Homo faber (novel)

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Homo faber in an edition of the Suhrkamp library

Homo faber. A report is a novel by the Swiss writer Max Frisch . After its publication in October 1957, it became a bestseller and is one of Max Frisch's best-known prose works . The novel has been translated many times and is often treated both in literary studies and in school lessons. A film adaptation of Volker Schlöndorff was released in 1991 as Homo Faber .

The title of the novel relates the main character, Walter Faber, to the anthropological concept of homo faber , the creative human being. Walter Faber is an engineer with a strictly rational , technically oriented worldview, in whose orderly life chance and the suppressed past break in. Through a chain of unlikely events, he successively meets his deceased childhood friend, his unforgettable childhood sweetheart and his daughter, of whose existence he does not suspect. Unknowingly, Faber has an incestuous relationship with the young womanA love affair that comes to a tragic end. Only at the end does he recognize his failures and failures; terminally ill he wants to walk his life.

In addition to autobiographical elements, Max Frisch dealt with central core themes of his work in Homo faber : the conflict between personal identity and social role , the determination of existence by chance or fate , the contrast between technology and nature and myth , the unsuccessful relationship between the sexes and the failed one Life.

content

A Super Constellation in New York, 1954

On board a Super Constellation , the Swiss engineer Walter Faber flies from New York-LaGuardia Airport to supervise an assembly in Venezuela on behalf of UNESCO . The person sitting next to him is the German Herbert Hencke, who turns out to be the brother of his college friend Joachim. Joachim Hencke once married Faber's childhood sweetheart Hanna after she separated from Faber. Two propeller plane engines fail during the flight. The pilot decides to make an emergency landing. After a few days in the Mexican desert, the passengers are rescued.

Faber decides at short notice to postpone his planned business trip to Caracas and accompanies Herbert in search of his brother. Joachim runs a plantation in Guatemala , but there has been no news from him for months. In the heat of Central America the search stops again and again. Only with the support of the musician and hobby archaeologist Marcel do they finally reach the plantation and find Joachim, who has hanged himself. Herbert stays behind on the plantation, while Faber, after a short stay in Caracas, returns to New York, where his lover Ivy is already waiting for him. Tired of their closeness and plans to marry, he decides to start the journey to Europe early by ship.

On board, Faber gets to know the young Elisabeth, whom he calls Sabeth . Faber falls in love with the young woman who reminds him of his childhood sweetheart Hanna. He is constantly looking for her nearness. On the last day of the crossing, his 50th birthday, he made her a marriage proposal, which she did not answer. After saying goodbye in Paris , Faber, although not interested in art, visits the Louvre repeatedly until he meets Sabeth again. He warns her about hitchhiking and spontaneously accompanies her on the journey home to Athens to see her mother. The journey together becomes a romantic educational journey through southern France, Italy and Greece. In Avignon , both are so overwhelmed by the experience of a lunar eclipse that they spend the night together.

After Faber found out that Sabeth is Hanna's daughter, he, who always relies on his technical-rational worldview to cope with life, fails on a simple calculation: to determine the date of her conception from Sabeth's age. He does not realize that Sabeth is his own daughter, although Hanna revealed to him around 21 years ago that she was expecting a child from him. Faber reacted cautiously, spoke of "your" instead of "our" child, and both agreed on an abortion. Hanna refused to marry Faber at the last moment because she did not see love in Faber's motives, but only the sense of duty to enable her to emigrate from National Socialist Germany to Switzerland because of her Jewish descent . Faber was offered a job as an engineer in Baghdad at the time, and Hanna gave birth to their child without his knowledge. Instead of Faber, Hanna married his friend Joachim, whom the adult Sabeth still takes to be her father.

View from Acrocorinth to the sea

The incestuous love story between Faber and Sabeth takes a tragic turn when Sabeth is bitten by a snake on a beach near Acrocorinth , falls back in front of the naked Faber hurrying to help, falls back over an embankment and hits the back of his head. With the unconscious Sabeth in his arms, Faber arrives in Athens, meets Hanna and finally learns that Sabeth is his daughter. After injecting a serum against snake venom, Elisabeth appears to be on the mend, but dies suddenly of untreated head injuries that have not been diagnosed because Faber has given no indication of Sabeth's fall.

Faber plans to stay with Hanna and marry her, but before that he goes on one last big trip. After learning in New York that his apartment has already been sold, he visits Herbert on his lonely plantation, but cannot persuade him to return. Faber then went to Caracas for a longer period of time, during which the first part of his report was written. He then flies to Havana for four days , where he is seized by a previously unknown zest for life, understands the limitations of his worldview and decides to change his life. He resigns from his position at UNESCO. Still, Faber's journey remains overshadowed by grief for the death of his daughter and a growing sense of his own death. His repressed stomach ailment is becoming more and more noticeable and suggests the diagnosis of gastric cancer . Faber is undergoing an operation in Athens. His report breaks off on the morning of that day.

shape

Structure of the novel

The novel Homo faber is divided into two parts, which are referred to as "stations". Faber reports the “first station” as a first-person narrator during the illness in the hotel room in Caracas (Faber's narration time : June 21st - July 8th). In it he reconstructs the events from the delayed departure in New York to the death of Sabeth (narrated time: March 25th - May 28th). Events that precede the first station (1933–1956) are integrated through epic flashbacks . Faber wrote the “second station” during his hospital stay in Athens (narration time: from July 19, narration time: from June 1). It continues beyond the beginning of its writing to Faber's appointment for the operation. This can be scheduled for around the end of August, as Faber ponders the night before about his remaining life: “two months (that would be September and October)”. With the interruption of the recordings the morning before the operation, the novel has an open ending . The reader is not informed of the outcome of the operation, but the course of the plot suggests that Faber did not survive the operation.

