Max Frisch

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The Swiss novelist and dramatist Max Frisch (1911-1991) explored the nature of human identity, individuality, and responsibility. His work is characterized by an ironic depiction of the issues confronting man in a technological society.

Max Frisch was born May 15, 1911, in Zurich and raised in a conventional middle-class milieu. His father's sudden death in 1933 forced him to abandon his studies in Germanic philology and literature at the University of Zurich and become a journalist to support himself and his mother. He wrote primarily about sporting events for newspapers, but his work allowed him to travel widely. An assignment on the Dalmatian coast inspired his first novel, Jürg Reinhardt: Eine sommerliche Schicksalsfahrt (Jürg Reinhardt: A Summer's Journey) (1934), which later was shortened considerably to serve as the initial portion of the author's extended prose fiction J'adore ce qui me brûle - oder die Schwierigen (1943). These two narratives reveal Frisch's early concern with the theme of man's quest for his true identity.

In 1937, despondent because of a lack of critical notice, Frisch vowed never to write again and resumed his education with funding by a family friend. He earned a university diploma in architecture, a field he pursued successfully after his army service to 1954. One of his commissions was from the city of Zurich to create the Zurich Recreational Park. When he was drafted into the army in 1939, however, he started to keep a diary, which was published in 1940 as Blätter aus dem Brotsack (Pages from a Knapsack).

Wrote First Play

Four years later, encouraged by a drama critic, Frisch wrote his first play, the symbolic Bin, or the Voyage to Peking, followed by the baroque Santa Cruz (1944). The war years left their mark on the playwright, and his initial stage production, Now They Sing Again (1945), poignantly evokes the pathos and agony of the conflict. His grim farce, The Wall of China (1946), deals surrealistically with a man's impotence when confronted by the forces of history. When the War Was Over (1949), more conventional in structure, deals with Frisch's recurring theme of responsibility and guilt. The inability of intellectuals to expose evil and take a stand against it appears to Frisch to be a major factor in the rise and supremacy of Nazism.

In these productions various scenes at different locations may take place simultaneously with minimal stage sets. Influenced by Bertolt Brecht, the playwright believed that the stage should not allow the audience to escape into an illusion of reality. Characters alternately enact their roles and step out of them, thus confronting the audience directly with the issues. The actors portray allegorical figures, frequently wearing masks to conceal their real identities and thus achieving loss of individuality. To emphasize this absence of romantic personal expression, Frisch had four actors play 12 parts in Count Oderland (1951), a dramatic attempt to mirror the chaotic nature of the modern age. The mask projects a superficial image to the viewer. The image, whether created or accepted by the individual, is difficult to dispel; and the struggle to escape from this dilemma is the source of modern tragicomedy.

Frisch's ironic comedy, Don Juan, or the Love of Geometry (1953), deals with a man trapped by his public image who must free himself by escaping into marriage. In a more serious vein, Andri, the protagonist of Andorra (1962), is persecuted as an alleged Jew. Four years previously Frisch had plunged into black comedy and the theater of the absurd with Biedermann and the Incendiaries, a sardonic commentary depicting a world of meaningless habit and of never-ending production and consumption, with absurdity attached to any traditional value.

Return to Fiction

During the 1950s Frisch resumed his fiction writing, pursuing the same themes of his plays. I'm Not Stiller (1954), the author's best-known novel, portrays a sculptor who attempts to escape from his self-imposed prison and fulfill himself, only to capitulate in the end because his public will not accept the change. Similarly, Faber in HomoFaber (1957) never really lives; rather he hides behind a mask. And the only way that Frisch's protagonist, Gontenbein, in A Wilderness of Mirrors (1962) can truly get to know and understand people is by pretending to be blind; only then do they feel sufficiently secure to remove their masks. This role playing, according to Frisch, is both misleading and fatal to love because it renders impossible the necessary adjustments and compromises involved in a constantly evolving relationship.

In 1975 he published Montauk, a novel that many critics felt was deserving of the Nobel Prize. In this work he draws from his relationship with Ingeborg Bachman, another writer. The book was described by Rüdiger Görner, a newspaper biographer, as "the most rigourous and tender, scrutinising and melancholic book Frisch wrote." When a journalist once asked him if he would like to correct any misinformation that had been published about him, he replied, "Fame is based on misstatements, so you should not correct them." He received many honors and awards for his plays and fiction from foundations and universities around the world. Among the later ones were: the German Book Trade Freedom Prize, 1976; commander, Ordre des Artes et des Lettres, 1985; Commonwealth Award, Modern Language Association, 1985; and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, 1986. In 1986 Frisch stopped writing because of failing health. He died in Zurich at the age of 80 on April 4, 1991.

