The Gruppe Olten (Olten Group) was a club of left-wing Swiss writers who convened at Olten 's "Bahnhofbuffet" (Swiss expression for a railway station restaurant) located in the canton of Solothurn in the Swiss plateau . It was founded in the aforementioned railway station restaurant and existed from 1970 to 2002.
146-565: Initially the group comprised just 22 well-established former members of the Swiss writer’s club ( Schweizerischer Schriftstellerverein , or SSV). Prominent writers including Max Frisch , Adolf Muschg , Peter Bichsel , Otto F. Walter and Friedrich Dürrenmatt in 1971 left the SSV (which they considered to be unprogressive) and became members of the Gruppe Olten. One of the reasons that led to
292-456: A " Greek chorus " and characters addressing the audience directly. In a manner reminiscent of Brecht 's epic theatre, audience members are not expected to identify with the characters on stage, but rather to have their own thoughts and assumptions stimulated and provoked. Unlike Brecht however, Frisch offered few insights or answers, preferring to leave the audience the freedom to provide their own interpretations. Frisch himself acknowledged that
438-407: A "lesson without teaching", and with Andorra (1961) that Frisch enjoyed the most success. Indeed, these two are among the most successful German language plays. The writer nevertheless remained dissatisfied because he believed they had been widely misunderstood. In an interview with Heinz Ludwig Arnold Frisch vigorously rejected their allegorical approach: "I have established only that when I apply
584-556: A "makerspace" and co-working space was established on the Hönggerberg campus, followed by a 6-story space near the ETH Zurich main building. Both locations function as a unified entity for the purpose of qualifications, staffing and decision making. While both makerspaces offer similar tools, the central one is significantly larger and also hosts a rentable auditorium, intended for pitching projects to faculty to gain funding, and
730-519: 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
876-544: A Frisch play typically involved a return to the starting position: the destiny that awaited his protagonist might be to have no destiny. Frisch's style changed across the various phases of his work. His early work is strongly influenced by the poetical imagery of Albin Zollinger , and not without a certain imitative lyricism, something from which in later life he would distance himself, dismissing it as "phoney poeticising" ("falsche Poetisierung") . His later works employed
1022-447: A bar. Both makerspaces include workspaces for wood- and metalworking, electronics fabrication, as well as an array of 3D-printers for students to use at a little over material cost. Both also feature a shop for students to buy items such as resistors in lower quantities than ordinarily, while passing down the savings of bulk purchases. The makerspaces are managed and staffed entirely by students, who are paid in shop credit. A new space
1168-496: 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
1314-404: A compilation titled Tagebuch mit Marion ( Diary with Marion ). In reality what appeared was not so much a diary as cross between a series of essays and literary autobiography. He was encouraged by the publisher Peter Suhrkamp to develop the format, and Suhrkamp provided his own feedback and specific suggestions for improvements. In 1950 Suhrkamp's own newly established publishing house produced
1460-545: A conventional trilogy ... but in the sense that they together form a single literary chord . The three books complement one another while each retains its individual wholeness ... All three books have a flavour of the balance sheet in a set of year-end financial accounts, disclosing only that which is necessary: summarized and zipped up". Frisch himself produced a more succinct "author's judgement": "The last three narratives have just one thing in common: they allow me to experiment with presentational approaches that go further than
1606-484: A diary which would be published in 1940 with the title "Pages from the Bread-bag" ( "Blätter aus dem Brotsack" ). Unlike his earlier works, output in diary form could more directly reflect the author's own positions. In this respect the work influenced Frisch's own future prose works. He published two further literary diaries covering the periods 1946–1949 and 1966–1971. The typescript for a further diary, started in 1982,
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#17327798183061752-487: A dozen buildings, although only two were actually built. One was a house for his brother Franz and the other was a country house for the shampoo magnate, K. F. Ferster. Ferster's house triggered a major court action when it was alleged that Frisch had altered the dimensions of the main staircase without reference to his client. Frisch later retaliated by using Ferster as the model for the protagonist in his play The Fire Raisers ( Biedermann und die Brandstifter ). When Frisch
1898-606: A full-time freelance writer. At the end of 1955 Frisch started work on his novel, Homo Faber which would be published in 1957. It concerns an engineer who views life through a "technical" ultra-rational prism. Homo Faber was chosen as a study text for the schools and became the most read of Frisch's books. The book involves a journey which mirrors a trip that Frisch himself undertook to Italy in 1956, and subsequently to America (his second visit, this time also taking in Mexico and Cuba ). The following year Frisch visited Greece, which
2044-771: A large variety of committees such as the Student Sustainability Committee and the ETH Model United Nations . The associations regularly organize events with varying size and popularity. Events of the neighboring University of Zurich are well-attended by ETH Zurich students and vice versa. The largest career fair on campus is the Polymesse which is organized by students in the Forum und Contact committee of VSETH. Many student associations however organize career fairs specifically for
2190-473: A little sequel which was intended as a warning against Nazism , though this was later removed. A sketch for Frisch's next play, Andorra had also already appeared in the Tagebuch 1946–1949 . Andorra deals with the power of preconceptions concerning fellow human beings. The principal character, Andri, is a youth who is assumed to be Jewish , rescued from the neighboring "Blackshirts" by his Andorran father,
2336-498: A new record of 0-100km/h in 0.956 seconds. [1] Swissloop is the ETH Zurich's newest competition team that is working on the development of a Hyperloop system. The annual Polyball is the most prestigious public event at ETH Zurich, with a long tradition since the 1880s. At the end of November, the Polyball welcomes around 10,000 dancers, music-lovers and partygoers in the extensively decorated main building of ETH Zurich. This
2482-414: A play that picked up on a narrative that had already been sketched out in the "diaries". The story concerns a state prosecutor named Martin who grows bored with his middle-class existence, and drawing inspiration from the legend of Count Oederland, sets out in search of total freedom, using an axe to kill anyone who stands in his way. He ends up as the leader of a revolutionary freedom movement, and finds that
