During the twentieth century, German-speaking Switzerland produced numerous writers who became famous far beyond her borders. Among those Max Frisch, prolific novelist, playwright and diarist, ranks high in international acclaim. His texts have been translated into many languages, and his plays remain in the repertoire of theaters around the globe to this day. Frisch’s œuvre has long become part of the modernist “canon” for students of literature on all continents. Frisch always had his finger on the pulse of his time: on the debates and crises in post-war Europe and beyond. He wrote about fashionable, even trendy themes, but his texts are inscribed with the timeless substance of human experience.
Max Rudolf Frisch was born in Zurich on 15 May 1911 as the second child of the architect Franz Bruno Frisch and Karoline Frisch (née Wildermuth). His paternal grandfather had immigrated from Austria, the maternal ancestors from Germany. After he graduated from high school, Frisch enrolled at Zurich University in the winter of 1930 as a student of literature, art history and philosophy.
His father’s sudden death in 1932 force Frisch to abandoned his studies and find work to support his family. He became a freelance journalist for several newspapers, where he worte travel reports, local columns and literary critiques. He visited Prague, Greece, Turkey and Hungary. He also began writing fiction. He was displeased with his early works, the novel, Jürg Reinhart. Eine sommerliche Schicksalsfahrt [Jürg Reinhart: A Fateful Trip in Summer, 1934], and the narrative Antwort aus der Stille [Response from Silence, 1937] and he destroyed the manuscripts. With a friend’s financial support, he enrolled in the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich to study architecture and he received his diploma in 1941. Upon graduation, Frisch joined a Zurich architects’ firm. His design for a public swimming pool won a competition and enabled him to open his own office the following year. In the same year, 1942, Frisch was married to Constanze von Meyenburg. However, soon he felt uneasy in his “bourgeois marriage”, subsequently separated from his wife in 1954 and was divorced in 1959. Similarly, his career in architecture proved unfulfilling. Already in 1942 he had written his second novel J’adore ce qui me brûle oder Die Schwierigen [I Adore What Burns Me, or Difficult Persons, 1943.
Kurt Hirschfeld, director at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, encouraged Frisch to write for the stage, and he completed his first drama, Santa Cruz in 1944. It is a play about the interplay between reality and dream, depicting humans locked in their destinies and longing for a different life – a theme that would recur many times in his work
Frisch’s second play, however, Nun singen sie wieder. Versuch eines Requiems [Now They are Singing Again: Attempt at a Requiem, 1945], breaks with the escapist themes of his earlier works and turns to the realities of the hour: the horrors of war, racism, fascism, and their devastating effect on humanity. The text conveys a powerful feeling of grief for the victims and a poignant plea for pacifism. The style of these works was much inspired by Bertolt Brecht: the two authors met in person in 1947, but Frisch had been familiar with Brecht’s work earlier. Later, Frisch would depict his friendship with Brecht in his diaries, Tagebuch 1948-1949 and Tagebuch 1966-1971.
In his next play, Die chinesische Mauer [The Chinese Wall, 1947, rev. 1955, 1965, 1973], Frisch turned to the nuclear threat to humanity: a timely topic also treated in plays by Brecht, Dürrenmatt and others. The following drama, Als der Krieg zu Ende war [When War was Finished, 1949], is an “historical play” about a German woman who falls in love with a Soviet occupation soldier while her Nazi husband is hidden in the cellar.
In 1954 Frisch closed his architect’s office and fully devoted himself to writing.
Meanwhile, encouraged by his stage success, Frisch had returned to the novel. His three major novels, Stiller [I’m not Stiller, 1954], Homo faber. Ein Bericht [Homo Faber: A Report, 1957] and Mein Name sei Gantenbein [A Wilderness of Mirrors, 1964], can be read as a trilogy connected by the recurring motif of their (male) protagonists’ struggles with the immutability of their respective biographies.
It was not until 1958 though, that he grew internationally famous with his play, Herr Biedermann und die Brandstifter [The Firebugs.] In that same year, he was awarded the prestigious Georg-Buchner Prize and met Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann. Their relationship ended in the early 1960s. It was during their relationship when Frisch had one of his most productive periods as a playwright and wrote one of his most famous plays, Andorra. Andorra was such a success that in 1963, it was performed in 53 different German cities.
A late drama, Triptychon [Triptych, 1978, rev. 1980], reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis clos and Les jeux sont faits, explores the questions of re-writing one’s life after death, of “permutations” thereafter, but also of the inevitable repetition of previous mistakes in the netherworld. Theatrically effective, bleak in its tone, the play delivers a fitting coda to Frisch’s “dramaturgy of permutation”. Max Frisch’s final years brought him a multitude of honors (honorary doctorates and prizes from universities and governments in the USA and Europe). His public presence remained strong: he attended, among other functions, the 1987 Moscow peace congress presided by Mikhail Gorbachev and delivered a fervent plea for a future in peace and without ideological strife.
In 1990 he was diagnosed with cancer, and he died in Zurich on April 4, 1991. In one of his last speeches he once more emphasized his unflagging belief in peace “as the only option for the survival of humanity”.
The Firebugs
On the international stage, Herr Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958), and Andorra became Frisch’s most successful and enduring plays. Both share an “open” parable form patterned after Brecht’s epic theater. Influenced by Thornton Wilder, Biedermann was actually based on a radio drama Frisch had written in 1953. An historical-political play about the rise of fascism and the self-destructive complacency of the bourgeoisie unable to recognize imminent doom, Biedermann was met with great success on the German-language stage and was also performed in the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Finland, Israel, Sweden, France and Spain. It was produced in London in 1961 as The Fire Raisers and Off-Broadway in New York in 1963 at the Maidman Theatre under the title The Firebugs, in a production directed by Gene Frankle. Interestingly, New Yorkers had the opportunity to see both these Frisch dramas that season. Andorra was playing on Broadway at the same time as The Firebugs was downtown.
