of humanity. Biedermann allows Schmitz to stay, after asking for reassurance that he is not an arsonist. Schmitz is able to manipulate both Biedermann and his wife, Babette, by playing on their need to appear kind and compassionate. Soon Schmitz is joined by two more strangers: Eisenring, a former waiter, and an unemployed doctor of philosophy, who is driven to join the conspirators by political ideology, whereas the other two appear drawn to their arson because they merely enjoy starting fires.

The scenes in the Biedermann household are punctuated by the speeches of a chorus of firemen, who warn the city’s residents of the “stupidity” of allowing fires to start. They are the guardians of the homes and lives of the citizens and attempt to bring Biedermann to his senses about the danger presented by the barrels of gasoline the three conspirators bring into the attic, along with paraphernalia to detonate an explosion. Biedermann, however, asserts his right as a free citizen “not to think at all” and proceeds with his plan to win the friendship of the arsonists by sponsoring a sumptuous family-style dinner. Biedermann has all the middle-class accoutrements removed from the dining room—the silver candelabra and wine bucket, damask napkins and tablecloth—in order to create an informal atmosphere. However, the conspirators had been expecting such trappings, and the embarrassed Biedermann calls for their return.

The meal culminates with Schmitz and Eisenring asking Biedermann to supply them with matches, which he does. At the end of the play, the stage is engulfed in red light, with sirens blaring and alarm bells ringing, and the audience knows that the conflagration has started. The culpability of Biedermann and his disingenuous life are evidenced in his treatment of Knechtling, who followed Biedermann’s advice to commit suicide by putting his head in a gas oven. During the course of the play, Knechtling’s widow visits Biedermann, since the bill for the funeral wreath sent by the Biedermanns is sent to the Knechtlings by mistake. Sure that Mrs. Knechtling will ask for financial assistance, Biedermann refuses to see her. Though morally responsible for Knechtling’s death, Biedermann smugly clings to his pretense of innocence.

After the initial production, Frisch added an epilogue to the play, in which Biedermann and Babette find themselves in Hell, with the three arsonists presiding in disguise. The Biedermanns cannot accept that they are not in Heaven and reveal their greediness and lack of acceptance of their culpability. Babette, for example, dies in the fire because she rushes back to her bedroom to rescue her jewelry. At the very end, all the workers in Hell go on strike, and, consequently, the Biedermanns are saved. The city appears to be rising again, and the chorus of firemen announces that all of those individuals who were killed in the fire have been forgotten. The lesson of this experience has been lost; just as Biedermann never acknowledges his guilt, society itself, made up of many Biedermanns, is doomed to repeat its past mistakes.

Homo Faber

First published: 1957 (English translation, 1959)

Type of work: Novel

Walter Faber, an engineer for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a prototypical twentieth century technocrat, learns that human identity and worth are not defined by the material world but by human relationships.

The protagonist of Frisch’s Homo Faber (literally in Latin, “man the maker”) embarks on a business trip to South America, only to be transformed by his travels, which take him back to his past and forward to his future. Walter Faber, an engineer working for UNESCO, sets out from his Manhattan apartment to check on engines being manufactured in Venezuela. On board his flight, he meets a German named Herbert, and after their plane crashes in the Sierra Madre desert in Mexico, he learns that Herbert is the brother of one of his old friends, Joachim. Walter also discovers that Joachim married Walter’s former mistress, Hanna, and that they had a child together. Telling this story as a reminiscence at a future time, Walter recalls that when he left Hanna she was pregnant with his child, which he speculates may be the child who is supposed to be Joachim’s.

After their rescue, Walter decides to accompany Herbert to Guatemala, where Joachim has been managing a tobacco plantation. During their strenuous trip to the plantation, Walter reflects on his relationship with Hanna and acquits himself of any guilt about the way he abandoned her. Upon arrival, they learn that Joachim hanged himself months before. The two men film and then bury the untouched body, and Herbert determines that he will remain on the plantation assuming Joachim’s responsibilities. Walter goes on to Venezuela, only to discover that the engines have not been assembled. Upon returning to New York, Walter tries to avoid a scene with Ivy, his married mistress, with whom he had broken off prior to his journey. He decides to sail to Paris to attend a conference rather than wait for his scheduled flight.

Aboard the ship, Walter becomes infatuated with a young woman named Sabeth. After arriving in Paris, he tries to meet her again in the Louvre. He develops a friendship with her and offers to drive her to Rome. Walter, narrating the story from the future, insists that he did not suspect that Sabeth was his daughter. On the road trip through France and Italy, Sabeth eventually goes to Walter’s room, and they sleep together. As Walter begins to question Sabeth about her family, he realizes that she is Hanna’s child and his daughter. He absolves himself from guilt, however, because Sabeth initiated their sexual relationship.