The novel is told in retrospect, from the memory of its protagonist . It is narrated in the form of a monologue , since the utterances of other characters in the dialogue passages are also reproduced second-hand through Faber's conscious or unconscious filters. The report of the first station based on the plot of the second station leads to an additional narrative framework and complicates the timeline, which is not always clear for the reader, to which the inserted flashbacks and foresight also contribute. According to Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp, the narrative linking of past, present and future reflects the influence of Martin Heidegger 's existential philosophy , which distinguishes the three time levels of “experience”, “existence” and “expectation”, although only in the Convergence of all three time levels could make human existence a reality.

The basic structure of the novel takes up the principle of counterpoint in several ways : the first station with the experiences of Faber up to the death of his daughter is set against the second station, his life afterwards. At the same time, the action - the experience - is contrasted with the later report of the events - the reflection. The processes are also repeated within the plot. Faber's travels lead twice to the Central American plantation, where he first finds his dead friend Joachim, and later, in a reversal of events, leaves his brother Herbert behind. The duplicity of the locations and travel routes reveal Faber's attempt to master and change his past through repetition. The place that falls out of this repetition and appears for the first time in the second station is Cuba; Faber wants to renew his life here.

chronology

The data are based on a list by Klaus Müller-Salget. Since not all the key data listed are specifically named in the novel, but are based on retrospective calculations, different calculations can be found in other sources.

First stop

1957

25th March Evening: Faber's departure from New York
26.-29. March Emergency landing and stay in the Mexican desert ( Tamaulipas )
April 1st Arrival in Campeche
2-3 April Train ride to Palenque
7th of April Full moon festival in Palenque
8-12 April Drive to the plantation in Guatemala (air line approx. 70 miles)
April 14th Start of the return journey to Palenque
20th of April Departure from Caracas (Venezuela)
April 21 Arrive in New York where Ivy is waiting
22.-30. April Cruise from New York to Le Havre
April 29th Faber's 50th birthday, marriage proposal to Sabeth
1st of May Paris
May 13th Lunar eclipse in Avignon , spends night with Sabeth
14.-25. May common trip to Italy, crossing to Patras
26.-27. May Night in Acrocorinth
May 27th noon: Sabeth's accident on Theodohori Beach
May 27th Arrival in Athens , reunion with Hanna
28th of May morning to noon: again drive to Theodohori; 2 p.m .: Death of Sabeth from cerebral haemorrhage

Second stop

June 1st New York, party at Williams
2th of June Flight to Mérida
4-5 June Drive to Palenque. Continue to the plantation in Guatemala
June 20–8. July Staying in Caracas, starting June 21, Faber will write the first part of the report while staying at the hotel due to stomach problems
9-13 July Faber in Havana ( Cuba )
15th of July Düsseldorf , film screening at Hencke-Bosch GmbH, departure by train
16th of July Zurich , meeting with Professor O.
July 18th Athens
From July 19th Hospital in Athens, where Faber wrote the second part of the report and the diary in italics
Appointment in August 8:05 am: surgery; the recordings break off.

The dates refer to the publications of the novel since the paperback edition 1977. Earlier editions, especially the first edition from 1957 and the edition of the collected works, are dated differently, starting with Faber's departure from New York on April 1st. After Michael Dym pointed out to Frisch that there were inconsistencies in the original data, he responded in a letter: "[G] er especially in a story of this kind - Walter Faber is keen on accuracy - such errors should not occur." Due to the subsequent relocation of the data, the events can be classified according to the calendar; As a result, however, there are contradictions to the phases of the moon , such as the fact that the full moon festival is now celebrated a week too early.

Narrative attitude

Faber writes his report on a Hermes Baby

Homo faber is a role novel in which Frisch lets a fictional engineer report in first person about the last months of his life. The subtitle A Report also maintains this fiction. The report is a text type familiar to the natural scientist Faber and arouses the reader's expectation of an objective description of the facts, which the novel does not deliver. Indeed, Faber's account is subjective and often imprecise. The diary notes from the second station also contrast with the objective text type report. The subtitle of the novel seems rather ironic after reading it, since Faber does not give a neutral report, but rather retells his life into a story that he himself wants to believe. In the end, when Faber orders the destruction of his notes, he himself admits their inadequacy: “nothing is right”.

The novel is told entirely from the point of view of the main character and takes the form of a self-justification. The forced retirement of Faber becomes the occasion for both reports. Only tied to bed because of his illness, Faber, previously constantly on the road through his job, is instructed to take stock, to come to terms with his unresolved past. An overriding narrator is missing. The reader only has the alternatives of following Faber's explanations or opposing them with his own arguments, ignoring the gaps in Faber's report or opposing them with his own speculations. The ambiguity of the novel, which is closed to simple interpretations, is also due to this narrative method, which does not stipulate any objective truths.

His report shows the increasing shaking of Faber's worldview, which is particularly evident where he feels compelled to justify Hanna or his guilt for Sabeth's death is in the room. In such confrontations, Faber's report jumps in time or slips into consideration of trivialities. For example, when he thinks about the wire or the power supply of the radio when he sees the dead Joachim. This reveals Faber's rational worldview to the reader as a mechanism of repression and a defense strategy. With the start of the trip to Italy, at the latest after Sabeth's death, Faber's report crumbles more and more under his growing shock. Past and present constantly overlap. In contrast to the first station, the second station lacks the level of the future, if one disregards Faber's illusory marriage plans with Hanna, a sign that the protagonist no longer has a future. At the same time, Faber's reflection on data and facts is replaced by direct experience.

language

The language of the narrator Walter Faber is the role prose of a person who identifies himself as a technician with his self-image. As in a scientific report, Faber gives precise time and place information , uses specialist terminology , and assembles statistical data and citations. Again and again Faber tries to causally link different facts . There is no decoration in his use of adjectives , but a factual designation of color, shape, size or age. Just like his technical and scientific self-image, Faber's language is shaped by his administrative activities. He uses elliptical shortcuts that are reminiscent of memos . Faber wants to demonstrate his cosmopolitanism through anglicisms , while at the same time his language is blurred through colloquial language through to grammatically incorrect expressions, such as the wrong subjunctive in "I was excited, as if I was flying for the first time in my life", which Frisch uses because one Faber cannot be trusted to use the language correctly.