2628-553: A private record, made public to provide readers with voyeuristic gratification, nor an intimate journal of the kind associated with Henri-Frédéric Amiel . The diaries published by Frisch were closer to the literary "structured consciousness" narratives associated with Joyce and Döblin , providing an acceptable alternative but effective method for Frisch to communicate real-world truths. After he had intended to abandon writing, pressured by what he saw as an existential threat from his having entered military service, Frisch started to write
2774-404: A second volume of Frisch's Tagebuch covering the period 1946–1949, comprising a mosaic of travelogues, autobiographical musings, essays on political and literary theory and literary sketches, adumbrating many of the themes and sub-currents of his later fictional works. Critical reaction to the new impetus that Frisch's Tagebücher was giving to the genre of the "literary diary" was positive: there
2920-533: A speech at an SPD Party Conference. In April 1974, while on a book tour in the US, Frisch launched into an affair with an American called Alice Locke-Carey who was 32 years his junior. This happened in the village of Montauk on Long Island , and Montauk was the title the author gave to an autobiographical novel that appeared in 1975. The book centred on his love life, including both his own marriage with Marianne Oellers-Frisch and an affair that she had been having with
3066-500: A stage version of his arresting dialogue Switzerland without an army? A Palaver . For Klaus Müller-Salget, the defining feature which most of Frisch's stage works share is their failure to present realistic situations. Instead they are mind games that toy with time and space. For instance, The Chinese Wall ( Die Chinesische Mauer ) (1946) mixes literary and historical characters, while in the Triptychon we are invited to listen to
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#17327798183063212-569: A tighter, consciously unpretentious style, which Frisch himself described as "generally very colloquial" ("im Allgemeinen sehr gesprochen."). Walter Schenker saw Frisch's first language as Zurich German , the dialect of Swiss German with which he grew up. The Standard German to which he was introduced as a written and literary language is naturally preferred for his written work, but not without regular appearances by dialect variations , introduced as stylistic devices. A defining element in Frisch
3358-507: Is a federal institute (i.e., under direct administration by the Swiss government), whereas the University of Zurich is a cantonal institution. The decision for a new federal university was heavily disputed at the time; the liberals pressed for a "federal university", while the conservative forces wanted all universities to remain under cantonal control, worried that the liberals would gain more political power than they already had. In
3504-530: Is a public research university in Zurich , Switzerland . Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics . Like its sister institution EPFL , ETH Zurich is part of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain , a consortium of universities and research institutes under
3650-770: Is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), and a member of the CESAER and League of European Research Universities (LERU) networks and the ENHANCE Alliance. ETH Zurich was founded on 7 February 1854 by the Swiss Confederation and began giving its first lectures on 16 October 1855 as a polytechnic institute ( eidgenössische polytechnische Schule ) at various sites throughout
3796-560: Is an institution for the education, training and development of career officers of the Swiss Armed Forces. The scientific part of this organization is attached to the ETH Zurich, while other parts such as training and an assessment center are under the direct management of the defense sector of the Swiss Federal Government . The Swiss National Supercomputing Center is an autonomous organizational unit of
3942-417: Is expected to open on the Hönggerberg campus in 2024. ETH Zurich promotes technology and knowledge transfer through an entrepreneurial ecosystem to foster spin-offs and start-ups. As of 2022, 527 ETH Zurich spin-off companies had been created. ETH Zurich has three prominent competition teams that perform research in different popular fields and compete on the world stage. Most of these teams are based in
4088-435: Is forced to acknowledge his original identity as a Swiss sculptor. For the rest of his life he returns to live with the wife whom, in his earlier life, he had abandoned. The novel combines elements of crime fiction with an authentic and direct diary-like narrative style. It was a commercial success, and won for Frisch widespread recognition as a novelist. Critics praised its carefully crafted structure and perspectives, as well as
4234-403: Is represented by the three novels I'm Not Stiller (1954), Homo Faber (1957) and Gantenbein / A Wilderness of Mirrors (1964), of which Stiller is generally regarded as his most important and most complex book, according to the US based German scholar Alexander Stephan , in terms both of its structure and its content. What all three of these novels share is their focus on the identity of
4380-602: Is the SOLA-Stafette (SOLA relay race) which consists of 14 sections over a total distance of 140 kilometers. More than 760 teams participated in the 2009 edition. The 40th edition of the SOLA, held on 4 May 2013, had 900 enrolled teams, of which 893 started and 876 were classified. In 2014 ASVZ celebrated their 75th anniversary. In 2017, ETH Zurich board approved the creation of a "Student Project House" to encourage student projects and foster innovation. A test consisting of
4526-619: Is the biggest decorated ball in Europe, takes places annually in the main building of ETH and is organized by students and former students in the KOSTA foundation. It has been taking place since the 1880s. ETH Juniors is another student organization. It forms a bridge between industry and ETH Zurich and offers many services for students and companies alike as a student-led consulting group. The Academic Sports Association of Zurich ( ASVZ ) offers more than 120 sports. The biggest annual sports event
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4672-578: Is the biggest decorated ball in Europe. The amicable rivalry between ETH Zurich and its neighbor, the University of Zurich, has been cultivated since 1951 (Uni-Poly). There has been an annual rowing match between teams from the two institutions on the river Limmat . There are many regular symposia and conferences at ETH Zurich, most notably the annual Wolfgang Pauli Lectures , in honor of former ETH Zurich Professor Wolfgang Pauli . Distinct lecturers, among them 24 Nobel laureates, have held lectures of
4818-439: Is the tracing of isotopes and the detection of rare radionuclides with radiocarbon dating and the use of techniques such as Rutherford backscattering spectrometry or elastic recoil detection . The LIB is developing the next generation of AMS machines. It is also a laboratory available for users interested in applying the techniques of ion beam analysis. The ETH link is a free bus for students, affiliates and faculty linking
4964-455: Is to raise funds to support chosen institutes, projects, faculty and students at the ETH Zurich. It receives charitable donations from companies, foundations and private individuals. It can be compared with university endowments in the US. However, the ETH Zurich is a public university so that the funds of this foundation are much smaller than at comparable private universities. Examples of funded teaching and research are: The Military Academy
