The Great Wall of China

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The Great Wall of China. A farce is a drama by the Swiss writer Max Frisch , for which a total of four versions were created. The first version was premiered on October 10, 1946 in the Zurich Schauspielhaus under the direction of Leonard Steckel . Later versions had their premieres on October 28, 1955 in the Theater am Kurfürstendamm and on February 26, 1965 in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus , both directed by Oscar Fritz Schuh , and on November 8, 1972 in the Théâtre National de l'Odéon directed by Jean-Pierre Miquel .

The play takes place against the background of the building of the Great Wall of China , with which an absolutist ruling Chinese emperor hopes to seal himself off from the future. During the play, personalities from various historical epochs appear on the stage. A contemporary man rejects their way of making history through wars in the face of the current threat posed by the atomic bomb to mankind . But in the end he remains helpless when a Chinese prince puts up a coup against the emperor and only leads the people from one oppression to the next terror.

content

foreplay

The present day person introduces the game. The place and time of the action are the stage and tonight at a time when the building of Chinese walls is a farce. Enter a Chinese peasant woman with her mute son Wang. You made a pilgrimage to Nanking a year to visit the eminent Emperor Tsin Sche Hwang Ti . A crier proclaims that the emperor has defeated all his enemies except for one, Min Ko, who calls himself the voice of the people, and who is now being sought throughout the empire. Today's people sense the crisis of a power that has conquered everything except the truth.

Main game

Historical and fictional characters from different eras are invited to a celebration in honor of the Chinese emperor. Romeo and Juliet wonder about the time they got into, about concepts like atom and heat death . Napoleon Bonaparte , who still wants to move to Russia, meets the present day, who explains to him that the atomic bomb makes the flood possible and that the era of the generals is over if humanity wants to survive. He also tries to make Philip of Spain understand that the age of the Inquisition is history, and he demands freedom of thought from him .

Christopher Columbus is an old man who does not understand that the India to which he sailed is now called America. Ivan the Terrible does not understand why Heinrich Pestalozzi calls him the "Terrible" when Joseph Stalin is committing much larger crimes. Henry Dunant wants nothing more than to alleviate. Pontius Pilate feels innocent of the crucifixion of Jesus and gives reasons that he could not have decided what the truth was. Don Juan Tenorio complains that everyone believes it knows him and translates it into poetry. He envies the stranger from the Seine , about whose life nobody knows anything, and longs for a virgin paradise. Brutus , who once murdered Julius Caesar , wonders why tyranny still reigns despite what he did. Cleopatra with her unmistakable feeling for powerful men attracted the Chinese emperor.

Emperor Hwang Ti gives a speech: he has fought for peace and freedom all his life. His goal has been achieved, there is only the great, true, final order. Now he plans to build the Great Wall of China as a bulwark against all change and against the future. Meanwhile, today's impressed Mee Lan, the daughter of the emperor, with his knowledge of the future. He knows a lot about modern physics, the theory of relativity , probability and improbability, but about modern man only that he lives in alienation . The prince, who once went into battle to win the favor of Mee Lan, returns after sending an army of thirty thousand men to its death as a general. But Mee Lan rejects him. He leaves with the threat that we will hear from him again.

The emperor's henchmen arrested Wang, the farmer's wife's silent son. They consider him of all people to be Min Ko, the voice of the people, because he did not hypocritically cheer the emperor like the rest of the people. Today's, who as a doctor jur. proves, acts as defense counsel for the accused. The emperor so intensifies his anger against the supposed rebel that he accuses himself of ever more serious crimes in his tyrannical rule. When the mute is unable to deny the allegations, he orders torture until his confession. Émile Zola appears, but his “ J'accuse ” charge has no effect.

Mee Lan is disappointed with today's involvement in the show trial. This admits his cowardice, but he reproaches back that the women always demanded the deeds from the man. He appears before the emperor, conjures up in a long speech the danger that a nuclear war threatens mankind, and turns against the tyranny which, under the threat of nuclear weapons, becomes the tyranny of all mankind. But the emperor reinterprets his speech as loyal to the state and merely directed against his enemies. Instead of the noose, he has the gold chain of a state award put around the neck of today's people.