Time and again, Faber's language reveals the content of his words, he becomes entangled in contradictions, he makes mistakes, he forgets what is already known. The reader is shown a contradiction between claim and reality. In the Freudian sense, Faber's failures point to mechanisms of repression. Faber's assertions that he has no feelings of inferiority, that he does not believe in fate and the like, reinforce the reader's assumption of the opposite. According to Walter Schmitz , Frisch uses a strategy similar to Brecht's alienation effect in order to repeatedly break the reader's expectations through Faber's alienation . Max Frisch himself commented on the language of his protagonist: “He lives past himself, and the discrepancy between his language and what he really experiences and experiences is what interested me. So the language is the actual crime scene here. [...] We see how he interprets himself. We see in comparison to his actions that he misinterprets himself. If that were in the Er-form, then I, as the author, would be the condescending judge; so he judges himself. "

interpretation

characters

Walter Faber

Person constellation of the novel

Walter Faber was born on April 29, 1907. From 1933 to 1935 he was an assistant at the ETH Zurich and worked on a dissertation on Maxwell's demon , but broke it off. At the ETH he met Hanna Landsberg, in 1935 the two planned to marry, in 1936 they separated. Faber moved to Baghdad , where he worked as an engineer at Escher Wyss AG . He has lived in New York since 1946 . For UNESCO , he leads the construction of technical systems around the world.

Faber's self-image is that of a rationalist : “I don't believe in fortune and fate, as a technician I'm used to calculating with the formulas of probability. [...] I do not need any mysticism in order to accept the improbable as a fact of experience; Mathematics is enough for me. ”His relationship to life and nature is characterized by alienation . In the course of the novel, his view of the world, which has been shaped by technology, is shaken more and more, and other, as yet unassigned aspects of his personality come to the surface. Faber corresponds to the type of a modern city dweller who - constantly traveling professionally - has become rootless and without ties. Faber himself states: “Being alone is the only possible state for me.” But although Faber constantly tries to differentiate himself from other people, he in particular reacts to his environment to a special degree. His dependence on other people is particularly evident in his relationship with Hanna, from which Faber has not been able to emotionally break away even after more than 20 years.

Hanna Piper

Hanna (actually Johanna) grew up under her maiden name Landsberg in Munich-Schwabing . She studied art history and philology in Zurich, from around 1931 to 1935. There she met Walter Faber, became pregnant by him and separated from him again. In 1937 she married Joachim Hencke and shortly afterwards gave birth to their daughter Elisabeth. In 1938 she separated from Joachim and went to Paris, where she lived with a well-known writer until 1940. Before the German invasion of France and the threat of persecution as a “ half-Jew ” she fled to London in 1941, worked for the BBC , became a British citizen and married the German communist Piper. In 1953 she divorced and since then has worked as an archaeologist in Athens.

Hanna is very emancipated and does not fit the stereotype of Faber's image of women. Their worldview, which Faber disparaged as the “Backfischphilosophie”, forms a feminist counter-position to Faber's reactionary image of women. In her criticism of the patriarchal religion and the tendency of men to regard women as a secret, she takes up theses from Simone de Beauvoir's work The Other Sex , which was very topical at the time the novel was written. Hanna is self-employed, independent of men and completely absorbed in her role as a single mother. She does not allow a husband to participate in her daughter's upbringing; she refused to have a child with her then husband Joachim, which led to their separation. Her statement that "the life of a woman who wants to be understood by the man cannot be anything other than botched", makes her life decision appear as an answer to the relationship with Faber: a resignation that leads to the breakdown of communication between the sexes and must lead a purely matriarchal way of life. According to Iris Block , her way of life thus becomes a counter-cliché to Faber's clichéd view of women.

The view of Hanna in secondary literature covers a wide spectrum. For example, Gerhard Kaiser saw Hanna as the accuser of homo faber , who, however, could not be a judge because her own life plan was "no less problematic". Her “mother egoism and her technology-hostile worldview” were based “on a covered inferiority complex”, out of which she “not really become a woman, but only an anti-man full of resentment”. Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp, for whom Hanna's life plan forms the opposite pole to Faber's failed existence, assessed quite differently, since she lived “a consistently fulfilled existence capable of experiencing”: “Her autonomy and integrity are beyond doubt. In contrast to Faber, whose view of the world turns out to be false and fragile, her position is not refuted at any point in the text. "

Elisabeth Piper

Elisabeth Piper is the daughter of Hanna Piper and Walter Faber, but considers Joachim Hencke to be her father himself. She was born in 1937 and moved to Paris, London and Athens with her mother. In 1956 she studied on a scholarship at Yale University in the United States. On her return trip to Athens she meets Walter Faber.

In Faber's description, Sabeth becomes a personified youth, the type of a young girl. Her most prominent quality is youthful spontaneity and the ability to experience. At the same time, she does not have a highly developed personality, is independent, but immature. Her openness to impressions extends from the past (her enthusiasm for art) to the present (what she sees as a temporary love adventure with Faber) to the future, for which she has no plans yet but which she is simply looking forward to. She is also shaped by her mother, who gave her an understanding of art, just as she effortlessly understands Faber's technical explanations. Therefore, according to Klaus Müller-Salget , she takes on the role of mediator between her parents and stands for the whole person who overcomes the modern division of consciousness between nature and technology. The names the girl is given - Faber calls her "Sabeth", Hanna "Elsbeth" - show that both parents only perceive a shortened part of their personality, which only finds its holistic equivalent in the name "Elisabeth".