5110-563: Is where the latter part of Homo Faber unfolds. The success of The Fire Raisers established Frisch as a world-class dramatist. It deals with a lower-middle-class man who is in the habit of giving shelter to vagrants who, despite clear warning signs to which he fails to react, burn down his house. Early sketches for the piece had been produced, in the wake of the communist take-over in Czechoslovakia , back in 1948, and had been published in his Tagebuch 1946–1949 . A radio play based on
5256-655: The Berlin–born Willy Brandt as Chancellor of Germany and was already becoming something of a respected elder statesman for the country's moderate left (and, as a former Defence Minister , a target of opprobrium for some on the SPD 's im moderate left ). In October 1975, slightly improbably, the Swiss dramatist Frisch accompanied Chancellor Schmidt on what for them both was their first visit to China, as part of an official West German delegation. Two years later, in 1977, Frisch found himself accepting an invitation to give
5402-585: The Carinthian writer Ingeborg Bachmann , and the two became lovers. He had left his wife and children in 1954 and now, in 1959, he was divorced. Although Bachmann rejected the idea of a formal marriage, Frisch nevertheless followed her to Rome where by now she lived, and the city became the centre of both their lives until (in Frisch's case) 1965. The relationship between Frisch and Bachmann was intense. Frisch remained true to his habit of sexual infidelity, but reacted with intense jealousy when his partner demanded
5548-557: The Diary 1946–1949 ( Tagebuch 1946–1949 ) some years before they appeared as stage plays. At the same time several of his novels such as I'm Not Stiller (1954), Homo Faber (1957) as well as the narrative work Montauk (1975) take the form of diaries created by their respective protagonists. Sybille Heidenreich points out that even the more open narrative form employed in Gantenbein / A Wilderness of Mirrors (1964) closely follows
5694-467: 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
5840-473: The Hönggerberg , a northern hill in the outskirts of the city. The last major expansion project of this new campus was completed in 2003. The Zentrum campus consists of various buildings and institutions throughout the city of Zurich. The Zentrum campus houses the: The main building of ETH Zurich was built from 1858 to 1864 under Gustav Zeuner ; the architect, however, was Gottfried Semper , who
5986-588: 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
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6132-532: The Peace Congress which was presented as part of a wider political reconciliation exercise between east and west. Frisch was not alone in quickly deciding that the congress hosts were simply using the event as an elaborate propaganda exercise, and there was hardly any opportunity for the "international participants" to discuss anything. Frisch left before the event ended and headed for Warsaw , notebook in hand, to collect and record his own impressions of what
6278-581: The Soviet Union . They returned two years later to attend a Writers' Congress at which they met Christa and Gerhard Wolf , leading authors in what was then East Germany , with whom they established lasting friendships. After they married, Frisch and his young wife continued to travel extensively, visiting Japan in 1969 and undertaking extended stays in the United States. Many impressions of these visits are published in Frisch's Tagebuch covering
6424-560: The Swiss Innovation Park near Dübendorf. The Swiss Academic Spaceflight Initiative (ARIS) (German: Akademische Raumfahrt Initiative Schweiz ) is an organisation at ETH Zurich that focuses on the development of space related technologies. The most prominent area of research is in the development of a sounding rocket that is flown yearly at the Spaceport America Cup . ARIS also dedicates its resources to
6570-482: 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
6716-527: The Zurich University of the Arts . It is dedicated to transdisciplinary research and acts as a think tank as well. Fellows are elected for five years to work together on a particular subject. For the period 2016–2020, the research focus is on digital societies . The ETH Zurich Foundation is a legal entity on its own (a Swiss non-profit foundation) and as such not part of the ETH Zurich. Its purpose
6862-533: The Zürich district of Albisrieden . Because of this substantial commission he was able to open his own architecture studio, with a couple of employees. Wartime materials shortages meant that construction had to be deferred until 1947, but the public swimming pool was opened in 1949. It is now protected under historic monument legislation. From 2006 to 2007, it underwent an extensive renovation which returned it to its original condition. Overall Frisch designed more than
7008-600: The war years . At the ETH, Frisch studied architecture with William Dunkel , whose pupils also included Justus Dahinden and Alberto Camenzind , later stars of Swiss architecture. After receiving his diploma in the summer of 1940, Frisch accepted an offer of a permanent position in Dunkel's architecture studio, and for the first time in his life was able to afford a home of his own. While working for Dunkel he met another architect, Gertrud Frisch-von Meyenburg , and on 30 July 1942
7154-469: The 1946/47 season. The NZZ , then as now his native city's powerfully influential newspaper, pilloried the piece on its front page, claiming that it "embroidered" the horrors of National Socialism , and they refused to print Frisch's rebuttal. The Chinese Wall ( Die Chinesische Mauer ) which appeared in 1946, explores the possibility that humanity might itself be eradicated by the (then recently invented) atomic bomb . The piece unleashed public discussion of
7300-416: The 2024 THE World University Rankings by subject, it was the top Swiss university in all ranked subjects. In the 2023 ARWU Subject Ranking, the university was ranked within the top 10 worldwide in civil engineering, water resources, environmental engineering, automation, mathematics, earth sciences, and ecology. ETH Zurich has two campuses, namely Zentrum and Hönggerberg . The Zentrum campus grew around
7446-469: The 2025 QS Europe rankings. In the 2023 Nature Index of academic institutions, ETH Zurich ranked 20th worldwide and first in Switzerland. In the 2024 QS Word University Rankings by subject, ETH Zurich was ranked within the top 10 in the world in architecture, engineering and technology, and the natural sciences. It ranked first worldwide in the earth and marine sciences, geology, and geophysics. In
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#17327798183067592-623: The American writer Donald Barthelme . There followed a very public dispute between Frisch and his wife over where to draw the line between private and public life, and the two became increasingly estranged, divorcing in 1979. In 1978, Frisch survived serious health problems, and the next year was actively involved in setting up the Max Frisch Foundation ( Max-Frisch-Stiftung ), established in October 1979, and to which he entrusted
7738-672: The ETH Zurich. It is a national facility based in Lugano -Cornaredo, offering high-performance computing services for Swiss-based scientists. ChainSecurity is a spin-off founded by ETH professor Martin Vechev and the former ETH doctoral students Hubert Ritzdorf and Petar Tsankov. The company's overall goal is to make blockchain technologies more secure. To that end, it develops and operates automated scanning programs for auditing smart contracts . Providers of smart contracts can ask ChainSecurity to audit them and thus receive certification for
