Max Frisch photo

Max Frisch

Max Rudolph Frisch was born in 1911 in Zurich; the son of Franz Bruno Frisch (an architect) and Karolina Bettina Frisch (née Wildermuth). After studying at the Realgymnasium in Zurich, he enrolled at the University of Zurich in 1930 and began studying German literature, but had to abandon due to financial problems after the death of his father in 1932. Instead, he started working as a journalist and columnist for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), one of the major newspapers in Switzerland. With the NZZ he would entertain a lifelong ambivalent love-hate relationship, for his own views were in stark contrast to the conservative views promulgated by this newspaper. In 1933 he travelled through eastern and south-eastern Europe, and in 1935 he visited Germany for the first time.

Some of the major themes in his work are the search or loss of one's identity; guilt and innocence (the spiritual crisis of the modern world after Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead"); technological omnipotence (the human belief that everything was possible and technology allowed humans to control everything) versus fate (especially in Homo faber); and also Switzerland's idealized self-image as a tolerant democracy based on consensus — criticizing that as illusion and portraying people (and especially the Swiss) as being scared by their own liberty and being preoccupied mainly with controlling every part of their life.

Max Frisch was a political man, and many of his works make reference to (or, as in Jonas und sein Veteran, are centered around) political issues of the time.

information was taken from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch


“Das wirkliche Leben, meint er, sei ja so anders...Jedenfalls das seine, denkt er: da erkennt man keinen klaren Ablauf und keinen roten Faden, da zerrinnt es einfach, ohne Abschnitt und ohne Tat, die Leidenschaft zerrinnt in eine Stimmung, und auch die Entschlüsse sind wie Sand, der leise durch die Finger rinnt, immer wieder nimmt man eine neue Handvoll, und wenn man sie aufmacht, ist wieder nichts darin geblieben, man ist verzweifelt, und auch das zerrinnt, wie die Hoffnung und der Jubel und der Schmerz und alles, wie das ganze Leben.”
Max Frisch
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“Ich habe nie einen ernsthaften Versuch unternommen, meinem Leben ein Ende zu machen; auch keinen unernsthaften. Ich habe nur oft, in jedem Lebensalter, dran gedacht.”
Max Frisch
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“JOURNAL INTIME: Wenn ich einmal darin lese, zum Beispiel weil ich ein Datum brauche für unser Gespräch, so bin ich bestürzt: daß ich vor zwei oder fünf Jahren genu zu derselben Einsicht gekommen bin – nur habe ich sie dann wieder vergessen, weil es mir nicht gelungen ist, nach meiner Einsicht zu leben; ich habe das Gegenteil gelebt mit zäher Energie.”
Max Frisch
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“You can put anything into words, except your own life”
Max Frisch
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“Sie wird gebraucht, unsere Schuld, sie rechtfertigt viel im Leben anderer.”
Max Frisch
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“Сякаш се сгромолясваш през огледало, когато се събудиш, нищо друго не помниш, сякаш се сгромолясваш през всички огледала, а сетне светът отново се сглобява, все едно нищо не се е случило. А и нищо не се е случило.”
Max Frisch
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“Wenn ich so allein bin, siehst du, und mich an alles erinnere, das ist das Schlimmste, daß man allein nicht darüber lachen kann, oder dann ist es nur so ein böses und bitteres Lachen, so daß man später über genau die gleichen Dinge doch wieder heult.”
Max Frisch
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“Gefühle am Morgen, das erträgt kein Mann. Dann lieber Geschirr waschen!”
Max Frisch
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“Ich finde sie lustig, ihre heutigen Tänze, lustig zum Schauen, diese existentialistische Hopserei, wo jeder für sich allein tanzt, seine eignen Faxen schwingt, verwickelt in die eignen Beine, geschüttelt wie von einem Schüttelfrost, alles etwas epileptisch, aber lustig, sehr temperamentvoll, muß ich sagen, aber ich kann das nicht.”
Max Frisch
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“Was mir auf die Nerven ging: die Molche in jedem Tümpel, in jeder Eintagspfütze ein Gewimmel von Molchen - überhaupt diese Fortpflanzerei überall, es stinkt nach Fruchtbarkeit, nach blühender Verwesung.Wo man hinspuckt, keimt es!”
Max Frisch
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“The demand that we love our neighbor as ourselves contains as an axiom the demand that we shall love ourselves, shall accept ourselves as we were created.”
Max Frisch
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“Freunde müssen einander verstehen um Freunde zu bleiben. Brüder sind immer Brüder.”
Max Frisch
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“(...)– aber vor allem: standhalten, dem Licht, der Freude (wie unser Kind als es sang) im Wissen, dass ich erlösche im Licht über Ginster, Asphalt und Meer, standhalten der Zeit, beziehungsweise Ewigkeit im Augenblick. Ewig sein: gewesen sein.”
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“Orice om îşi inventează mai devreme sau mai târziu o poveste pe care o consideră a fi viaţa sa, cu orice preţ, sau o serie de poveşti, pe care le întăreşte cu nume şi date, încât s-ar zice că adevărul lor e de necontestat. Cu toate acestea însă, orice poveste e o invenţie şi, de aceea, poate fi, după părerea mea, oricând schimbată.”
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“Sunt orb. N-o ştiu întotdeauna, doar uneori. Apoi însă mă întreb din nou dacă poveştile pe care mi le pot imagina nu sunt totuşi viaţa mea. Deşi nu cred. Nu pot să cred că ceea ce eu văd este chiar mersul lumii.”
Max Frisch
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“I've often wondered what people mean when they talk about an experience. I'm a technologist and accustomed to seeing things as they are. I see everything they are talking about very clearly; after all, I'm not blind. I see the moon over the Tamaulipas desert--it is more distinct than at other times, perhaps, but still a calculable mass circling around our planet, an example of gravitation, interesting, but in what way an experience? I see the jagged rocks, standing out black against the moonlight; perhaps they do look like the jagged backs of prehistoric monsters, but I know they are rocks, stone, probably volcanic, one should have to examine them to be sure of this. Why should I feel afraid? There aren't any prehistoric monsters any more. Why should I imagine them? I'm sorry, but I don't see any stone angels either; nor demons; I see what I see--the usual shapes due to erosion and also my long shadow on the sand, but no ghosts. Why get womanish? I don't see any Flood either, but sand lit up by the moon and made undulating, like water, by the wind, which doesn't surprise me; I don't find it fantastic, but perfectly explicable. I don't know what the souls of the damned look like; perhaps like black agaves in the desert at night. What I see are agaves, a plant that blossoms once only and dies. Furthermore, I know (however I may look at the moment) that I am not the last or the first man on earth; and I can't be moved by the mere idea that I am the last man, because it isn't true. Why get hysterical? Mountains are mountains, even if in a certain light they may look like something else, but it is the Sierra Madre Oriental, and we are not standing in a kingdom of the dead, but in the Tamaulipas desert, Mexico, about sixty miles from the nearest road, which is unpleasant, but in what way an experience? Nor can I bring myself to hear something resembling eternity; I don't hear anything, apart from the trickle of sand at every step. Why should I experience what isn't there?”
Max Frisch
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“When we travel, we are like a film at the moment of exposure; it is memory that will develop it.”
Max Frisch
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“... der Terror, scheint es, eignet sich beonders zur Vernichtung sittlicher Menschen.”
Max Frisch
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“Wer sich nicht mit Politik befaßt, hat die politische Parteinahme, die er sich sparen möchte, bereits vollzogen: er dient der herrschenden Partei.”
Max Frisch
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“Wieso seid ihr stärker als die Wahrheit”
Max Frisch
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“Blinders als blind ist die Aengstlicher”
Max Frisch
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“Die beste und sicherste Tarnung ist immer noch die blanke und nackte Wahrheit. Komischerweise die glaubt niemand.”
Max Frisch
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“-only human beings can recognize catastrophes, provided they survive them; Nature recognizes no catastrophes.”
Max Frisch
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“Es ist bemerkenswert, dass wir gerade von dem Menschen, den wir lieben, am mindesten aussagen können, wie er sei. ”
Max Frisch
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“Ich bin nicht Stiller!”
Max Frisch
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“Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.”
Max Frisch
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“Wer sich nicht mit Politik befasst, hat die politische Parteinahme, die er sich sparen wollte, bereits vollzogen.”
Max Frisch
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“We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes--or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers.”
Max Frisch
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“It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.”
Max Frisch
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“Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.”
Max Frisch
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“We asked for workers. We got people instead.”
Max Frisch
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