Meanwhile, there is an uprising of the people who demand the freedom of the supposed Min Ko. The prince sits at the head of the movement. When the present day realizes that the unscrupulous general's military coup will only mean further terror for the people, he tries to persuade the Chinese peasant woman to confess that her son Wang is mute and therefore cannot be the symbolic figure of the rebels. But the mother is flattered by the sudden importance of her son, who is always perceived as inferior, and now carries on the legend that he is Min Ko. The people walk away cheering with Wang, the violated Mee Lan faces the prince, who has everyone liquidated.

What remains is a man in tails and a man in cut . They are the business leaders who are already figuring out how to do business with the prince. Brutus stabs them both, knowing full well that their kind will always stay in power. Romeo and Juliet once again conjure up the beauty of the doomed world. After the dance of historical masks appears again, the lovers die united in a kiss.

Earlier versions

In particular, the first version differed significantly in terms of the plot elements: Here Min Ko, the voice of the people, was identical to today's, who, according to Hellmuth Karasek, became the hero of the play. The relationship between Min Ko and the princess was also more dramatic. From the second version onwards, Min Ko is no longer physically present on the stage, the present-day becomes the emcee who intervenes in the action from a large temporal and spatial distance and thus ironizes it. According to Urs Bircher, Frisch largely removed the moralisms from the plot in the second version , incorporating alienation effects and contemporary references. The characters now speak in literary style quotations, "[t] he keynote of the text becomes bitter and satirical." With the fourth version, Frisch also deleted the love affair between the present day and the princess. According to Klaus Müller-Salget, this led to a concentration of the piece on the central themes, but also severed the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, Don Juan and the stranger from the Seine to the main plot.

shape

Max Frisch called the play in the subtitle a farce and stated that it was a “ parody of our consciousness, a farce of the incommensurable ” of the incomparable or incompatible. According to Jürgen H. Petersen, the meeting of the centuries and their different perspectives has an educational function; in the contrast of the time and its style, as well as the content and vocabulary, it also leads to the comedy typical of the farce . According to Gerhard Kaiser , the pure form of tragedy or comedy is no longer possible for Frisch in modern theater , so that "tragedy and comedy suddenly stand side by side" in his pieces. Jürgen Kost refers to the double meaning of the term “farce”: On the one hand, the piece corresponds to the anti-illusionist pattern of a farce that presents a comical absurdity without the viewer feeling any dismay. However, the generic features of the farce, the circular nature and the pseudo-plot without consequences, also related to the farce-like course of the story in terms of content. For Hellmuth Karasek , the “farce” also refers to the romantic form of literary satire, which uses irony to address doubts about its own function.

In the personage of his piece, Frisch differentiates between “figures” and “masks”. According to Klaus Müller-Salget, the former speak during the entire drama in normal, contemporary prose , which is only interspersed with “Chinese” formulas. From the 1955 version, however, the latter use quotations and style imitations. Romeo and Juliet and Brutus, for example, speak in verses of the German Shakespeare translations of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, or by Frisch, passages that have been added in the same style. Philip II used passages from Friedrich Schiller's drama Don Carlos , while the present day met him in the role of the Marquis of Posa. Pilate reports in the words of the Bible . Other dialogues are kept in the alternating rhythm of the iambus .

The place and time of the action are announced by today's in the prelude: “Place of the action: this stage. Action time: tonight. (So ​​in an age where the building of Chinese walls is, of course, a farce.) "Although reference was made to Nanking and a historical emperor of the Qin dynasty with regard to place and time , these dates are, according to Manfred Jurgensen , similar to Andorra , for example , to be understood as a model , because today's asks in the prelude: “Where is (today) this nanking? And who is (today) Hwang-Ti, the Son of Heaven, who is always right? ”Freshly relativize the place, time and people of the play in the sense of epic theater , the play does not take place in a specific place, but in human consciousness.