7884-460: The Holocene ( Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän ) (1979), and Bluebeard ( Blaubart ) (1981), are frequently grouped together by scholars. All three are characterized by a turning towards death and a weighing up of life. Structurally they display a savage pruning of narrative complexity. The Hamburg born critic Volker Hage identified in the three works "an underlying unity, not in the sense of
8030-701: The Journey to Beijing ). Both of his next two works for the theatre reflect the Second World War . Now they sing again ( Nun singen sie wieder ), though written in 1945, was actually performed ahead of his first play Santa Cruz . It addresses the question of the personal guilt of soldiers who obey inhuman orders, and treats the matter in terms of the subjective perspectives of those involved. The piece, which avoids simplistic judgements, played to audiences not just in Zürich but also in German theatres during
8176-524: The Playhouse director Kurt Hirschfeld encouraged Frisch to work for the theatre, and backed him when he did so. In Santa Cruz , his first play, written in 1944 and first performed in 1946, Frisch, who had himself been married since 1942, addressed the question of how the dreams and yearnings of the individual could be reconciled with married life. In his 1944 novel J'adore ce qui me brûle ( I adore that which burns me ) he had already placed emphasis on
8322-515: The Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research . As of 2023 , ETH Zurich enrolled 25,380 students from over 120 countries, of which 4,425 were pursuing doctoral degrees. Students, faculty, and researchers affiliated with ETH Zurich include 22 Nobel laureates , two Fields Medalists , three Pritzker Prize winners , and one Turing Award recipient , including Albert Einstein and John von Neumann . It
8468-629: The Swiss army some 30 years earlier. More negativity about Switzerland was on show in January 1974 when he delivered a speech titled "Switzerland as a homeland?" ( Die Schweiz als Heimat? ), when accepting the 1973 Grand Schiller Prize from the Swiss Schiller Foundation . Although he nurtured no political ambitions on his own account, Frisch became increasingly attracted to the ideas of social democratic politics . He also became friendly with Helmut Schmidt who had recently succeeded
8614-464: The Teacher. The boy therefore has to deal with antisemitic prejudice, and while growing up he has acquired traits which those around him regard as "typically Jewish". There is also exploration of various associated individual hypocrisies that arise in the small fictional country where the action takes place. It later transpires that Andri is his father's real son and therefore not himself Jewish, although
8760-485: The United States, from those who thought that it treated with unnecessary frivolity issues which were still extremely painful so soon after the Nazi Holocaust had been publicised in the west. Another criticism was that by presenting its theme as one of generalised human failings, the play somehow diminished the level of specifically German guilt for recent real-life atrocities. During July 1958 Frisch got to know
8906-635: The abolition of the army , and published a piece in the form of a dialogue on the subject titled Switzerland without an Army? A Palaver ( Schweiz ohne Armee? Ein Palaver ) There was also a stage version titled "Jonas and his veteran" ( Jonas und sein Veteran ). Frisch died on 4 April 1991 while in the middle of preparing for his 80th birthday. The funeral, which Frisch had planned with some care, took place on 9 April 1991 at St Peter's Church in Zürich . His friends Peter Bichsel and Michel Seigner spoke at
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#17327798183069052-456: The academic advancement of spaceflight and hosts projects ranging from the development of Hybrid rocket Engines to Payload research. The Academic Motorsports Association (German: Akademischer Motorsportverein Zürich ) is the ETH Zurich's equivalent of a Formula One team, that develops electric and driverless sports vehicles that compete at Formula Student . AMZ has proven to be one of
9198-400: The administration of his estate. The foundation's archive is kept at the ETH Zurich , and has been publicly accessible since 1983. Old age and the transience of life now came increasingly to the fore in Frisch's work. In 1976 he began work on the play Triptychon , although it was not ready to be performed for another three years. The word triptych is more usually applied to paintings, and
9344-416: The anti-hero finds himself falling in love with a former prostitute. The play proved popular and has been performed more than a thousand times, making it Frisch's third most popular drama after The Fire Raisers (1953) and Andorra (1961). The novel I'm Not Stiller appeared in 1954. The protagonist, Anatol Ludwig Stiller starts out by pretending to be someone else, but in the course of a court hearing he
9490-635: The audience reaction to the complexity of the work's unconventional structure was still a little cautious. In 1980, Frisch resumed contact with Alice Locke-Carey and the two of them lived together, alternately in New York City and in Frisch's cottage in Berzona , till 1984. By now Frisch had become a respected and from time to time honoured writer in the United States. He received an honorary doctorate from Bard College in 1980 and another from New York's City University in 1982. An English translation of
9636-400: The autonomous driving category since its introduction in 2017 for three years, winning all the events the team attended with the autonomous car until FSG 2021. In 2015, and again since 2016, their car grimsel holds the official Guinness world record for fastest acceleration of an electric car, achieving 0–100 km/h in 1.513 seconds. In 2023, AMZ broke the previous world record again and has set
9782-460: The beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zurich. From 1905 to 1908, under the presidency of Jérôme Franel , the course program of ETH Zurich was restructured to that of a real university and ETH Zurich was granted the right to award doctorates. In 1909, the first doctorates were awarded. In 1911, it was given its current name, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule . In 1924, another reorganization structured
9928-433: The centre of the play is a behavioural scientist who is given the chance to live his life again, and finds himself unable to take any key decisions differently the second time round. The Swiss premier of the play was to have been directed by Rudolf Noelte , but Frisch and Noelte fell out in the autumn of 1967, a week before the scheduled first performance, which led to the Zürich opening being postponed for several months. In
10074-583: The ceremony. Karin Pilliod also read a short address, but there was no speech from any church minister. Frisch was an agnostic who found religious beliefs superfluous. His ashes were later scattered on a fire by his friends at a memorial celebration back in Ticino at a celebration of his friends. A tablet on the wall of the cemetery at Berzona commemorates him. The diary became a very characteristic prose form for Frisch. In this context, diary does not indicate