Time lapses and Walter awakens in a hospital in Athens, unclear about what has just occurred. His memory returns, and he recalls that he brought Sabeth to the hospital after she was bitten by a poisonous snake as they walked on the beach at night. Hanna has come to look after her daughter, and she is surprised to learn that Walter is the man with whom her daughter has been traveling. Walter tells Hanna about the night of the snakebite, and Hanna confesses that Sabeth is his daughter. Sabeth eventually dies from an undiagnosed concussion that resulted from her fall after she was bitten.

The remainder of the novel chronicles Walter’s continued travels, during which he is haunted by memories of Sabeth and his growing realization of how important Hanna has become to him. At the novel’s end, Walter returns to Athens, where he enters the hospital for tests. Throughout his journeys, from the very beginning of the novel, he has been plagued by stomach pains, which are ultimately diagnosed as cancer. Walter prepares for an operation and expects to die. He comes to the realization that identity and worth do not depend on his mastery of the material world but on his relationships with others.

Early in the novel, Walter relishes travel because it makes him feel disconnected and anonymous, and, therefore, empowered to reinvent himself. Through the agency of Hanna, he begins to realize how important it is to be with people who know him, with whom he shares a history, a life. As Walter is wheeled into the operating room, he understands that the only person who will remember him, for whom his life made any difference, is Hanna.

Andorra

First produced: 1961 (first published, 1961; English translation, 1963)

Type of work: Play

A teacher raises his illegitimate son as a Jew in a small village in the fictional country of Andorra, where he is destroyed by anti-Semitism.

Andorra centers on a teacher named Can, who returned from Andorra’s neighboring country, the nation of the Blacks, accompanied by an infant, whom he claimed was an orphaned Jew. Since the Blacks are notorious for their anti-Semitism, he rescued the boy and adopted him as his own child. The boy, Andri, has grown to be a young man who is in love with Can’s daughter, Barblin (Andri’s half sister), who has also promised to marry him.

As the play begins, Barblin is whitewashing her father’s house in preparation for St. George’s Day. Pieder, a soldier, ogles her and scoffs at her assertion that she is engaged. Andorra is described as a snow-white country, beautiful, peaceful, and pious. Pieder, however, points to the fact that underneath the whitewash is red clay, and when the rains come the church and houses are revealed for what they are, blood red like a slaughtered pig. At the inn, the townspeople are also revealed for what they really are in their treatment of Andri, whom they regard with disdain because they think he is a Jew. They ascribe to him traits they associate with Jewishness: avarice, sneakiness, ambition, unfeelingness, and cowardliness. The Cabinetmaker, for instance, asks for an exorbitant fee to take Andri as an apprentice because he thinks that Andri would make a better salesman.

Andri accepts the identity that is forced on him by the town and feels disappointment and resentment when Can refuses to allow him to marry Barblin, thinking that his adopted father will not allow his daughter to marry a Jew. That night, Pieder sneaks into Barblin’s room and overpowers her. In the early morning, Can stumbles into the hallway where Andri is sitting guard outside Barblin’s room. The drunken Can tries to tell Andri the truth about his birth but hesitates, and Andri refuses to listen to him. Once Can retreats, Andri pounds on Barblin’s door, which Pieder opens and tells him to go away or he will smash his face in.

The next day, the despondent Andri meets with the Priest, who attempts to help Andri reconcile himself to the fact that he is different from the Andorrans. In the town square, Andri accosts Pieder and provokes a fight. The Senora, a woman from the country of the Blacks, intervenes after the soldiers have knocked Andri down and kicked him. She cleans Andri’s wounds and leads him home, arm in arm. She then confronts and upbraids Can for the lie he perpetrated to save his reputation. She accuses him of being a coward and makes him promise to tell Andri and the townspeople the truth.

The Senora forges a bond with Andri before leaving to return home. Before she departs the town, however, she is murdered by someone who throws a stone at her. Andri is accused of the murder by the Innkeeper, who claims to have witnessed the event. Andri was with the Priest at the time, who was trying unsuccessfully to convince him that he truly is Can’s son and not a Jew. The Blacks invade Andorra, capture the town, and begin the process of identifying the Senora’s killer. All the men of the town are forced to parade barefoot across the town square with sacks over their heads while the Jew Detector seeks to identify the culprit. He pronounces that Andri is the Jew who killed the Senora, and despite the protestations of Can and his wife that Andri is not a Jew and that he is innocent of the murder, Andri is killed.

The play ends with the image of Barblin again whitewashing what she thinks is her father’s house, but now her head is shaven and she is obviously unstrung because of Andri’s death and her father’s suicide by hanging. She says, “I’m whitewashing so that we shall have a white Andorra, you murderers, a snow-white Andorra; I shall whitewash all of you, all of you.”