Ivy

Ivy chooses her wardrobe to match the color of her Studebaker , here a Studebaker Commander State from 1952

Ivy is a 26-year-old mannequin little more known than that she was from the Bronx , is Catholic, and has a husband who works as a civil servant in Washington . Ivy remains a template in Faber's description. He knows nothing of her own feelings; Ivy's descriptions are in truth descriptions of Faber's image of women. In the picture he paints of Ivy, all the clichés about the female American way of life of the 1950s come together for the reader . Her accessories are cars and clothes, her main concern is her appearance, the language is limited to clichéd phrases such as “Everything okay?” Despite Faber's rejection, she clings to him, her greatest drive is the desire to marry, which is not canceled by it either that she is already married to someone else. The name alone evokes associations with a creeper: "Ivy means ivy, and that's what all women are actually called for me." For Mona Knapp, Ivy's role in the novel is limited to demonstrating the stereotype with which Faber views women: they are for him annoying and trivial, he feels superior to you.

Joachim Hencke

Joachim Hencke, the only central character who is no longer alive during the novel, is Faber's former student friend from Zurich from Düsseldorf. For Faber he was “my only real friend”. As a medical doctor in the state examination , Joachim Faber advised Hanna on the planned abortion. He did not express any medical or legal concerns, but later he encouraged Hanna to wish to carry the child to term and married her after she separated from Faber. Hanna's sole ownership of the child and her sterilization led to the divorce. In a short-circuit operation, Joachim volunteered for the Wehrmacht , became a prisoner of war and returned to Düsseldorf after the war.

Like Faber, Joachim also has a rational approach to the world, tries to solve problems with the mind and, like him, plays chess. Like Faber, he is shaped by a belief in the superiority of the technical system. After the failed marriage, he sacrifices his life to an obsession, the “future of the German cigar” in the Guatemalan plantations. Even when he saw no more perspective than to hang himself in the barrack, he staged his suicide in such a way that he remained visible to the Indians through a window of the barrack in his leadership role. By keeping the plantation running until it is replaced by his brother, according to Manfred Leber, Joachim tries to plan and work beyond his death. Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp also interpret Joachim's death as a symbolic anticipation of Faber's fate: his attempt to correct the past proves to be just as viable, Faber fails as does his friend.

Herbert Hencke

Herbert Hencke, who happened to be sitting next to him on Faber's flight with the Super Constellation, turns out to be the younger brother of his childhood friend Joachim. He establishes the link between Faber and his past with Hanna. For Faber, Herbert initially conveys the image of the aspiring German at the time of the economic miracle , who tried to establish international ties and tried to displace the time of National Socialism . Only his brother's suicide shakes him, and he remains in his place on the Hencke-Bosch plantation. When Faber visits him again after two months, "Herbert has become like an Indian". In the same way overwhelmed by nature and the indigenous equanimity as his brother did before, he still takes a different path: instead of Joachim's escape from existence, Herbert adapts to life on the plantation, surrenders fatalistically to his fate, resigned and developed no more prospects for the future. Hencke-Bosch GmbH gave it up a long time ago.

Marcel

Mayan ruins in Palenque

Marcel is a young American of French descent and a musician by profession in the Boston Symphony Orchestra . His passion are ancient Mayan ruins . He devotedly sacrifices his vacation to the self-chosen mission of making copies of old inscriptions from tracing paper and black chalk; In his opinion, photographs let them "die". Marcel is contrary to Faber's worldview, he repeatedly criticizes the American lifestyle. Marcel's theses anticipate essential themes of the later novel and Faber's development. They also refer to Faber's future arguments with Sabeth and Hanna, who are also art enthusiasts. Faber already feels reminded of Hanna by Marcel, whose carefree joy is repeated later in Sabeth. In the end, Faber adopts Marcel's outlook on life more and more and confesses in a letter: “Marcel is right”.

Other minor characters

The main characters Hanna and Faber are each assigned an older spiritual teacher, whereby, according to Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp, they already oppose each other through their initial letters, the alpha and omega as the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet . In Hanna's case it is Armin, who, although physically blind himself, taught her to “see” by shaping her later life-defining love for Greek culture. Armin symbolizes a positive relationship to life and old age that has been carried over to Hanna. Faber's mentor, on the other hand, is his former professor O. from ETH Zurich. He is a technician like Faber and meets him several times in the course of the novel , marked by stomach cancer . Similar to the zopilote in Latin America, it acts as a messenger of death. His increasing physical decline reflects Faber's own inability to cope with his aging and death. The wife of the high school teacher, with whom the young Faber had his first sexual experiences and who died shortly afterwards, also symbolizes the ominous amalgamation of life, sexuality and death in Faber's biography. For Faber, two women, mainly characterized by their youth, become the anticipation and return of his daughter Sabeth: the stewardess in the Super Constellation and the Cuban Juana.

Themes and motifs

"Homo faber" and the technology debate

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution , technology has become more and more decisive for people's professional and private lives. Different perspectives arose as to its meaning, and it increasingly became the subject of debate. In the 19th century there was an optimism about progress, which was reflected in philosophical currents such as positivism or literarily in the technical-utopian novels of Jules Verne . Early Expressionism hoped that technology would replace traditions and move towards a modern way of life. With the First World War , the view of technology became more critical. Georg Kaiser's gas dramas formed a climax in the demonization of technology . After the Second World War , a mixed picture emerged: on the one hand, under the impression of the massive use of war technology, a pessimism about technology increased, on the other hand, with the new possibilities opened up by cybernetics , for example , a new technology optimism was emerging. As a result, the mythical view of technology largely disappeared; philosophers such as Martin Heidegger emphasized the role of people who ultimately bear responsibility for technology.