10220-479: The city of Zurich. It was initially composed of six faculties: architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry , forestry , and an integrated department for the fields of mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and social and political sciences . It is locally still known as Polytechnikum , or simply as Poly , derived from the original name eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , which translates to " federal polytechnic school ". ETH Zurich
10366-573: The conclusion that none of the tested scenarios leads to an entirely "fair" outcome. Frisch himself wrote of Gantenbein that his purpose was "to show the reality of an individual by having him appear as a blank patch outlined by the sum of fictional entities congruent with his personality. ... The story is not told as if an individual could be identified by his factual behaviour; let him betray himself in his fictions." His next play Biography: A game ( Biografie: Ein Spiel ), followed on naturally. Frisch
10512-517: 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
10658-418: The conversations of various dead people. In Biography: A game ( Biografie: Ein Spiel ) a life-story is retrospectively "corrected", while Santa Cruz and Count Oederland ( Graf Öderland ) combine aspects of a dream sequence with the features of a morality tale. Characteristic of Frisch's stage plays are minimalist stage-sets and the application of devices such as splitting the stage in two parts, use of
10804-410: The diary format enables Frisch most forcefully to demonstrate his familiar theme that thoughts are always based on one specific standpoint and its context; and that it can never be possible to present a comprehensive view of the world, nor even to define a single life, using language alone. Frisch's first public success was as a writer for theatre, and later in his life he himself often stressed that he
10950-515: The diary format. Rolf Keiser points out that when Frisch was involved in the publication of his collected works in 1976, the author was keen to ensure that they were sequenced chronologically and not grouped according to genre: in this way the sequencing of the collected works faithfully reflects the chronological nature of a diary. Frisch himself took the view that the diary offered the prose format that corresponded with his natural approach to prose writing, something that he could "no more change than
11096-400: The dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Frisch had little appetite for theatrical effects, which might distract from doubts and sceptical insights included in a script. For Frisch, effects came from a character being lost for words, from a moment of silence, or from a misunderstanding. And where a Dürrenmatt drama might lead, with ghastly inevitability, to a worst possible outcome, the dénouement in
11242-476: The earlier works." Frisch's dramas up until the early 1960s are divided by the literary commentator Manfred Jurgensen into three groups: (1) the early wartime pieces, (2) the poetic plays such as Don Juan or the Love of Geometry ( Don Juan oder Die Liebe zur Geometrie ) and (3) the dialectical pieces. It is above all with this third group, notably the parable The Fire Raisers (1953), identified by Frisch as
11388-730: The end of 1968. Oellers accompanied her future husband on numerous foreign trips. In 1963 they visited the United States for the American premieres of The Fire Raisers and Andorra , and in 1965 they visited Jerusalem where Frisch was presented with the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In order to try to form an independent assessment of "life behind the Iron Curtain " they then, in 1966, toured
11534-545: The end the play opened in the Zürich Playhouse in February 1968, the performances being directed by Leopold Lindtberg . Lindtberg was a long established and well regarded theatre director, but his production of Biografie: Ein Spiel neither impressed the critics nor delighted theatre audiences. Frisch ended up deciding that he had been expecting more from the audience than he should have expected them to bring to
11680-412: The exiled German writer, Carl Zuckmayer , in 1946, and the young Friedrich Dürrenmatt in 1947. Despite artistic differences on self-awareness issues, Dürrenmatt and Frisch became lifelong friends. 1947 was also the year in which Frisch met Bertolt Brecht , already established as a doyen of German theatre and of the political left. An admirer of Brecht's work, Frisch now embarked on regular exchanges with
11826-553: The fair distribution of goods, democratizing economy and public institutions, saving the world from military and civilian destruction, and the realization of human rights ." On 12 October 2002 the Olten Group disbanded in Bern , as did the Swiss writer’s club SSV (in the meantime renamed "Schweizerischer Schriftstellerinnen- und Schriftstellerverband"). A new club, named "Authors of Switzerland" ( Autorinnen und Autoren der Schweiz ),
11972-509: 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
12118-421: 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 Zürich , 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
12264-458: The full title of Gantenbein uses the German "Konjunktiv II" (subjunctive mood) to give a title along the lines "My name represents (Gantenbein)". The protagonist's aspiration has moved on from the search for a fixed identity to a less binary approach, trying to find a midpoint identity, testing out biographical and historic scenarios. Again, the three later prose works Montauk (1975), Man in
12410-421: The greater level of objectivity required by theatre work. In terms of the timeline, Frisch's prose works divide roughly into three periods. His first literary works, up till 1943, all employed prose formats. There were numerous short sketches and essays along with three novels or longer narratives, Jürg Reinhart (1934), its belated sequel J'adore ce qui me brûle ( I adore that which burns me ) (1944) and
12556-424: The group, writing was inseparably associated with political commitment. Their specified goal, to "build a democratic-socialist society" was included in their "Zweckartikel" "written statement of objectives" ) . That goal was discarded in 2000, which led to the departure of Mariella Mehr . The rest of the "Zweckartikel" reads: " [The Olten Group] ...supports nationwide and international political attempts that involve
12702-460: The highest accolades such as the Fields Medal , Pritzker Prize and Turing Award , among other distinctions in their respective fields. Academic achievements aside, ETH Zurich has been alma mater to many Olympic medalists and world champions. The Collegium Helveticum is an Institute for Advanced Study. It is jointly supported and operated by the ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and
12848-460: The identities and biographical background of the parties get switched along with details of their shared married life. This theme is echoed in Malina , where Bachmann's narrator confesses that she is "double" to her lover (she is herself, but she is also her husband, Malina), leading to an ambiguous "murder" when the husband and wife part. Frisch tests alternative narratives "like clothes", and comes to
12994-474: The incompatibility between the artistic life and respectable middle class existence. The novel reintroduces as its protagonist the artist Jürg Reinhart, familiar to readers of Frisch's first novel, and in many respects a representation of the author himself. It deals with a love affair that ends badly. This same tension is at the centre of a subsequent narrative by Frisch published, initially, by Atlantis in 1945 and titled Bin oder Die Reise nach Peking ( Bin or
