Friedrich Dürrenmatt

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The works of the Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) combine surface realism with an absurd and almost surreal artistic vision, expressed in an abundance of oppressive, distorted, often ironic detail.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921, in Konolfingen, Switzerland, near Bern. His father, Rheingold, was a pastor, while his grandfather, Ulrich, was a famous satirist and poet. At 13 he began to study theology, philosophy, German literature, and natural sciences, first at the Gymnasium in Bern and then at the University of Bern. Later he attended the University of Zurich to study art and philosophy. Inexplicably he began to write, yet he entered the field of graphic design in order to support himself. A heavy man with a penchant for cigars, in 1947 he won the heart of Lotti Geisler, a German actress, with whom he had three children. While residing in Basel, he composed Es steht geschrieben ("It Is Written," 1946), which caused scandal when it was produced in 1947 because of its alternative portrayal of religion, yet it earned him a prize. Der Blinde ("The Blind," 1948) was produced the next year.

Dürrenmatt's first success on the postwar German stage was Romulus der Grosse ("Romulus the Great," 1949), an "unhistorical historical comedy" about the fall of the Roman Empire. In this commentary on the absurdity of human values - with contemporary satirical implications - the last Roman emperor, more interested in breeding chickens than in politics, stoically accepts the inevitable course of history and hands his crown to the barbarian invader. The dramatist was later to write, "The world, for me, stands as something monstrous, an enigma of calamity that has to be accepted but to which there must be no surrender."

His next work and first big hit, Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi ("The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi," 1950), was produced in Munich in 1952. A grotesque yet comic "dance of death" mocking ideology as a solution to man's predicament, it was briefly produced off-Broadway in 1958 as Fools Are Passing Through to mixed criticism. With Ein Engel kommt nach Babylon ("An Angel Comes to Babylon," 1953), produced in Munich, Dürrenmatt's reputation was established in Europe. It has been alternatively described as an obscure, fragmentary drama challenging "God's injustice," and as a parable of "a heavenly emissary who brings confusion instead of happiness." Der Besuch der alten Dame ("The Old Lady's Visit," later shortened to just "The Visit", 1955), however, extended the author's impact. Caught in a struggle between moral and material values, the dramatic protagonist of this work is an entire community which slowly succumbs to the temptation of murdering one of its members for the sake of a promised fortune. When it opened on Broadway in 1958, it was one of the most highly praised plays of the season. In 1971 Austrian composer made The Visit into an opera.

Dürrenmatt's nondramatic prose also explores "black comic" elements with penetrating irony. Among the radio scripts prepared during this period are The Vega Enterprise (1956), a science-fiction thriller which ends with the atomic bombing of the last humane sanctuary in a corrupt universe, and Nächtliches Gespräach mit einem verachtelen Menschen ("Nocturnal Conversation With a Scorned Man," 1957), which contains a dialogue between the secret executioner and the idealist on the futility of self-sacrifice and the art of dying. Many of his shorter efforts can be termed detective mysteries. His full-length novel Grieche Sucht Griechin ("Greek Man Seeks Greek Woman," 1955), however, does offer some genuine comic relief from the oppressive quality of the author's world view, but it was panned because its logic escaped its reviewers.

Three years after The Visit Dürrenmatt returned to the theater with Frank V, a poorly received musical drama. Die Physiker ("The Physicists," 1961), his first classically constructed work, restored the playwright to favor. Dürrenmatt preferred to term his plays "comedies," and in Problems of the Theatre (1955) he expressed the belief that tragedy could no longer be written because the modern age, lacking a well-ordered world - with established standards of guilt and retribution - is not suited for it. He continued writing, his plays of note including Play Strindberg (1969), Die Frist ("The Appointed Time," 1977), Achterloo, and Oedipus (1989). His last major work, The Execution of Justice (1989), has been described as the culmination of 400 years of European thought on the topic of justice. Dürrenmatt passed away in 1990.

Further Reading

Many of Dürrenmatt's plays can be found in print, and a good number of those in English. The Playwrights Speak, edited by Walter Wager (1967), includes a chapter by Dürrenmatt on his theory of theater. Murray B. Peppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1970), contains a discussion of Dürrenmatt's writings as well as biographical details. Several critical surveys of drama devote sections to the playwright: see Hugh F. Garten, Modern German Drama (1959).