According to Walter Schmitz, Max Frisch's novel Homo faber appeared at a time when the humanities debates about technology had already passed their climax. Formally, he makes use of well-known set pieces of the technology debate and as a protagonist falls back on the type of engineer. In his existential confrontation with technology, she assumed demonic traits. On the other hand, the actual technology hardly appears in Frisch's novel, it is just talked about all the time. Walter Faber does not correspond to the anthropological type of homo faber , a person who would rather act than talk. On the contrary, Faber constantly tries to prove to himself through his explanations that he meets the image of the acting person, the technician, whereby the reader is shown the discrepancy between Faber's self-view and reality. Faber's wisdom of the "man as engineer" and "nature as an idol" repeat positions that have already been thought in advance from the technology debate. In doing so, Frisch avails himself of the issues raised in the fund of technology criticism, but lets Faber make an unsuitable, technology-friendly judgment from them. Through these contradictions he expose him to the reader and demonstrate the hopelessness of Faber's worldview. The opposing positions to Faber's worldview, expressed in particular by Hanna and Marcel, are based on positions of cultural criticism . Marcel recalled the positions of Ludwig Klages when he feared the soul's retreat from civilization, Hanna, especially in her conception of time, recalled the mythical approaches of Friedrich Georg Jünger .

Portrait and Lost Life

A central theme that runs like a red thread through Frisch's work is the problem of identity. In doing so, he refers to the Old Testament commandment “You shouldn't make an image for yourself” and relates it to people, for which Hans Jürg Lüthi explained: “Max Frisch places God in people, he is 'the living thing in every person'”, that for the other person is never recognizable and comprehensible in its entirety. Therefore every picture includes people within limits, inhibits their free development and becomes the opposite of a love that accepts the other without limit and together with all his secrets.

According to Kerstin Gühne-Engelmann, Faber takes refuge from a life that scares him, into the role of the technician. The rationality of technology serves as a protection against feelings that he cannot control. In the role of the technician, Faber finds security and order without which he feels lost. For example, the optics of the camera, through which he films everything, creates a distance from life. But this distance, the assumed role and its sober, emotionless view excludes him from the experience, the actual living. The technology surrounds Faber like a protective shield, permeable only for a filtered life. Only at the end does Faber recognize the failure and neglect of his life. Frisch himself commented on the role of Walter Faber: “This man lives past himself because he chases after a generally offered image, that of 'technology'. Basically, the 'homo faber', this man, is not a technician, but a prevented person who has made an image of himself, who has had an image made that prevents him from coming to himself. [...] The 'homo faber' is certainly a product of a technical performance society and efficiency society, he measures himself by his efficiency, and the receipt is his life lost. "

But Hanna also lives in a role that she creates for herself by banning all male influence from her life, establishing a private matriarchy , so to speak . The focus of her life, which she sees as “botched”, is exclusively her daughter, who is supposed to belong to Hanna alone, to whom Hanna sacrifices her own life. Against Faber she directs the argument: “She is my child, not your child.” While Faber was guilty by calling the unborn Elisabeth “your child”, Hanna is complicit in her daughter from now on only as “ my child ”. She conceals the existence of his daughter from Faber just as she conceals her real father from Sabeth. Hanna's self-reproach "if she could live again" corresponds to Faber's desire: "If one could live again." According to Meike Wiehl, the same expressions suggest a spiritual relationship between the two in relation to their missed life.

Break in by chance and the past

At the beginning of the novel, everything is “as usual” in Faber's ordered world. This is also the most frequent phrase on the first pages: The aircraft is a Super Constellation, “as usual on this route”, the German seat neighbor annoys “as usual”, there is the “usual trouble” at customs. The list can be continued for a while until another word comes to the fore: the machine flies “suddenly inland”, “suddenly” the second engine cuts out, “suddenly” the chassis is swung out. Chance invades Faber's closed-off world. But it does not come as a power from outside, it was already part of the apparently perfectly functioning technology, because the start is already "three hours late due to snowstorms". According to Peter Pütz , the usual and the sudden, the technology and the chance are not the opposites that Faber sees in them, but permeate each other. The only moment in the novel when Faber's observations are completely free from the shackles of the ordinary is his journey with Sabeth. Only after this out of time trip does Faber experience the "usual Saturday party" and the "usual standing around".

In the same way as chance, the past breaks into the life of Walter Faber, who sees himself as a future-oriented person, who dislikes standstill and ties like Ivy's marriage wish, “used to thinking ahead, not thinking backwards, but rather to plan". Only the journey into the past with Sabeth awakens Faber's longing for a solid bond. Like technology and chance, the future and the past do not form a contradiction, but are interwoven, which is reflected in the formal structure of the novel, in the temporal jumps and insertions that are not mere flashbacks or anticipations, but a visualization of different time levels that stand for push the narrator together. Only at the end, immediately before the operation, does Faber himself suspect the temporal permeation: “Eternity in the moment. To be eternal: to have been. "

Faber's image of women

Simone de Beauvoir , to whose influence the image of women in the novel refers, next to Jean-Paul Sartre

Throughout the novel, Faber constructs stereotypical opposites between technology and nature, rationalism and mysticism, America and Europe. For him, the relationship between the sexes is also shaped by an indissoluble contrast between man and woman. While he postulates sober objectivity as the primary gender characteristic of men, women are characterized by hysteria, a turn to mysticism, the constant need to talk about feelings, and a general tendency to “become unhappy”. In the figure of Faber, Frisch portrayed a typical anti-feminism of the time and resorted to observations from Simone de Beauvoir's work The Other Sex , published a few years earlier . According to this, the man sees himself as the subject, as the center of the world, while for him women belong to the “category of the other” and are viewed as inferior and inferior. Faber's clichéd perception of the sexes is clearly evident in his relationship with Ivy, which, not being accepted by him as an equal partner, is constantly a nuisance to him. Above all, Ivy's physicality upsets Faber, the sex drive escapes the technician's control, he feels “urged to do so”, feels the sexual need as “downright perverse”. He assigns responsibility for his instincts to the woman who evokes them, subordinating her to cunning and calculation. He feels “pressured” by Ivy and admits that he really doesn't know anything about her. In his relationship with Ivy, Faber turns out to be an egocentric, incapable of attachment .

