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Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch (German: [maks ˈfʁɪʃ] ⓘ; 15 May 1911 – 4 April 1991) was a Swiss playwright and novelist. Frisch's works focused on problems of identity, individuality, responsibility, morality, and political commitment. The use of irony is a significant feature of his post-war output. Frisch was one of the founders of Gruppe Olten. He was awarded the 1965 Jerusalem Prize, the 1973 Grand Schiller Prize, and the 1986 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Max Rudolf Frisch was born on 15 May 1911 in Zurich, Switzerland, the second son of Franz Bruno Frisch, an architect, and Karolina Bettina Frisch (née Wildermuth). He had a sister, Emma (1899–1972), his father's daughter by a previous marriage, and a brother, Franz, eight years his senior (1903–1978). The family lived modestly, their financial situation deteriorating after the father lost his job during the First World War. Frisch had an emotionally distant relationship with his father, but was close to his mother. While at secondary school Frisch started to write drama, but failed to get his work performed and he subsequently destroyed his first literary works. While he was at school he met Werner Coninx (1911–1980), who later became a successful artist and collector. The two men formed a lifelong friendship.[citation needed]
In the 1930/31 academic year Frisch enrolled at the University of Zurich to study German literature and linguistics. There he met professors who gave him contact with the worlds of publishing and journalism, and was influenced by Robert Faesi (1883–1972) and Theophil Spoerri (1890–1974), both writers and professors at the university. Frisch had hoped the university would provide him with the practical underpinnings for a career as a writer, but became convinced that university studies would not provide this. In 1932, when financial pressures on the family intensified, Frisch abandoned his studies. In 1936 Max Frisch studied architecture at the ETH Zurich and graduated in 1940. In 1942 he set up his own architecture business.
Frisch made his first contribution to the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in May 1931, but the death of his father in March 1932 persuaded him to make a full-time career of journalism in order to generate an income to support his mother. He developed a lifelong ambivalent relationship with the NZZ; his later radicalism was in stark contrast to the conservative views of the newspaper. The move to the NZZ is the subject of his April 1932 essay, titled "Was bin ich?" ("What am I?"), his first serious piece of freelance work. Until 1934 Frisch combined journalistic work with coursework at the university. Over 100 of his pieces survive from this period; they are autobiographical, rather than political, dealing with his own self-exploration and personal experiences, such as the break-up of his love affair with the 18-year-old actress Else Schebesta. Few of these early works made it into the published compilations of Frisch's writings that appeared after he had become better known. Frisch seems to have found many of them excessively introspective even at the time, and tried to distract himself by taking labouring jobs involving physical exertion, including a period in 1932 when he worked on road construction.
Between February and October 1933 he travelled extensively through eastern and southeastern Europe, financing his expeditions with reports written for newspapers and magazines. One of his first contributions was a report on the Prague World Ice Hockey Championship (1933) for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Other destinations were Budapest, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Istanbul, Athens, Bari, and Rome. Another product of this extensive tour was Frisch's first novel, Jürg Reinhart, which appeared in 1934. In it Reinhart represents the author, undertaking a trip through the Balkans as a way to find purpose in life. In the end the eponymous hero concludes that he can only become fully adult by performing a "manly act". He does so by helping his landlady's daughter, who is terminally ill, end her life painlessly.
In the summer of 1934, Frisch met Käte Rubensohn, who was three years his junior. The next year the two developed a romantic liaison. Rubensohn, who was Jewish, had emigrated from Berlin to continue her studies, which had been interrupted by government-led antisemitism and race-based legislation in Germany. In 1935 Frisch visited Germany for the first time. He kept a diary, later published as Kleines Tagebuch einer deutschen Reise (Short Diary of a German Trip), in which he described and criticised the antisemitism he encountered. At the same time, Frisch recorded his admiration for the Wunder des Lebens (Wonder of Life) exhibition staged by Herbert Bayer, an admirer of the Hitler government's philosophy and policies. (Bayer was later forced to flee the country after annoying Hitler). Frisch failed to anticipate how Germany's National Socialism would evolve, and his early apolitical novels were published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA) without encountering any difficulties from the German censors. During the 1940s Frisch developed a more critical political consciousness. His failure to become more critical sooner has been attributed in part to the conservative spirit at the University of Zurich, where several professors were openly sympathetic with Hitler and Mussolini. Frisch was never tempted to embrace such sympathies, as he explained much later, because of his relationship with Käte Rubensohn, even though the romance itself ended in 1939 after she refused to marry him.