According to Günter Waldmann, three levels can be identified in the action: the first level is the present of today with its level of knowledge and its questions, the second level that of a 2000 year old Chinese past. The main event arises from the relationship between the two levels, the classic " tyranny " and the current concerns and problems. The third level is that of the masks from the meantime, which do not influence the main event directly, but only indirectly. Walter Jacobi describes how the different levels constantly overlap and mix in the course of the game. He sees it as a "prime example of a surrealistic drama form" based on the principle of dreams . The drama gains its structure primarily through the central figure of the present day, who acts like a puppeteer and gives the play the impression of a puppet theater . However, Frisch does not completely resolve the classic structure of a regular drama . For example, the prelude fulfills the role of an exposition with the exciting moment of the exclamation of the fight against Min Ko, the show trial being the climax. Today’s, on the other hand, keep changing to the role of the conférencier, a kind of modern choir that addresses the audience directly.

Gerhard Kaiser emphasizes that the Great Wall of China does not have a closed fable of a conventional drama, but is a montage “of different elements of action and meaning that overlap, comment and satirize and ultimately seem to cancel each other out. Every illusion is thoroughly destroyed; the actors fall out of their roles, the audience is addressed directly, the sets collapse, and the stage machinery becomes visible. ”The abolition of the order of space and time subordinates the form to an element of content that is dealt with in the play: the theory of relativity .

interpretation

Masks of the past

For Jürgen Kost, the masks that appear in the play represent “ archetypes of historical behavior”. For Gerhard Kaiser each one carries its “imaginary museum” with it, its time in which the masks, as the present day describes, remain “deaf to every development of our consciousness”, “ lemurs of a story that cannot be repeated” They are functionally interchangeable, so that in an early version Napoleon simply takes the place of Alexander the Great because he embodies the same type of conqueror. The other masks are also reduced to individual behaviors: Columbus seeks the truth, Don Juan the original, the unknown from the Seine the beautiful, Romeo and Juliet love, Brutus freedom. Cleopatra swarms around the ruler and Pilate hesitates before making a decision. For Kaiser, the China level also symbolizes a form of the past, but not historical China 2000 years ago, but the way of life of people today, which is 2000 years behind their reality, their knowledge and possibilities.

According to Heinz Gockel, the masks are deliberate stereotypes , which in their quotes reflect the educational value of the petty bourgeoisie. They do not bring historical stations onto the stage, but remain schemes and templates. In Frisch's words, they are “figures that populate our brains”. Their existence lies in language. “Hence the style quotes: Brutus after Shakespeare, Philipp von Spanien after Schiller. We do not know Pilate from Roman history, but from the Bible. Hence the quotation from the Bible. ”The historical figures are identified with their traditions, through which they are anchored in the present day. Reduced to a quote, they remain mere pawns.

History as a cycle

With the construction of the Great Wall of China, the Emperor Hwang Ti tried, according to Jürgen Kost, “to negate the historicity of his own present by preventing any change and, as it were, giving his rule eternity”, thereby stopping the historical process. The play ends with a revolution , but the result is only the return of the previous conditions. The prince, who embodies the same type of tyrant, takes the place of the emperor. The recurrence of the same thing is explicitly discussed in other parts of the piece. The Kaiser predicts that even after his fall, they will read their papers from guys like him. And when in the end the gentlemen in tailcoats and cut dominate the present, Brutus comments: “Confident! - as a variety you stay in power. ”Finally, with the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet, the play ends as it began.

Erna M. Dahms speaks of the fact that Frisch's works show a "negative image of history", Walter Schmitz names the "ahistorical content" of the farce and explains that in Frisch the principle of repetition is "identical to mechanically unconscious repetition" . Kost explains that the principle of repetition is a central motif in Frisch's work, in which there are hardly any fundamental changes. While repetition mostly determines a person's private biography, Frisch also applies it in The Great Wall of China to society, which is equally under the spell of the inevitable return of the same thing. It is the human psyche, which always follows the same patterns and laws and thus determines the historical cycle, which leads to a dance of death of the masks: “It is as if they were dead, but they talk / And also dance and turn in a circle / How figures on a music box turn. ”The motif of repetition and the people acting like on a music box will recur in Frisch's late piece Biography: A Game .