Another form of encounter with the female sex is only opened up to him by Sabeth with her light-heartedness and zest for life, which impress him. In contrast to other women, Sabeth is not a nuisance to him, on the ship and in Paris he seeks her closeness. Faber experiences the pleasure of the moment at her side: "I can only say that I was happy because I think the girl was happy too". Nevertheless, Sabeth remains a substitute for Faber, it is never about the actual encounter with her. She remains the "girl with the blond horse tail" and the "Hanna girl face". She remains a mediator who awakens the only real love in Faber's life, the love for Hanna, the woman with whom even the loathed sexuality "was never absurd". Hanna was the only woman in Faber's life who resisted his fixation of roles, which he could understand as a truly equal partner. She shook his male claim to rule, and that was exactly what impressed Faber: “Hanna didn't need me.” Her independence, her success also extended to her profession, a male domain in Faber's view of the world, without her, as he was astonished, as a result Has become “unfair”, so that he makes up his mind to confess: “I admire her.” Faber's admiration remains incomprehensible until the end. For him, Hanna is a mixture of familiarity and foreignness, and it is precisely her contradictions that make Hanna interesting for him.

Psychoanalytic interpretations also interpret Faber's fixation on Hanna as his longing to return to his mother. The female characters in the novel were characterized by three characteristics: maternal care, dominance (both embodied, for example, by the “fat negress” in the airport toilet) and a distance that evoked Faber's intrusiveness: a motif that is first shown by the stewardess and later on in the intrusive approach of naked Faber to Sabeth on the beach and to Hanna in her apartment. After Sabeth's accident, Faber's development is characterized by regression into an oedipal phase : first he leaves his watch and with it his temporal orientation, in the city he loses his spatial orientation, and without mastering the language he feels “like an illiterate, completely lost ”. In Sabeth's room he is in the final stage of a prenatal regression: "I sat [...] hunched over [...] like a fetus".

myth

The Dutch actor Louis Bouwmeester as the blinded King Oedipus in Sophocles ' drama (shot by Albert Greiner sen. & Jun., Ca.1896)

It is no coincidence that Faber and Sabeth's trip together leads to Greece. References to Greek mythology are repeatedly made in the novel . In particular, Faber's incest with his daughter is accompanied by allusions to Oedipus , who without knowledge killed his father, married his mother and gouged his eyes out after realizing his deeds. The motif of blindness runs through the novel, the strongest is the reference in Faber's train journey from Düsseldorf to Zurich: “I'm sitting in the dining car and think: Why not take these two forks, raise them up in my fists and let my face fall get rid of the eyes? ”In addition, Faber's fear that Hanna could“ easily step in during his bath to kill me from behind with an ax ”reminds of the death of Agamemnon at the hand of Clytemnestra . The mention of Daphni brings the love story of Faber and Sabeth close to the myth of Apollo and Daphne . The multiple journey through Eleusis evokes echoes of the mysteries of Eleusis , in whose myth Faber takes on the role of Hades , Hanna that Demeter and Sabeth takes on the role of Kore . All of the myths woven into the novel address the oppression and resistance of women who, in Faber's worldview, are marginalized and sink to the "other".

Mythological signs of death also follow Faber's journey. In the Museo Nazionale Romano , the works of art Birth of Venus on the throne Ludovisi and the head of a sleeping Erinnye , the so-called Medusa Ludovisi , represent the pair of opposites between life and death. When Sabeth approaches the goddess of love, a shadow arises on the goddess of revenge, Erinnye , which makes her look wild - a foretaste of the fatal end of the love affair between Sabeth and Faber. The Erinyes, often depicted with a dog's head in antiquity, have been persecuting Faber for a long time. Even his first lover, the wife of his teacher, looked like a bitch in the sexual act. In Acrocorinth , Sabeth and him are followed by the barking dogs. When Faber holds the head of Sabeth and Hanna in his hands, “like holding the head of a dog, for example,” he succeeds in resurrecting the statue from the museum: Sabeth keeps her eyes closed like the sleeping Erinnye, Hanna's expression is wild, like that of the awakening goddess of vengeance. For Faber, his typewriter, the Hermes Baby , whose name already hints at the god Hermes , becomes the last messenger of death for Faber , who at the end guides Faber on his way into the world of the dead.

Tragedy and guilt

In spite of the echoes of the ancient Greek tragedy , Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp do not see a fateful tragedy in the classical sense in Homo faber , and in Faber no modern Oedipus. While the latter immediately recognizes his guilt after uncovering the circumstances, a guilt for which, according to ancient standards, it does not matter whether he has committed his deeds knowingly or ignorantly, Faber does not know what his guilt consists of until the end. In his statements he repeatedly equates the incest and the death of his daughter, but asserts his innocence. It is true that Faber's inaccurate description of the accident, which focuses on the snakebite, not the fall and head injury, ultimately became the cause of his daughter's death. But at this very moment he was immediately affected for the first time and reacted without the technician's mask, and it was there that the gift of precise observation left him. Faber is in a sense guilty of no blame. He becomes an instrument of a chain of fateful coincidences, the cause of which extends far back into the past: the failure of the relationship with Hanna.