Further Reading

No critical biography of Frisch exists in English. Martin Esslin in The Theater of the Absurd (1961; rev. ed. 1969) considers several of Frisch's plays.

Further information on Frisch can be found in Deborah Andrews, ed., The Annual Obituary 1991 (1992), Mark Hawkins-Dady, ed., International Dictionary of Theatre: Playwrights (1994), and Leonard S. Klein, ed., World Literature: 20th Century (1967; rev. ed. 1982).

Frisch, Max (Zurich, 1911-91, Zurich), the son of an architect, studied Germanistik at Zurich University. When, in his fifth semester, his father's death forced him to become independent, he turned to journalism, but in 1936 was enabled to study architecture at the Zurich Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. Qualifying in 1941, he practised successfully until 1954/5, when he left his office and his architect wife to make authorship his career. During the 1939-45 War he served in the Swiss army; his diary Blätter aus dem Brotsack (1940) is the first record of this experience. His urge to travel took him first to the Balkans (1933) and to Germany (1935), to which he frequently returned, to France, Italy, and the USA, Eastern Europe, the USSR (1966), the Arab states, Israel, Japan, and China (1975), and he made his home successively in various places (Berlin, Rome, Berzona, and New York). This restlessness corresponds to personal crises as well as to his impulse to explore forms of existence and identity, which represent the foremost theme of his work. But towards the end of the war he also became involved in the pressing issues of the contemporary social and political scene; it shows in his fiction and plays, dominating some of them. Yet unlike Brecht, whose stage technique influenced him (as did that of Thornton Wilder), he doubted the effectiveness of the political theatre beyond its critical function (in Der Autor und das Theater, 1964, he coins the phrase ‘Theater als Prüfstand’). The—at times very tenuous—link between both aspects, political involvement and self-absorbed escapism, the refusal to accept any single role in life that might impede possible potential, arises not least out of Frisch's revolt against conditions in his own country.

Early beginnings, the novel Jürg Reinhart (1934), its sequel J'adore ce qui me brûle oder Die Schwierigen (1943, new version as Die Schwierigen oder J'adore ce qui me brûle, 1957), and the story Antwort aus der Stille (1937), ended in 1937 with Frisch's decision to give up writing. He resumed with Bin oder die Reise nach Peking (1945), which set the pattern for his first-person prose fiction and role playing, and made his stage debut with the romance (Romanze) Santa Cruz (1947), an experiment in the simultaneous presentation of different levels of consciousness and time, and a programmatic treatment of marriage, which recurs in many variations; here the partners live their ‘more real’ life, that of their expectations, in their dreams or by identifying with another character, who in his freedom outside society represents it. The mellow ending is, however, in view of Frisch's increasing pessimism, uncharacteristic. The first play really to attract attention, Nun singen sie wieder (1946, rev. 1955 and 1972), Frisch's first response to the war, was conceived as a requiem for the dead and a warning to the living. Als der Krieg zu Ende war (1949) is devoted to Frisch's lifelong political message, the reconciliation of nations, though the real challenge appears to have been the portrayal of the mystery of love, here between a Russian officer and the wife of a German ex-officer, neither of whom speaks the other's language. A greater effect was achieved by Die chinesische Mauer (1947, rev. 1955, 1965, and 1972), a protest against atomic warfare in the form of a farce. The same cannot be said of the ‘Moritat’ Graf Öderland (1951, rev. 1957 and 1961), which fails to find a politically unambiguous ending. The political and social satire of Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie (1953, rev. 1962) is reminiscent of Büchner's Leonce und Lena; but the play is above all a parody of the legend (see Don Juan), suggesting that it was invented by Juan himself as a means of escape from women into the unemotional world of geometry. The game is lost when, in the end, he is tricked into marriage and fatherhood by a courtesan. According to Frisch's reference to Kierkegaard (cf. Either/Or), contained in the notes on the legend (Nachträgliches), acceptance of marriage would be a step towards maturity; the play leaves it open whether this narcissistic figure will overcome insecurity and fear of the female sex. The novel Stiller (1954) first established Frisch's international reputation as a writer of fiction. Noted for its integration of comments on contemporary issues, including deft criticism of Swiss attitudes, it presents a sculptor who escapes from his wife, country, and name, a concept that serves Frisch's projection of a modern artist's dilemma of identity, designed to blend with that of his formal approach to the modern novel. In the end Stiller is forced to accept his name, but not his wife; yet he returns to her, for, he admits, one does not forget a defeat (!). A similarly complex novel is Homo faber (1957), in which the scientist Walter Faber represents the fast-moving 1950s, in which the economic miracle accelerates the advance of the technological age, creating man in its own image, dehumanized and with the illusion that he is in control. The third of this set of novels, Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964) is Frisch's most ambitious composition demonstrating possible forms of experience, for which his stories (he prefers the term ‘Fiktionen’) serve as models (Erlebnismuster). Thus the title implies ‘imagine my name is Gantenbein’ (Gantenbein, who pretends to be blind, is one of the narrator's three fictitious names and, possibly, identities), and every recorded incident (Erfahrung) opens with the stereotyped phrase ‘I imagine’ (‘Ich stelle mir vor’). Frisch experimented with further variations, now with the emphasis on patterns of behaviour, in his comedy Biografie: Ein Spiel (1967, rev. 1968), a play within a play, set in the 1960s. Kürmann, to whose life his wife Antoinette is central, rehearses his ‘biography’, for life is like a lost game of chess, he muses, at the end of which one reconstructs the decisive moves, wondering whether, where, and how one could have played the game differently.