Frisch's second novel, An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille), appeared in 1937. The book returned to the theme of a "manly act", but now placed it in the context of a middle class lifestyle. The author quickly became critical of the book, burning the original manuscript in 1937 and refusing to let it be included in a compilation of his works published in the 1970s. Frisch had the word "author" deleted from the "profession/occupation" field in his passport. Supported by a stipend from his friend Werner Coninx, he had in 1936 enrolled at the ETH Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) to study architecture, his father's profession. His resolve to disown his second published novel was undermined when it won him the 1938 Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize, which included an award of 3,000 Swiss francs. At this time Frisch was living on an annual stipend from his friend of 4,000 francs.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the Swiss army as a gunner. Although Swiss neutrality meant that army membership was not a full-time occupation, the country mobilised to be ready to resist a German invasion, and by 1945 Frisch had clocked up 650 days of active service. He also returned to writing. 1939 saw the publication of From a Soldier's Diary (Aus dem Tagebuch eines Soldaten), which initially appeared in the monthly journal, Atlantis. In 1940 the same writings were compiled into the book Pages from the Bread-bag (Blätter aus dem Brotsack). The book was broadly uncritical of Swiss military life, and of Switzerland's position in war-time Europe, attitudes that Frisch revisited and revised in his 1974 Little Service Book (Dienstbuechlein); by 1974 he felt strongly that his country had been too ready to accommodate the interests of Nazi Germany during the war years.
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Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch (German: [maks ˈfʁɪʃ] ⓘ; 15 May 1911 – 4 April 1991) was a Swiss playwright and novelist. Frisch's works focused on problems of identity, individuality, responsibility, morality, and political commitment. The use of irony is a significant feature of his post-war output. Frisch was one of the founders of Gruppe Olten. He was awarded the 1965 Jerusalem Prize, the 1973 Grand Schiller Prize, and the 1986 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Max Rudolf Frisch was born on 15 May 1911 in Zurich, Switzerland, the second son of Franz Bruno Frisch, an architect, and Karolina Bettina Frisch (née Wildermuth). He had a sister, Emma (1899–1972), his father's daughter by a previous marriage, and a brother, Franz, eight years his senior (1903–1978). The family lived modestly, their financial situation deteriorating after the father lost his job during the First World War. Frisch had an emotionally distant relationship with his father, but was close to his mother. While at secondary school Frisch started to write drama, but failed to get his work performed and he subsequently destroyed his first literary works. While he was at school he met Werner Coninx (1911–1980), who later became a successful artist and collector. The two men formed a lifelong friendship.[citation needed]
In the 1930/31 academic year Frisch enrolled at the University of Zurich to study German literature and linguistics. There he met professors who gave him contact with the worlds of publishing and journalism, and was influenced by Robert Faesi (1883–1972) and Theophil Spoerri (1890–1974), both writers and professors at the university. Frisch had hoped the university would provide him with the practical underpinnings for a career as a writer, but became convinced that university studies would not provide this. In 1932, when financial pressures on the family intensified, Frisch abandoned his studies. In 1936 Max Frisch studied architecture at the ETH Zurich and graduated in 1940. In 1942 he set up his own architecture business.