In the end, Faber learns to accept another guilt: his denial of death. In the end, Hanna makes him aware that there can be no relationship to time without a relationship to death. “My mistake with Sabeth: Repetition, I acted as if there was no age, therefore unnatural. We cannot cancel out old age by adding further, by marrying our own children. ”In his selfishness , Faber had created an immutable image of himself that did not allow any maturation process and shielded him from relationships with other people. He is not to blame for any classic moral or ethical guilt, but for the failure of his life. At the end of the novel, the structure of a classic educational novel is reversed: while guilt and remorse lead to a maturation of the protagonist, Faber as a modern person is also guilty of himself and others, but the objective standard for a judgment is missing. So in the end there is not perfection of personality, but death as the only objective certainty of life.

Faber's change: "My decision to live differently"

The question of whether Faber will ultimately change his consciousness and his way of life, whether he can break away from his alienated, technology-fixated worldview and turn to a direct, unmediated experience, is highly controversial in the investigations of the novel. Most of the time it is unequivocally affirmed or denied by the various interpreters and plays a central role in the resulting interpretations. For Jürgen H. Petersen, Faber said goodbye to the way of thinking of Homo faber , of man as a technical being; and by directing his hope and longing only to the mere 'natural' existence, in the end he abandons his earlier life as improper existence ”. In contrast, Joachim Kaiser decided : “The homo faber fails and hardly learns anything; because even after the peripeteia, the mere fear for the life of the beloved, terminally ill daughter is replaced by the ridiculous consideration of percentage probability. "

In Havana , here a street scene around 1955, Faber tries to change his life

In many interpretations, his stay in Cuba is rated as a yardstick for Faber's changed life. For Manfred Jurgensen , the stay in Havana enabled Faber to participate in a life previously thought to be impossible. He identifies with other people, shares in their joie de vivre, which culminates in the scene with the little shoeshine boy during a thunderstorm: “My decision to live differently - light of lightning; afterwards you are like blind, for a moment you have seen. ”According to Jurgensen, Faber experiences in Cuba“ the joyful affirmation of life ”,“ a rebirth of the self ”. In contrast, Walter Schmitz assessed: “Faber does not change; he remains fixated on the past. Even his stay in Cuba does not bring him a new beginning, because the bond with the past only turns negative there. ”Faber said he was free of his worldview, but he still had no contact with real life. His perception remains as clichéd as before.

Even Faber's late life-oriented utterances - "I praise life!" - "I cling to this life as never before" - "withstand the light, the joy [...], knowing that I am going out, [...] withstand the time" - are judged differently by the interpreters. Jürgen H. Petersen saw in the ciphers “joy”, “light”, “eternity in the moment”, “that Faber's cult of calculating has given way to experiencing the world and that he finds himself in this devotion to the tangible existence”. Other voices recognized in Faber's words not a changed man, but the fear of a doomed man. This is how Erich Franzen judged Faber's late longing for marriage: “[T] his word armor made from cosmetic adjectives [...] prevents him from realizing that he has lost once and for all the opportunity to find his ego through surrender to another ego . “Mona and Gerhard P. Knapp came to the conclusion that in Faber's change or non-change the ambiguity of the novel comes to light, an ambivalence that cannot be clearly interpreted. Although Faber's self-chosen pose crumbles in the course of the novel, his self-image is attacked and Faber opens up to new impressions and knowledge, but his personality does not change into its opposite. Faber's decision to live differently is canceled in another place by the wish never to have been. In contrast to the classic Bildungsroman, Faber does not mature into a well-rounded personality, but remains ambivalent, contradicting itself.

background

Autobiographical reference

Parts of the novel Homo faber go back to Max Frisch's own life story. In his autobiographical story Montauk , Frisch reported: “The Jewish bride from Berlin (during Hitler's time) is not called hanna , but Käte, and they are not at all alike, the girl in my life story and the character in a novel, den he wrote. The only thing they have in common is the historical situation and in this situation a young man who later does not come to terms with his behavior; the rest is art, the art of discretion towards yourself ... "

In 1934, while studying German in Zurich , Frisch met the 20-year-old Käte Rubensohn. Her uncle Ludwig Borchardt had made it possible for the daughter of a middle-class, intellectual family of Jewish descent, who were barred from universities in Germany during the Nazi era , to study in Zurich, but Käte continued to live temporarily in Berlin until her parents finally emigrated in 1939. Frisch called the almost four years together in Montauk "childhood love under an overpressure of conscience [...], while the race laws are promulgated in Nuremberg ". Kate's desire to have children had frightened him, he still felt unfinished, after all there were plans to marry: "Then I'm ready to get married so that she can stay in Switzerland, and we go to the Zurich City Hall , civil registry office, but she notices: that is not love that wants children, and she rejects that, no, not that. [...] She says it: you are ready to marry me just because I'm Jewish, not out of love . I say: we are getting married, yes, we are getting married. She says: No. ”In autumn 1937 Max Frisch and Käte Rubensohn separated. She commented that she did not want to be married out of pity in 1936 after Frisch had previously stated in a letter that he did not believe in the plan of a permanent marital bond with which people would “call the world and their unspeakable plan, which we call fate , just want to cross out ... ".

History of origin

The years 1954/1955 marked a turning point in Max Frisch's life. After having had to combine his work as a writer with the profession of architect for many years , the success of the 1954 novel Stiller made it possible for Frisch to give up his architecture office and concentrate on literature. He separated from Gertrud Frisch-von Meyenburg , with whom he had been married since 1942, and their three children and moved into a farmhouse in Männedorf . At the end of 1955 he began working on Homo faber .