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich (Konolfingen, Canton Berne, 1921-90, Neuchâtel), son of a pastor who settled in Berne in 1935. He pursued literary, philosophical, and scientific studies at the universities of Zurich and Berne. His study of the dramatic technique of B. Brecht was a decisive factor in his development as an outstanding dramatist of the post-war era. He was also an intriguing writer of fiction. From 1946 he settled in Basel, and in 1952 moved to Neuenburg (Neuchâtel).

Dürrenmatt's first play, Es steht geschrieben, performed at the Schauspielhaus, Zurich, in April 1947 and published before the year was out, is an unhistorical, tragicomic treatment of the Anabaptist rule of Münster from 1534 to 1536, and the subsequent retribution exacted by the Catholic bishop's soldiers on the fall of the city. The work is an original mixture of serious thought, violence, and grotesque comedy, in which Knipperdollinck, the man of simple-minded sincerity, and Bockelson, the selfish and ruthless agitator, both suffer death. As the troops are about to break into the city, Knipperdollinck and Bockelson execute a grotesque rooftop dance (an episode which provoked a disturbance at the first performance). As both men die, it is the passive victim Knippeldollinck who praises God and receives his grace. The disparate elements of the play foreshadow the character of much of Dürrenmatt's work. In 1967 a revised version of Es steht geschrieben appeared under the title Die Wiedertäufer. In 1948 Der Blinde was performed in Basel (published 1960). It is set a century later in the Thirty Years War (see Dreissigjähriger Krieg) and is an allegory of faith in the form of a parallel to Job. The blind Duke overcomes, through his credulous passivity, the machinations and outrages of his antagonist Negro da Ponte.

Dürrenmatt's highly successful play Romulus der Große was performed and published in 1949 (revised 1957). It presents the end of the Roman Empire in comic terms: intent on the ruin of the Empire, Romulus is more concerned with breeding poultry than with running the state. A passive martyr in the first version, he is not allowed to achieve martyrdom in the later, more comic, form which accentuates the political satire. Two minor narrative works (Pilatus, 1949, and Der Nihilist, 1950) preceded Dürrenmatt's first première outside Switzerland, the comedy Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi (1952, Munich). His next play, Ein Engel kommt nach Babylon (performed in Munich, 1953, published 1954), is a kind of prelude to the building of the Tower of Babel; it is his most poetic and harmonious play.

While Dürrenmatt was producing this succession of grotesque and paradoxical comedies—and abstaining from tragedy because in his view the world had reached a state in which the assumptions of tragedy appeared ridiculous—he was also busy writing a succession of prose works, ‘potboilers’, as he is reported to have called them. These narrative works comprise primarily three detective novels which have become well known in English-speaking countries. Der Richter und sein Henker (1952) begins the cycle, sharing its detective, Bärlach, with the second, Der Verdacht (1953). Both deal with the fulfilment of justice, but with the special peculiarity, which is shared also by the succeeding story, Das Versprechen (1958), that the detective suffers as greatly as the quarry he pursues. These works are marked by ingenious psychology and considerable power to evoke landscape. Another novel, Justiz, begun in 1957, appeared in 1985.

Between the second and the third novel Dürrenmatt published a collection of short narratives, Der Tunnel (1952), and the ‘Prosakomödie’ Grieche sucht Griechin (1955). The marriage advertisement ‘Grieche sucht Griechin’ leads to the incongruous coupling of the mild and simple Arnolph Archilochos and the sophisticated courtesan Chloë Saloniki, which for a time lifts Arnolph on to a social plane he has admired from below, only to dash him into revolutionary depths in which he seeks to assassinate the state president. Dürrenmatt gives the story alternative endings, ‘Ende I’ and ‘das Ende für Leihbibliotheken’. (Film version by F. Seitz, 1966.)

The story Die Panne (1956, originally a radio play, with a less radical ending, also version for television and stage performance) provides a ghostly court scene and another character, Alfredo Traps, who, like Knipperdollinck and later Alfred Ill in Der Besuch der alten Dame, passively accepts his guilt and, as a necessary consequence, his end. The title refers to a car breakdown with which the story opens, but also, with varied emphasis, to today's world, ‘diese Welt der Pannen’ (Erster Teil). Dürrenmatt published his early stories in Die Stadt. Prosa I-IV (1952), containing Weihnacht, Der Folterknecht, Der Hund, Das Bild des Sisyphos, Der Theaterdirektor, Die Falle, Die Stadt, Der Tunnel, and Pilatus.