Frisch made his first contribution to the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in May 1931, but the death of his father in March 1932 persuaded him to make a full-time career of journalism in order to generate an income to support his mother. He developed a lifelong ambivalent relationship with the NZZ; his later radicalism was in stark contrast to the conservative views of the newspaper. The move to the NZZ is the subject of his April 1932 essay, titled "Was bin ich?" ("What am I?"), his first serious piece of freelance work. Until 1934 Frisch combined journalistic work with coursework at the university. Over 100 of his pieces survive from this period; they are autobiographical, rather than political, dealing with his own self-exploration and personal experiences, such as the break-up of his love affair with the 18-year-old actress Else Schebesta. Few of these early works made it into the published compilations of Frisch's writings that appeared after he had become better known. Frisch seems to have found many of them excessively introspective even at the time, and tried to distract himself by taking labouring jobs involving physical exertion, including a period in 1932 when he worked on road construction.
Between February and October 1933 he travelled extensively through eastern and southeastern Europe, financing his expeditions with reports written for newspapers and magazines. One of his first contributions was a report on the Prague World Ice Hockey Championship (1933) for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Other destinations were Budapest, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Istanbul, Athens, Bari, and Rome. Another product of this extensive tour was Frisch's first novel, Jürg Reinhart, which appeared in 1934. In it Reinhart represents the author, undertaking a trip through the Balkans as a way to find purpose in life. In the end the eponymous hero concludes that he can only become fully adult by performing a "manly act". He does so by helping his landlady's daughter, who is terminally ill, end her life painlessly.
In the summer of 1934, Frisch met Käte Rubensohn, who was three years his junior. The next year the two developed a romantic liaison. Rubensohn, who was Jewish, had emigrated from Berlin to continue her studies, which had been interrupted by government-led antisemitism and race-based legislation in Germany. In 1935 Frisch visited Germany for the first time. He kept a diary, later published as Kleines Tagebuch einer deutschen Reise (Short Diary of a German Trip), in which he described and criticised the antisemitism he encountered. At the same time, Frisch recorded his admiration for the Wunder des Lebens (Wonder of Life) exhibition staged by Herbert Bayer, an admirer of the Hitler government's philosophy and policies. (Bayer was later forced to flee the country after annoying Hitler). Frisch failed to anticipate how Germany's National Socialism would evolve, and his early apolitical novels were published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA) without encountering any difficulties from the German censors. During the 1940s Frisch developed a more critical political consciousness. His failure to become more critical sooner has been attributed in part to the conservative spirit at the University of Zurich, where several professors were openly sympathetic with Hitler and Mussolini. Frisch was never tempted to embrace such sympathies, as he explained much later, because of his relationship with Käte Rubensohn, even though the romance itself ended in 1939 after she refused to marry him.
Frisch's second novel, An Answer from the Silence (Antwort aus der Stille), appeared in 1937. The book returned to the theme of a "manly act", but now placed it in the context of a middle class lifestyle. The author quickly became critical of the book, burning the original manuscript in 1937 and refusing to let it be included in a compilation of his works published in the 1970s. Frisch had the word "author" deleted from the "profession/occupation" field in his passport. Supported by a stipend from his friend Werner Coninx, he had in 1936 enrolled at the ETH Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) to study architecture, his father's profession. His resolve to disown his second published novel was undermined when it won him the 1938 Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize, which included an award of 3,000 Swiss francs. At this time Frisch was living on an annual stipend from his friend of 4,000 francs.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the Swiss army as a gunner. Although Swiss neutrality meant that army membership was not a full-time occupation, the country mobilised to be ready to resist a German invasion, and by 1945 Frisch had clocked up 650 days of active service. He also returned to writing. 1939 saw the publication of From a Soldier's Diary (Aus dem Tagebuch eines Soldaten), which initially appeared in the monthly journal, Atlantis. In 1940 the same writings were compiled into the book Pages from the Bread-bag (Blätter aus dem Brotsack). The book was broadly uncritical of Swiss military life, and of Switzerland's position in war-time Europe, attitudes that Frisch revisited and revised in his 1974 Little Service Book (Dienstbuechlein); by 1974 he felt strongly that his country had been too ready to accommodate the interests of Nazi Germany during the war years.