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Max Rudolf Frisch 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 fo…
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culture · Swiss playwrighter and novelist (1911–1991) · writer · architect · playwright · novelist · diarist · screenwriter · philosopher · journalist · biographer · poet · also Max Frisch, Max Rudolf Frisch, Frisch
Born 15 May 1911 · Died 4 April 1991 · Q115483
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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.
“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.”
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Yahoo: Author Max Frisch's school-leaving essay discovered after 100 years
His daughter Ursula reflected on her difficult relationship with her father
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The Zurich–born artist Gottfried Honegger published eleven portrait-sketches and fourteen texts in memory of his friend
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Says that Frisch's aesthetics is driven by a fundamentally anti-ideological and critical animus, formed from a recognition of the writer's status as an outsider within society
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When it was the turn of Swiss literature to be the special focus at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the literary commentator Andreas Isenschmid identified some leading Swiss writers from his own (baby-boomer) generation such as
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Died 1991-04-04.
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Awarded Heinrich Heine Prize (1989).
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Visited Moscow and together took part in the "Forum for a world liberated from atomic weapons"
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Awarded Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1986).
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Dürrenmatt took the opportunity of Frisch's 75th birthday to try and effect a reconciliation with a letter, but the letter went unanswered
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Awarded Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1985).
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Awarded Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (1984).
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Frisch returned to Zurich, where he would live for the rest of his life
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Began a relationship with his final life partner, Karen Pilliod
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With Wolfgang Hildesheimer's "Message to Max [Frisch] about the state of things and other matters" (Mitteilungen an Max über den Stand der Dinge und anderes)
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Was discovered only in 2009 among the papers of Frisch's secretary
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And another from New York's City University in 1982
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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, until 1984
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(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)
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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 the administration of
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Frisch found himself accepting an invitation to give a speech at an SPD Party Conference
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Awarded Peace Prize of the German Publishers' and Booksellers' Association (1976).
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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
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Began work on the play Triptychon, although it was not ready to be performed for another three years
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Produced a compilation of quotations which he called "The collected sayings of Max Frisch" (Max Frisch Stich-Worte zusammen)
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Frisch acknowledged that his literary career had not been marked by some "sudden breakthrough" ("
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Frisch published his Little service book (Dienstbüchlein), and from this time – possibly from earlier – Frisch became a powerfully divisive figure in Switzerland, where in some quarters his criticisms were vigorously rej
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Awarded Schiller prize (1973).
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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
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And staying for extended periods in the United States
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A 30-minute episode of the multinationally produced television series Creative Persons was devoted to Frisch
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Temporarily occupied a second home in an apartment block in Aussersihl, a residential quarter of down-town Zurich known, then as now, for its high levels of recorded crime and delinquency, but they quickly swapped this f
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Awarded Schiller Memorial Prize (1965).
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Awarded Jerusalem Prize (1965).
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Moved into an apartment together in Rome, and in autumn 1965 they moved to Switzerland, setting up home together in an extensively modernised cottage in Berzona, Ticino
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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 Soci
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But with a project that was nevertheless abandoned, when Frisch resigned from the production of a film titled SOS Gletscherpilot (SOS Glacier Pilot), and in 1960 his draft script for William Tell (Castle in Flames) was t
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Awarded Charles Veillon prize in the German language (1958).
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Awarded Georg Büchner Prize (1958).
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By which time Frisch had become better known among the general book-buying public on account of his novels
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And again in 1961, but it failed, on both occasions, to win many new friends
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And subsequently to America (his second visit, this time also taking in Mexico and Cuba)
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Awarded Wilhelm Raabe Prize (1954).
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By Count Oederland (Graf Öderland), a play that picked up on a narrative that had already been sketched out in the "diaries"
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Frisch was awarded a travel grant by the Rockefeller Foundation and between April 1951 and May 1952 he visited the United States and Mexico
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With Count Oederland, that Frisch experienced his "first stage-flop"
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Suhrkamp's own newly established publishing house produced a second volume of Frisch's Tagebuch covering the period 1946–1949, comprising a mosaic of travelogues, autobiographical musings, essays on political and literar
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Frisch switched publishers again, this time to the arguably more mainstream publishing house then being established in Frankfurt by Peter Suhrkamp
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And had been published in his Tagebuch 1946–1949
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And the young Friedrich Dürrenmatt in 1947
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Explores the possibility that humanity might itself be eradicated by the (then recently invented) atomic bomb
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And titled Bin oder Die Reise nach Peking (Bin or the Journey to Beijing)
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Was actually performed ahead of his first play Santa Cruz
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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
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Frisch was selected from among 65 applicants to design the new Letzigraben (subsequently renamed Max-Frisch-Bad) swimming pool in the Zurich district of Albisrieden
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The same writings were compiled into the book Pages from the Bread-bag (Blätter aus dem Brotsack)
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With the title "Pages from the Bread-bag" ("Blätter aus dem Brotsack")
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Comes across as a conventional Swiss patriot, reflecting the unifying impact on Swiss society of the perceived invasion risk then emanating from Germany
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Awarded Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize (1938).
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And refusing to let it be included in a compilation of his works published in the 1970s
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Enrolled at the ETH Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) to study architecture, his father's profession
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Max Frisch studied architecture at the ETH Zurich and graduated in 1940
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Frisch visited Germany for the first time
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When financial pressures on the family intensified, Frisch abandoned his studies
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Born 1911-05-15.
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