13140-562: The individual and on the relationship between the sexes. In this respect Homo Faber and Stiller offer complementary situations. If Stiller had rejected the stipulations set out by others, he would have arrived at the position of Walter Faber, the ultra-rationalist protagonist of Homo Faber . Gantenbein / A Wilderness of Mirrors ( Mein Name sei Gantenbein ) offers a third variation on the same theme, apparent already in its (German language) title. Instead of boldly asserting "I am not (Stiller)"
13286-414: The issues involved, and can today be compared with Friedrich Dürrenmatt 's The Physicists (1962) and Heinar Kipphardt's On the J Robert Oppenheimer Affair ( In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer ), though these pieces are all now for the most part forgotten. Working with the theatre director Hirschfeld enabled Frisch to meet some leading fellow playwrights who would influence his later work. He met
13432-407: The main building of the University of Zurich . The Hönggerberg campus is a more classical university campus, consisting mainly of university buildings and student accommodation. The Hönggerberg campus houses the: There is also an ASVZ sports centre which is accessible to all students and faculty, and includes a gym, beach volleyball court, football field, and martial-art rooms. In 2005,
13578-400: The main building, which was constructed 1858–1864 outside and right above the eastern border of the town, but which is nowadays located right in the heart of the city. As the town and university grew, ETH Zurich spread into the surrounding vineyards and later quarters. Because this geographic situation substantially hindered the expansion of ETH Zurich, a new campus was built from 1964 to 1976 on
13724-839: The most recent of whom is Richard F. Heck , awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010. Albert Einstein is perhaps its most famous alumnus. ETH Zurich is ranked 7th worldwide (first in Switzerland) in the QS World University Rankings 2025, 11th worldwide (first in Switzerland) in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, and 20th worldwide in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2023. ETH Zurich ranked 1st in Europe in
13870-680: The most successful teams in the Formula Student history, with in total 13 overall victories (as by September 2021) at Formula Student Events. Highlight was the double victory at the Formula Student Germany (FSG) in the Electric as well as the Driverless Category (autonomous driving car). Furthermore, AMZ was leader of the Formula Student world ranking in 2013 – 2015, 2017 & 2018. The team also dominated
14016-421: The narrative An Answer from the Silence ( Antwort aus der Stille ) (1937). All three of the substantive works are autobiographical and all three centre round the dilemma of a young author torn between bourgeois respectability and "artistic" life style, exhibiting on behalf of the protagonists differing outcomes to what Frisch saw as his own dilemma. The high period of Frisch's career as an author of prose works
14162-712: 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
14308-414: The next decade much of their time was spent living in rented apartments abroad, and Frisch could be scathing about his Swiss homeland, but they retained their Berzona property and frequently returned to it, the author driving his Jaguar from the airport: as he himself was quoted at the time on his Ticino retreat, "Seven times a year we drive this stretch of road and it happens every time: lust for existence at
14454-518: The novella Man in the Holocene ( Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän ) was published by The New Yorker in May 1980, and was picked out by critics in The New York Times Book Review as the most important and most interesting published Narrative work of 1980. The story concerns a retired industrialist suffering from the decline in his mental faculties and the loss of the camaraderie which he used to enjoy with colleagues. Frisch
14600-471: The older dramatist on matters of shared artistic interest. Brecht encouraged Frisch to write more plays, while placing emphasis on social responsibility in artistic work. Although Brecht's influence is evident in some of Frisch's theoretical views and can be seen in one or two of his more practical works, the Swiss writer could never have been numbered among Brecht's followers. He kept his independent position, by now increasingly marked by scepticism in respect of
14746-445: The parable format, I am obliged to deliver a message that I actually do not have". After the 1960s Frisch moved away from the theatre. His late biographical plays Biography: A game ( Biografie: Ein Spiel ) and Triptychon were apolitical but they failed to match the public success of his earlier dramas. It was only shortly before his death that Frisch returned to the stage with a more political message, with Jonas and his Veteran ,
14892-455: The part of writing a new play that most fascinated him was the first draft, when the piece was undefined, and the possibilities for its development were still wide open. The critic Hellmuth Karasek identified in Frisch's plays a mistrust of dramatic structure, apparent from the way in which Don Juan or the Love of Geometry applies theatrical method. Frisch prioritized the unbelievable aspects of theatre and valued transparency. Unlike his friend,
15038-669: The period 1966–1971. In 1972, after returning from the US, the couple took a second apartment in the Friedenau quarter of West Berlin , and this soon became the place where they spent most of their time. During the period 1973–79 Frisch was able to participate increasingly in the intellectual life of the place. Living away from his homeland intensified his negative attitude to Switzerland, which had already been apparent in "William Tell for Schools" ( Wilhelm Tell für die Schule ) (1970) and which reappears in his Little service book ( Dienstbüchlein ) (1974), in which he reflects on his time in
15184-502: The play Don Juan or the Love of Geometry ( Don Juan oder Die Liebe zur Geometrie ) which in May 1953 would open simultaneously at theatres in Zürich and Berlin. In this play Frisch returned to his theme of the conflict between conjugal obligations and intellectual interests. The leading character is a parody Don Juan , whose priorities involve studying geometry and playing chess , while women are let into his life only periodically. After his unfeeling conduct has led to numerous deaths
15330-691: The play is set in three triptych-like sections in which many of the key characters are notionally dead. The piece was first unveiled as a radio play in April 1979, receiving its stage premier in Lausanne six months later. The play was rejected for performance in Frankfurt am Main where it was deemed too apolitical. The Austrian premier in Vienna at the Burgtheater was seen by Frisch as a success, although
15476-607: The polarized political grandstanding which in Europe was a feature of the early Cold War years. This is particularly apparent in his 1948 play As the war ended ( Als der Krieg zu Ende war ), based on eye-witness accounts of the Red Army as an occupying force. In April 1946 Frisch and Hirschfeld visited post-war Germany together. In August 1948 Frisch visited Breslau/Wrocław to attend an International Peace Congress organized by Jerzy Borejsza . Breslau itself, which had been more than 90% German speaking as recently as 1945,