Faint or hope

Hellmuth Karasek calls The Great Wall of China "the playwright Frisch's answer to the atomic bomb". It was "certainly the most desperate piece by Frisch", followed by debates about the author's nihilism . For Hans Bänziger, the farce is “a pessimistic counterpart of Wilder's We Got Away Again ”. Karasek explains that while humanity at Wilder still survives its catastrophe, Frisch assumes that the next catastrophe can no longer be survived. The play also offers a “sell-out of literature”, whose ineffectiveness in contributing to real change is demonstrated, for example by the emperor giving his critic a literary prize at the end. The theme of the powerlessness of the intellectual also runs through other works by Frisch, as Karasek sees the present day, a Dr. jur., as the intellectual forerunner of Dr. phil. from Biedermann and the arsonists .

Gerhard Kaiser, on the other hand, has a positive outlook: The play is “an appeal, and those who still appeal have not completely lost hope.” For Klaus Müller-Salget too, the drama “encourages people to think and act themselves, to strive beyond what is available out ”, to which the statements Christopher Columbus point out:“ India, which I meant has not yet been discovered. ”And he refers to“ the continents of one's own soul, the adventure of truthfulness. I never saw other rooms of hope. "

Reference to Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1954)

According to Manfred Durzak , no other play by Max Frisch refers so strongly to Bertolt Brecht as The Chinese Wall , and he sees the play as "an act of productive confrontation with Brecht". In part, because of the play, the accusation of a Brecht epigone was even raised. For example, Frisch's techniques of literary quotation and montage were compared with Brecht's “ alienation through classicism” or the mute Wang with the equally mute Kattrin in Brecht's mother Courage and her children . And the reference to China and Chinese history is already sketched out in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle or The Good Man of Sezuan . However, Durzak refers to the different function of the China motif in the two playwrights. While Brecht used it to distance the viewer in his political parables , Frisch used China as a metaphor for the discrepancy between technological progress and humanity.

Gerhard Kaiser also emphasizes the different intentions of the two dramatists. Brecht alienates the world that he believes he can see through as a political poet in order to move the viewer to change reality towards a given solution of Marxism . Fresh is also striving to change people, but his piece remains open because he lacks the recipes. Freshly alienate the world because he experiences it as alien, and write, as in the subtitle of Biedermann und die Brandstifter , “ didactic pieces without teaching”. For Walter Schmitz, too, Frisch broke away from Brecht by mixing his epic theater with Thornton Wilder's theatrical means , for example letting the director not critically examine the events, but instead let them participate in the eternal cycle of which he remained unconscious. In addition, Frisch continues Brecht's worldview through the theories of CG Jung , in which he transfers Brecht's theater model into a stage of consciousness. But since, according to Eun-A Choi, “the theater cannot show the world of consciousness depending on the genre”, the playful character of the play is emphasized and the illusion of reality is broken.

History of origin

Max Frisch rehearsing Biedermann and the arsonists (1958)

Max Frisch described the trigger for the piece: "a visual stimulus (masked ball), an intellectual shock (bikini) and ideas on the bike (I was a cyclist at the time, hence the agile dramaturgy of the piece)". The first version was created between November 1945 and May 1946. In fact, the nuclear weapons tests named by Frisch on Bikini Atoll only took place after the piece was finished, so Urs Bircher attributed the shock to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Frisch drew on elements of his earlier works Bin or Die Reise nach Peking , Santa Cruz and Nun they sing back again, which mixed with influences from Brecht's political theater.

The first version was premiered on October 10, 1946 in the Zurich Schauspielhaus under the direction of Leonard Steckel . Actors were Wilfried Seyferth , Gustav Knuth , Agnes Fink , Traute Carlsen , Erwin Parker , Bernhard Wicki and Elisabeth Müller . In 1947 the book was published by Benno Schwabe . It was premiered in Germany on November 24, 1948 at the Hamburger Kammerspiele . Directed by Ulrich Erfurth . Hans Quest took over the role of today .

In retrospect, Frisch judged the first version: “It seemed to me a missed opportunity.” He told the ambiguous story too clearly: “Instead of producing the story of the tyrant and the mute, the play tries to teach us the meaning of this very story. In the new version he planned to “scrape off the 'meaning' and reduce the piece to its bare plot.” Frisch made the changes for the second version from February to June 1955. It was performed as part of the Berliner Festwochen on October 28, 1955 in the Theater am Kurfürstendamm under the direction of Oscar Fritz Schuh . In the same year it was published by Suhrkamp Verlag .