On the political plane, Frisch achieved his most enduring success with Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958) and the parable Andorra (1961). Both attack the attitude ‘it can't happen here’ and the supineness of the bourgeoisie. Though both are meant to have special application to Switzerland, their significance is universal. As Biedermann was too short for performance alone, Frisch wrote a one-act play, Die große Wut des Philipp Hotz (1958), described as a ‘Schwank’, to accompany it. Concern for the adverse effect of myth on the Swiss Confederation (Eidgenossenschaft) underlies the satirical prose of Wilhelm Tell für die Schule (1971), presented in the form of an annotated story with 74 extensive notes and in deliberate contrast to Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, which unwittingly promoted Swiss nationalism. The same reforming spirit informs the political and social criticism of the Swiss army contained in the reminiscences of Frisch's wartime service, Dienstbüchlein (1973), and in his contribution, two years before his death, to the polemics over the future of the army occasioned by the demand for a plebiscite, Schweiz ohne Armee? Ein Palaver (1989). Written as a dialogue between Jonas and his grandson, it was performed at the Zürcher Schauspielhaus as Jonas und sein Enkel, an occasion on which Frisch took his leave of the stage that had seen the first performance of most of his plays. One of his (repeatedly expressed) criticisms pertained to the role of military training in relation to civil obedience, which he viewed as being detrimental to democratic developments. Frisch was not alone in his strained relationship with his native land; he shared it with Dürrenmatt, for a long time a friend. And he expressed it by founding in 1979 his own Archive in Zurich in order to prevent his posthumous papers from going to Berne. This was not mere forethought. He had begun to take stock and to be more intimately preoccupied with existential problems, with age, death, and, in the context of sexual relationships, with guilt, albeit inexplicable. Averse to writing his autobiography, he composed Montauk (1974-5), his overtly autobiographical ‘story’, for which a weekend with Lynn, his young American friend, on the beach of Montauk forms the frame. Its play with different perspectives includes first and third person narrative, the latter serving the most private sphere of his experience and self-analysis; his relationship with Ingeborg Bachmann during the years in Rome (she refers to it in Malina) deserves special mention, but many sections are devoted to literature, prominent authors, and politicians. Triptychon. Drei szenische Bilder (1978, rev. 1980), his most abstract play, deals with the finality of death, with no hope of reincarnation (demonstrated by the central scene), and with no hope for any communication between the dead and the living (elaborated in the first and third scenes), a conviction demonstrated in Nun singen sie wieder but for a political purpose. Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (1979) is the story of Geiser, who, at the age of 73 (Frisch was in his late 60s at the time of writing), collects and recollects knowledge to test his memory, aware of the futility of such pursuits, in his voluntary retreat, an isolated mountain village (that of Frisch's Italian home), where the rocks induce a sense of indifference to the passing of life. In Blaubart (1982) the central figure, Schaad, a medical doctor in his mid-50s and known as Ritter Blaubart for having been divorced six times, is accused of the murder of one of his wives. Despite his subsequent acquittal for lack of evidence, he longs for an end to his existence, but his attempt to end his life in a road accident fails; he must bear his sense of guilt, not for the murder (another is convicted), but for guilt incurred since the age of puberty. (Filmed by Krzystof Zanussi, 1982-4.) Frisch's only film script, Zürich-Transit (1965), was produced by Hilde Bechert just before his death.

Particularly noteworthy is Frisch's contribution to the literary genre of the diary. Tagebuch 1946-49 (containing parts of Tagebuch mit Marion, 1947) appeared in 1950; its more consciously structured successor, Tagebuch 1966-71, in 1972. They include extensive observations on a great variety of major events in world politics and complement his numerous articles and speeches. Frisch's extensive correspondence includes that with Uwe Johnson. The most notable honour Frisch received was the Büchner Prize (1958), for he was the first non-German writer to be chosen for the award.

Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge. Jubiläumsausgabe (7 vols.), ed. H. Mayer and W. Schmitz, appeared in 1986 (6 vols. in 1976).

Quotes:

"It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life."

"Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."

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