15622-498: The power and responsibility that his new position imposes on him leaves him with no more freedom than he had before. This play flopped, both with the critics and with audiences, and was widely misinterpreted as the criticism of an ideology or as being essentially nihilistic, and strongly critical of the direction that Switzerland's political consensus was by now following. Frisch nevertheless regarded Count Oederland as one of his most significant creations: he managed to get it returned to
15768-409: The rest of his life. In 1983 he began a relationship with his final life partner, Karen Pilliod. She was 25 years younger than he was. In 1987 they visited Moscow and together took part in the "Forum for a world liberated from atomic weapons". After Frisch's death Pilliod let it be known that between 1952 and 1958 Frisch had also had an affair with her mother, Madeleine Seigner-Besson. In March 1989 he
15914-498: The right to behave in much the same way. His 1964 novel Gantenbein / A Wilderness of Mirrors ( Mein Name sei Gantenbein ) – and indeed Bachmann's later novel, Malina – both reflect the writers' reactions to this relationship which broke down during the bitterly cold winter of 1962/63 when the lovers were staying in Uetikon . Gantenbein works through the ending of a marriage with a complicated succession of "what if?" scenarios:
16060-422: 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
16206-465: The separation was that the SSV president Maurice Zermatten had translated into French the official anti-communist “ Civil Defense Book ”, which commanded citizens on the civil protection of the country in order to strengthen the resistance of the people and to secure the independence of Switzerland. The manual was distributed among all Swiss households during the Cold War . For the founding members of
16352-403: The shape of his nose". Attempts were nevertheless made by others to justify Frisch's choice of prose format. Frisch's friend and fellow-writer, Friedrich Dürrenmatt , explained that in I'm Not Stiller the "diary-narrative" approach enabled the author to participate as a character in his own novel without embarrassment. (The play focuses on the question of identity, which is a recurring theme in
16498-525: The stage in 1956 and again in 1961, but it failed, on both occasions, to win many new friends. In 1951, Frisch was awarded a travel grant by the Rockefeller Foundation and between April 1951 and May 1952 he visited the United States and Mexico. During this time, under the working title "What do you do with love?" ( "Was macht ihr mit der Liebe?" ) on what later became his novel, I'm Not Stiller ( Stiller ). Similar themes also underpinned
16644-532: The student's nationality. Both merit and need based scholarships are also available. The Excellence Scholarship & Opportunity Programme (ESOP) is a merit scholarship program for master students with excellent grades in their undergraduate program. ETH Zurich has well over 100 student associations . Most notable is the VSETH ( Verband der Studierenden an der ETH ) which forms the umbrella organization of all field of study specific student associations and comprises
16790-404: The students in their departments with companies related to their field of study. The VSETH is also the official representation of the student body towards the school and has been working with ETH on various projects with the aim of improving the students' experience at ETH. The representation towards the various departments is handled by the respective student associations. The Polyball , which
16936-482: The text had been transmitted in 1953 on Bavarian Radio (BR) . Frisch's intention with the play was to shake the self-confidence of the audience that, faced with equivalent dangers, they would necessarily react with the necessary prudence. Swiss audiences simply understood the play as a warning against Communism , and the author felt correspondingly misunderstood. For the subsequent premier in West Germany he added
17082-524: The theatrical experience. After this latest disappointment it would be another eleven years before Frisch returned to theatrical writing. In summer 1962 Frisch met Marianne Oellers, a student of Germanistic and Romance studies. He was 51 and she was 28 years younger. In 1964 they moved into an apartment together in Rome, and in autumn 1965 they relocated to Switzerland, setting up home together in an extensively modernised cottage in Berzona , Ticino . During
17228-440: 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
17374-529: 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
17520-427: The townsfolk are too focused on their preconceptions to accept this. The themes of the play seem to have been particularly close to the author's heart: in the space of three years Frisch had written no fewer than five versions before, towards the end of 1961, it received its first performance. The play was a success both with the critics and commercially. It nevertheless attracted controversy, especially after it opened in
17666-476: The two campuses. During the school week, the bus runs 3 times an hour, and takes around 15 minutes. In 2020 a new, fully electric, eLink was introduced. Since 2018, an electric bike sharing system between the two campuses is also available, with yearly subscriptions subsidised by the university. There are rental stations on both campuses. Being a public university, the heavily subsidized (by Swiss federal tax) tuition fees are CHF 730 per semester, regardless of
17812-454: The two were married. The marriage produced three children: Ursula (1943), Hans Peter (1944), and Charlotte (1949). Much later, in a book of her own, Sturz durch alle Spiegel (Fall through all the mirrors), which appeared in 2009, his daughter Ursula reflected on her difficult relationship with her father. In 1943 Frisch was selected from among 65 applicants to design the new Letzigraben (subsequently renamed Max-Frisch-Bad ) swimming pool in
17958-453: The university in 12 departments. However, it now has 16 departments. ETH Zurich, the EPFL, and four associated research institutes form the " ETH Domain " with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects. Historically, ETH Zurich has achieved its reputation particularly in the fields of chemistry , mathematics and physics . There are 32 Nobel laureates who are associated with ETH Zurich,
18104-472: 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
18250-457: 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
18396-408: The various fields of natural sciences at this conference since 1962. ETH Zurich has produced and attracted many famous scientists in its short history, including Albert Einstein and John von Neumann . More than twenty Nobel laureates have either studied at ETH Zurich or were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work achieved at ETH Zurich. Other alumni include scientists who were distinguished with
18542-539: The way it managed to combine philosophical insight with autobiographical elements. The theme of the incompatibility between art and family responsibilities is again on display. Following the appearance of this book Frisch, whose own family life had been marked by a succession of extra-marital affairs, left his family, moving to Männedorf , where he had his own small apartment in a farmhouse. By this time writing had become his principal source of income, and in January 1955 he closed his architectural practice, becoming officially