Ten years later, Oscar Fritz Schuh, who was meanwhile artistic director at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus , again suggested a third version. Max Frisch, with an increased distance to his play, which has "meanwhile become a school reading, inasmuch as it is actually inviolable", now felt more like "a dramaturge who can only intervene with a red pencil". His editing does not reinterpret anything, leave the original author “his ideas, his seriousness and his fun, his opinions; I'm just cutting down what has nothing to do with it. It was all sorts of things. ”Created in two weeks at the beginning of 1965, the third version premiered on February 26, 1965 in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus. It played Will Quadflieg , Solveig Thomas , Charles Brauer , Max Eckard , Ullrich Haupt , Ruth Niehaus , Erni Mangold , Hermann Schomberg and Beatrice Norden . The text remained unpublished.

The fourth and final version was created for a performance at the Théâtre National de l'Odéon with the participation of the director Jean-Pierre Miquel and the translator Henri Bergerot. It premiered on November 8, 1972 and was published in the same year as a version for Paris, 1972 in the edition suhrkamp .

reception

Contemporary reviews

The premiere of The Great Wall of China met controversial reviews. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung perceived an “enthusiastic thanks from the audience” for having seen a “world theater that has been whirling behind our foreheads for years”, while Weltwoche is a “world view piece” that “leaves us disappointed and unsatisfied”. Carl Seelig criticized the construction of the piece. Walter Muschg , on the other hand, already praised the program for the premiere : “In his third stage poem, too, Max Frisch succeeds in his peculiar combination of poetic depth and enchanting lightness of form.” Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer judged more critically : “There is actually everything that is on the today Theater is made, and there is actually everything that moves us in the way of problems today. ”However, compared to the subject of the atomic bomb, Frisch's play looks like a“ lyrical anthology ”,“ closer to a poetic Jules Verne than to the devilish perfection of ours Days. "

For the German premiere at the Hamburger Kammerspiele, Der Spiegel Frisch compared with Thornton Wilder : “ The Great Wall of China is not only mentally but also in shape on the same line as We got away with it again . It's unleashed theater. In Frisch, to a certain extent, it is a macabre revue ballad of human unteachability. ”Jakob R. Welti judged on the new version from 1955 that everything in the play“ acts as a farce, as antics, viewed from the monstrous recognition of our present day that the atom is divisible, the deluge can be produced '. "

Later reviews

The Great Wall of China occupies a special position in Frisch's work in several ways. Due to the numerous revisions, the piece accompanied him through all periods of his dramatic work. Alexander Stephan , along with Count Öderland , described it as "the piece with which Frisch struggled the most." It also remained artistically controversial and - unlike Frisch's well-known parables Biedermann and the Arsonists and Andorra - did not find a permanent place in the repertoire of the Theatre. Ulrich Weisstein thinks it is the only artistic failure of Frisch's dramas. Manfred Jurgensen also called the artistic value “problematic”. For Peter Demetz , on the other hand, it was one of Frisch's “most outstanding pieces”, and for Klaus Matthias it was “Frisch's most significant contribution to contemporary world theater”.

Volker Hage judged The Great Wall of China to be “the most recent among the early dramatic works” of Max Frisch. The fact that it was nevertheless “a little forgotten” is due to the fact that it packs its simple warning very elaborately, and that the piece, in contrast to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker, came too early. For Lioba Waleczek, too, the piece is “clearly in the shadow” of Dürrenmatt's physicist and Heinar Kipphardt's In the J. Robert Oppenheimer case . For Klaus Müller-Salget, however, “at a time when mankind has almost got used to global armament, it is confronted with the consequences of 'civil' nuclear power and the first signs of a comprehensive climate catastrophe nothing lost in its topicality. "

Max Frisch's drama also met with political echoes in several ways. According to Volker Weidermann, the quote “The Flood can be created ” became a “tremendous sentence for the time” . All you have to do is give the order, Your Excellency. That means: We are faced with the choice of whether there should be a human race or not. ”Later, it could be read in various variations on numerous banners of the peace movement . Another late political consequence of the early work was Max Frisch's trip to China, in which he took part in 1975 as part of the delegation of the then German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt . Schmidt reported that with his invitation he wanted to give Frisch the opportunity to see the real Great Wall of China.

