Max Goldinger

b. 10 Nov. 1908 in Zurich, d. 19 June 1988 in Trogen

Max Goldinger appears to have been driven by an irresistible urge to create, in light of the innumerable drawings, poems, stringed instruments, and other objects made of found materials which he left behind. He travelled extensively and is said to have been a journalist in Hamburg and in France as well as the editor of the communist newspaper L’Humanité. He is believed to have returned to Switzerland due to the Second World War. After becoming mute as a result of an automobile accident, he ended up in the Münsterlingen psychiatric hospital. From 1984 on he lived at the Lindenbühl retirement and nursing home in Trogen. On a train Goldinger became friends with the musician and embroidery artist Ficht Tanner, who supported him and edited a commemorative publication with poems by his fellow outsider artist in 1981. Goldinger mainly built musical instruments, even though he could neither read music nor play an instrument. He bound wood, wire scraps, tin cans, nails, screws, and bells together into compact ‘miniature lyres,’ ‘violins,’ and ‘harps.’ He called himself an ‘Aussensaiter,’ an ‘outsider and troublemaker,’ a role he also alluded to in the title of one of his stringed instruments (‘Aussensaiter,’ a play on the words ‘Aussenseiter’ for ‘outsider’ and ‘Saiteninstrument’ for ‘stringed instrument’).