18688-521: The wheel. This is fantastic countryside." As a "social experiment" they also, in 1966, temporarily occupied a second home in an apartment block in Aussersihl , a residential quarter of down-town Zürich known, then as now, for its high levels of recorded crime and delinquency, but they quickly swapped this for an apartment in Küsnacht , close to the lake shore. Frisch and Oellers were married at
18834-508: The work of Andrea Palladio and Donato Bramante . During the construction of the University of Zurich, the south wing of the building was allocated to the University until its own new main building was constructed (1912–1914). At about the same time, Semper's ETH Zurich building was enlarged and received its cupola . The main building stands directly across the street from the University Hospital of Zurich and, right alongside
18980-472: The work of Frisch.) More specifically, in the character of James Larkin White, the American who in reality is indistinguishable from Stiller himself, but who nevertheless vigorously denies being the same man, embodies the author, who in his work cannot fail to identify the character as himself, but is nevertheless required by the literary requirements of the narrative to conceal the fact. Rolf Keiser points out that
19126-706: The year of ETH Zurich's 150th anniversary, an extensive project called "Science City" for the Hönggerberg Campus was started with the goal to transform the campus into an attractive district based on the principle of sustainability. The ETH Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics (LIB) is a physics laboratory located in Science City. It specializes in accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and the use of ion beam based techniques with applications in archeology , earth sciences , life sciences , material sciences and fundamental physics . An example of such application
19272-493: Was a mention of Frisch having found a new way to connect with wider trends in European literature ("Anschluss ans europäische Niveau"). Sales of these works would nevertheless remain modest until the appearance of a new volume in 1958, by which time Frisch had become better known among the general book-buying public on account of his novels. The Tagebuch 1946–1949 was followed, in 1951, by Count Oederland ( Graf Öderland ),
19418-516: Was a professor of architecture at ETH Zurich at the time and one of the most important architectural writers and theorists of the age. Semper worked in a neoclassical style that was unique to him; and the namesake and architect of the Semperoper in Dresden. It emphasized bold and clear massings with a detailing, such as the rusticated ground level and giant order above, that derived in part from
19564-570: Was able, from his own experience of approaching old age, to bring a compelling authenticity to the piece, although he rejected attempts to play up its autobiographical aspects. After Man in the Holocene appeared in 1979 (in the German language edition) the author developed writer's block, which ended only with the appearance, in the Autumn/Fall of 1981 of his final substantial literary piece, the prose text/novella Bluebeard ( Blaubart ). In 1984 Frisch returned to Zürich, where he would live for
19710-541: Was an instructive microcosm of the post-war settlement in central Europe. Poland's western frontier had moved , and the ethnically German majority in Breslau had escaped or been expelled from the city which now adopted its Polish name as Wrocław. The absented ethnic Germans were being replaced by relocated Polish speakers whose own formerly Polish homes were now included within the newly enlarged Soviet Union . A large number of European intellectuals were invited to
19856-428: Was an underlying scepticism as to the adequacy of language. In I'm Not Stiller his protagonist cries out, "I have no language for my reality!" ( "... ich habe keine Sprache für meine Wirklichkeit!" ). The author went further in his Diary 1946–49 ( Tagebuch 1946–49 ): ETH Zurich ETH Zurich ( German : Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich ; English: Federal Institute of Technology Zurich )
20002-475: Was at school he met Werner Coninx (1911–1980), who later became a successful artist and collector. The two men formed a lifelong friendship. 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
20148-435: Was described by the publisher as a draft work by Frisch: it was edited and provided with an extensive commentary by Peter von Matt , chairman of the Max Frisch Foundation. Many of Frisch's most important plays, such as Count Oederland ( Graf Öderland ) (1951), Don Juan or the Love of Geometry ( Don Juan oder Die Liebe zur Geometrie ) (1953), The Fire Raisers (1953) and Andorra (1961), were initially sketched out in
20294-567: Was diagnosed with incurable colorectal cancer . In the same year, in the context of the Swiss Secret files scandal , it was discovered that the national security services had been illegally spying on Frisch (as on many other Swiss citizens) ever since he had attended the International Peace Congress at Wrocław/Breslau in 1948. Frisch now arranged his funeral, but he also took time to engage in discussion about
20440-485: Was disappointed that his commercially very successful plays Biedermann und die Brandstifter and Andorra had both been, in his view, widely misunderstood. His answer was to move away from the play as a form of parable , in favour of a new form of expression which he termed " Dramaturgy of Permutation " ( "Dramaturgie der Permutation" ), a form which he had introduced with Gantenbein and which he now progressed with Biographie , written in its original version in 1967. At
20586-438: Was discovered only in 2009 among the papers of Frisch's secretary. Before that it had been generally assumed that Frisch had destroyed this work because he felt that the decline of his creativity and short-term memory meant that he could no longer do justice to the diary genre. The newly discovered typescript was published in March 2010 by Suhrkamp Verlag . Because of its rather fragmentary nature Frisch's Diary 3 ( Tagebuch 3 )
20732-403: Was established to replace them both. 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
20878-454: Was happening. Nevertheless, when he returned home the resolutely conservative NZZ concluded that by visiting Poland Frisch had simply confirmed his status as a Communist sympathizer , and not for the first time refused to print his rebuttal of their simplistic conclusions. Frisch now served notice on his old newspaper that their collaboration was at an end. By 1947 Frisch had accumulated roughly 130 filled notebooks, and these were published in
21024-403: Was in the first place a creature of the theatre. Nevertheless, the diaries, and even more than these, the novels and the longer narrative works are among his most important literary creations. In his final decades Frisch tended to move away from drama and concentrate on prose narratives. He himself is on record with the opinion that the subjective requirements of story telling suited him better than
21170-512: 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
21316-410: Was managing his own architecture studio, he was generally found in his office only during the mornings. Much of his time and energy was devoted to writing. Frisch was already a regular visitor at the Zürich Playhouse ( Schauspielhaus ) while still a student. Drama in Zürich was experiencing a golden age at this time, thanks to the flood of theatrical talent in exile from Germany and Austria. From 1944
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