Adaptations

The Great Wall of China has been filmed several times. Südwestfunk produced two television films . 1958 played under the direction of Ludwig Cremer among others Martin Benrath , Hanns Ernst Jäger , Maria Emo , Robert Dietl . In 1965, Hans Lietzau filmed the play with Gerd Baltus , Hermann Schomberg , Ernst Jacobi , Charles Brauer , Vera Tschechowa , Wolfgang Spier , Heinz Baumann and others. In 1967 Yugoslav television filmed Frisch's play as Kineski zid , directed by Berislav Makarovic . The drama was also produced twice as a radio play, in 1949 under the direction of Ludwig Cremer from Süddeutscher Rundfunk , with Michael Konstantinow , Paul Dättel , Ortrud Bechler , Edith Heerdegen , Friedrich Schönfelder and others, and in 1955 under the direction of Walter Ohm from Bayerischer Rundfunk , with Ingeborg Hoffmann , Carl Wery , Robert Lindner , Lina Carstens , Otto Brüggemann and others.

literature

Text output

  • Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. A farce. Benno Schwabe, Basel 1947. (first edition, first version)
  • Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. A farce. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1955 (first edition, second version)
  • Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. A farce. Version for Paris, 1972. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-518-10065-3 . (First edition, fourth version)
  • Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. A farce. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-06533-5 , pp. 139-216.