In 1956 appeared his play Der Besuch der alten Dame, and in 1962 Die Physiker. Both works, which stand out clearly above the rest, deal with power, responsibility, and guilt; the first in the context of finance, the second in that of technology. The ordinary individual confronted with either of these forces of the modern world can, in Dürrenmatt's view, at best face up to it—‘die Welt bestehen’. Between these two plays came Frank der Fünfte. Oper einer Privatbank (1960), a work with some affinity to Der Besuch der alten Dame. Herkules und der Stall des Augias, adapted in 1962 from a radio play of 1954, twists the ancient myth to make a parable. Hercules does not shift the muck; Augias endures it and uses its fertilizing power to advantage. This play, which contains amusing comedy and brilliant satire, encountered fierce opposition.

Among Dürrenmatt's radio plays are Der Doppelgänger (1946), Der Prozeß um des Esels Schatten (1958), Nächtliches Gespräch mit einem verachteten Menschen (1952), Das Unternehmen der Wega (1954), and Die Abendstunde im Spätherbst (1956).

During the last decades of his life Dürrenmatt's dramatic writing became more pessimistic as well as more experimental, his ‘Endspiel-Dramatik’, as it came to be known, contributing to his increasing isolation from the general public. In Der Meteor (1966) he turned death into a subject for comedy. Porträt eines Planeten (1st version Düsseldorf, 1970; 2nd version Zurich, 1971), his bleakest play, presents archetypal characters (Adam, Eva, etc.). Placed on a bare stage, they conduct an arid, laconic dialogue, interrupted from time to time by addresses to the audience, explaining the end of our planet and its recommencement. The printed play is preceded by a paradoxical preface on the improbability of reality.

The volume presenting Dürrenmatt's comedy Der Mitmacher (1976, first publication of the play 1973) is introduced as Ein Komplex. Text der Komödie. Dramaturgie. Erfahrungen. Berichte. Erzählungen. The latter items appear in the table of contents in two sections, Nachwort and Nachwort zum Nachwort, which together are some 200 pages longer than the play itself. They include comments on the play, dramaturgical suggestions, and an analysis of the philosophy underlying the notion of the ‘conformer’ and ‘conforming’ (Mitmachen). Everyone conforms, but there are two types of conformers: the positive conformer who acts with conviction (though his convictions can produce evil as well as good), and the negative conformer who acts out of self-interest and is a morally inferior and weak character. Set in an underground laboratory, accessible through a lift, the play is divided into two parts containing five monologues, spoken in turn by Doc, Ann, Bill, Boß, and Cop, Doc being the Conformer of the title. The one-syllable names of the figures indicate their purely functional capacity and the curt phrases of the dialogue (also termed Stichwort-Dramatik) the absence of genuine communication between them. The inventor of a necrodializator that dissolves corpses and hence makes a perfect murder possible, Doc works for the ‘syndicate’, a gang that supplies him with the corpses of its victims. A formerly prosperous biochemist, he is thus able to rebuild his existence, only to find that his conformism ends in even greater ruin. Other late works include the comedy Die Frist (1977), the tragi-comedy Achterloo (1983), Rollenspiele (1986, incl. Achterloo III), Achterloo IV (directed by Dürrenmatt himself at its première in 1988), and his last novel, Durcheinandertal (1989).

Dürrenmatt was a skilful draughtsman, and his economical and firm line-drawings illustrate some of his works. He was also a keen critic and essayist, beginning with Theaterprobleme (1955), in which he promulgates his conception of comedy, the ‘mutiger Mensch’, and the function of the grotesque. Towards the end of his life Dürrenmatt, a moralist who distrusted human nature as well as ideological and religious dogma, delivered two political speeches, the second substantiating the title of the posthumous volume Kants Hoffnung (1991, with an essay by W. Jens), for, so Dürrenmatt argues, Kant, the realist, conceived his moral philosophy in the hope that it would lead to freedom and justice. This was likewise Dürrenmatt's last hope for the future.

Dürrenmatt received prizes and honours in Switzerland, Austria, West Germany (incl. the Büchner Prize, 1986), the USA, Israel, and Great Britain. His work appeared in numerous publications including a volume of Bilder und Zeichnungen (1978), Gesammelte Hörspiele (1960), Theater-Schriften und Reden (2 vols., 1966 and 1972), a comprehensive Werkausgabe (30 vols., 1980), Stoffe I-III (1981), Turmbau. Stoffe IV-VIII (1990), Gesammelte Werke in sieben Bänden, ed. F. J. Görtz (1988), the essays of Gedankenfuge (1992), and the novel Der Pensionierte, written 1969-71, ed. P. Rüedi (1995).