Secondary literature

  • Manfred Durzak: Dürrenmatt, Frisch, Weiss. German drama of the present between criticism and utopia. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-010201-4 , pp. 174-185.
  • Heinz Gockel: Max Frisch. Drama and dramaturgy . Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-486-88271-6 , pp. 54-63.
  • Walter Jacobi: Max Frisch "The Great Wall of China". The relationship between meaning and form. In: Albrecht Schau (Hrsg.): Max Frisch - Contributions to an impact history . Becksmann, Freiburg 1971, pp. 211-224.
  • Manfred Jurgensen : Max Frisch. The dramas . Francke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1160-8 , pp. 56-65.
  • Gerhard Kaiser : Max Frisch's farce “The Great Wall of China”. In: Thomas Beckermann (ed.): About Max Frisch I . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-518-10852-2 , pp. 116-136.
  • Hellmuth Karasek : Max Frisch. Friedrich's playwright of the world theater volume 17 . Friedrich Verlag, Velber 1974, pp. 30-39.
  • Jürgen Kost: History as a comedy. On the connection between historical image and comedy conception in Horvath, Frisch, Dürrenmatt, Brecht and Hacks. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1182-1 , pp. 99-125 ( google books ).
  • Klaus Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Literary knowledge. Reclam, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-015210-0 , pp. 39-46.
  • Walter Schmitz : Max Frisch: The Work (1931–1961). Studies on tradition and processing traditions. Peter Lang, Bern 1985, ISBN 3-261-05049-7 , pp. 157-172.
  • Günter Waldmann: The fate of historicity. In: Walter Schmitz (Ed.): About Max Frisch II . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-10852-2 , pp. 207-219.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Max Frisch. P. 33.
  2. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955. Limmat, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-85791-286-3 , pp. 149–150.
  3. ↑ See excerpts from the different versions: Max Frisch: Gesammelte Werke in chronological order. Second volume , pp. 761-765.
  4. ↑ Klaus Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Literature Knowledge , p. 42.
  5. ↑ Max Frisch: On the Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 225.
  6. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch. Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , pp. 60-61.
  7. ↑ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frisch's farce "The Great Wall of China". Pp. 135-136.
  8. ↑ a b Jürgen Kost: History as a Comedy. P. 125.
  9. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Max Frisch. Pp. 30-33.
  10. ↑ Klaus Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Literary knowledge. P. 41.
  11. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 145.
  12. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , pp. 144-145.
  13. ↑ Manfred Jurgensen: Max Frisch. The dramas. Francke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1160-8 , pp. 60-61.
  14. ↑ Günter Waldmann: The fate of the historicity. Pp. 207-208.
  15. ^ Walter Jacobi: Max Frisch "The Great Wall of China". The relationship between meaning and form. Pp. 213, 220-224.
  16. ↑ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frisch's farce "The Great Wall of China". Pp. 117-118.
  17. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 158.
  18. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 150.
  19. ↑ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frisch's farce "The Great Wall of China". Pp. 120-124.
  20. ↑ Max Frisch: On the Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume, pp. 226-227.
  21. ^ Heinz Gockel: Max Frisch. Drama and Dramaturgy , pp. 57–59.
  22. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 213.
  23. ↑ Jürgen Kost: History as a Comedy. Pp. 100-104.
  24. ↑ Erna M. Dahms: Time and time experience in the works of Max Frisch: Meaning and technical representation. De Gruyter, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-11-006679-3 , p. 72.
  25. ^ Walter Schmitz: Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931-1961). Pp. 157, 172.
  26. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume. P. 215.
  27. ↑ Jürgen Kost: History as a Comedy. Pp. 105, 111.
  28. ^ Heinz Gockel: Max Frisch. Drama and Dramaturgy , p. 58.
  29. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Max Frisch. Pp. 31, 33.
  30. ^ Hans Bänziger: Fresh and Dürrenmatt. Franke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1212-4 , p. 66.
  31. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Max Frisch. Pp. 31-32.
  32. ↑ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frisch's farce "The Great Wall of China". P. 136.
  33. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 184.
  34. ↑ a b Klaus Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Literary knowledge. P. 46.
  35. ↑ Manfred Durzak: Dürrenmatt, Frisch, Weiss. German drama of the present between criticism and utopia. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-010201-4 , pp. 175-176.
  36. ↑ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frisch's farce "The Great Wall of China". P. 135.
  37. ^ Walter Schmitz: Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931-1961). Pp. 158-161.
  38. ↑ Eun-A Choi: Aspects of literary illusionism - depicted in German-language dramas . Inaugural dissertation at the Wuppertal University 2001, p. 36
  39. ↑ Max Frisch: Chinese Wall 1965. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 226.
  40. ↑ a b c d e Max Frisch: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume. Pp. 760-761.
  41. ↑ a b Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955. P. 146.
  42. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Max Frisch. P. 100.
  43. ↑ a b Max Frisch sounds the alarm . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1948, pp. 22 ( online ).
  44. ↑ Max Frisch: On the Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 223.
  45. ↑ Max Frisch: Chinese Wall 1965. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , pp. 226-227.
  46. ^ Johannes Jacobi: Theater . In: The time of March 5, 1965.
  47. ↑ Quotations from Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955. P. 146.
  48. ↑ Luis Bolliger (Ed.): Now: max fresh. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39734-6 , p. 32.
  49. ^ Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer : The Great Wall of China. In: Schweizer Monatshefte , Volume 26 1946/47, p. 510.
  50. ↑ Jakob R. Welti: The Great Wall of China. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 12, 1955. Reprinted in: Luis Bolliger (Ed.): Now: max frisch , p. 30.
  51. ↑ Alexander Stephan : Max Frisch . CH Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09587-9 , p. 50.
  52. ↑ Jürgen Kost: History as a Comedy. Pp. 99-100.
  53. ↑ Ulrich Weisstein: Max Frisch. Twayne, New York 1967, p. 165.
  54. ↑ Manfred Jurgensen: Max Frisch. The dramas. P. 63.
  55. ↑ Quoted from: Manfred Durzak: Dürrenmatt, Frisch, Weiss , p. 185.
  56. ^ Klaus Matthias: The Dramas of Max Frisch. Structures and statements. In: Walter Schmitz (Ed.): About Max Frisch II , p. 87.
  57. ↑ Volker Hage : Max Frisch . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 3-499-50616-5 , p. 44.
  58. ↑ Lioba Waleczek: Max Frisch. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-31045-6 , p. 71.
  59. ↑ Max Frisch: The Great Wall of China. In: Collected works in chronological order. Second volume , p. 149.
  60. ↑ Volker Weidermann : Max Frisch. His life, his books . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-462-04227-6 , p. 154.
  61. ↑ PHOENIX contemporary witness Ulrich Wickert in an interview with Helmut Schmidt . In: Die Zeit 52/1999.
  62. ^ The Great Wall of China (1958) in the Internet Movie Database .
  63. ↑ The Great Wall of China (1965) in the Internet Movie Database .
  64. ↑ Kineski zid in the Internet Movie Database .
  65. ↑ The Great Wall of China in the HörDat audio play database .