Like his protagonist later, Max Frisch visited the Museo Nazionale Romano when the novel was written

In the genesis of the novel, Frisch made several great journeys. In June / July 1956 he gave a lecture on urban planning in Aspen , Colorado , at the invitation of the International Design Conference . He used the journey to travel through Italy, where he visited the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome , among other places . From Naples he went by ship to New York . After his lecture, the journey took him to San Francisco , Los Angeles and Mexico City , the Yucatán Peninsula and Havana . In April and May of the following year he traveled through Greece . Frisch's journeys to the creation of the novel can largely be found in the places that Walter Faber visits later in the novel.

The structure of the first version of Homo faber was similar to that of the previous novel Stiller . Originally the whole novel was told from the perspective of Faber's hospital stay, similar to Stiller's stay in prison. The course of the action followed a more chronological order. Frisch wrote this version without any major sideline activities from June 1956, before sending it to his publisher Peter Suhrkamp on February 23, 1957 . On April 21, he withdrew the manuscript. A composition sketch followed three days later, in which the present material was completely reorganized. Here, Frisch first introduced the two stations that structure the later novel. The first station now led more strongly in the form of a report to the death of Sabeth, without the action being accompanied by the commenting Faber from the Athens hospital. The plot elements were arranged less according to chronology than according to association sequences.

In the two months that followed his trip to Greece, Frisch completed the newly arranged novel. On June 20, he announced the end of the work in a letter to Peter Suhrkamp. Final corrections were made until August 12th. The first preprints were published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Alfred Anderschs Zeitschrift Texte undzeichen . The book edition was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in October 1957 . In contrast to many other works that Frisch repeatedly revised, he left the text of Homo faber unchanged for many years. It was not until 1977 that he corrected the contradicting data in the first edition.

Position in Frisch's oeuvre

Max Frisch (1955)

In Homo faber , Frisch took up numerous central themes in his oeuvre, such as the problem of the role that a person plays and the image that the world around them makes of him, the existential decision on one's own identity or the complex of chance and predestination through personality . The American experience of Frisch, the topic of the failed partnership and marriage or the question of belief in technology run through his entire work as motifs. In the same year as Homo faber , Frisch's Die Schwierigen or J'adore ce qui me brûle also appeared , an edited summary of his two first novels, Jürg Reinhart. A summery journey of fate and J'adore ce qui me brûle or The Difficult . Here, with Hinkelmann, the husband of the female main character Yvonne, a forerunner of Walter Faber appears: As an archaeologist a learned scientist, Hinkelmann proves to be cold and unemotional in his private life. His loveless reaction to Yvonne's pregnancy is reminiscent of Walter Faber's later rejection.

The complex of works Rip van Winkle , Stiller and Don Juan or The Love of Geometry from the early 1950s processed both Frisch's American experiences from 1951 and 1952 and the problem of portraits that Frisch first formulated in his diary 1946–1949 : “You should make you no image, it is said, of God. It should also apply in this sense: God as the living in every human being, that which cannot be grasped. It is a sin that, as it is committed against us, we commit again almost without ceasing - except when we love. ”In the play of Don Juan , the latter proves to be just as trapped in his traditional role as Walter Faber later. In Frisch's Don Juan, women are an abomination; he takes refuge in the pure clarity of geometry. He is reminiscent of Faber's admiration for technology as well as his disparaging remarks about Ivy.

There is a special relationship between Homo faber and his previous novel Stiller . In both novels, a failed relationship becomes the trigger for the plot, Faber, like Stiller, suffers from his insufficient role as a man from which he cannot free himself, has a problematic relationship with women and flees into repression. At the same time, Homo faber also forms a contrast to its predecessor. While Stiller tries to free himself from the shackles of the portraits of his environment and to be himself as "White", Faber accepts the portrayal of the technician and aligns his life with it. While Stiller finds his identity only in the negation of his role, Faber seeks it in its affirmation. Neither of them develop their own identity and force their loved ones into rigid role models. In both cases, love has a fatal outcome without the protagonist succeeding in real life. Hans Mayer was one of the first to draw attention to the contrast between the two novels: “They are complementary novels. The same civilizational theme is dealt with in such a way that each of these two novels can be viewed as a counterpart, supplement, but above all as a secret refutation of the other. "

In later works, Frisch also resorted to motifs from Homo faber . Andri from Andorra, like Faber, takes on an alien identity, assigned to him by the environment, but not in keeping with him. The theme of denied fatherhood with a fatal outcome can also be found in this drama. In Biography: A Game , Frisch brought the question of chance and fate to the stage. Like Faber, Kürmann understands his life as a chain of coincidences, his biography as changeable at any time, and when repeating his life he has to realize that he always makes the same decisions, that he is not able to significantly change his life, which was determined by his personality. Like Faber, Kürmann has only one choice at the end of the play: accepting death.

reception

Frisch in 1958 when the City of Zurich was awarded the Literature Prize

Homo faber was delivered to bookstores on September 30, 1957 in an edition of 8,779 copies. The novel immediately took one of the top positions in bestseller lists in German-language newspapers. A second edition of 5,870 books was added on October 3, another 5,000 copies followed before Christmas, and in July 1958 the circulation had reached 23,000. With the publication of Homo faber in the Suhrkamp library in 1962, the 100,000 copies were soon exceeded. In 1977 450,000 copies of this edition had already been sold, and the paperback edition of Suhrkamp Verlag that was now in circulation drove the total edition to over a million in 1982. By 1998, the total German-language circulation had risen to four million. Translations of the novel were available in 25 languages.

Reinhold Viehoff divided the history of Homo faber's reception into four phases. The first phase marked its inclusion in contemporary literary criticism from October 1957 to March 1958. Five years after the first edition, the publication of magazine articles and monographs on Homo faber began in a second phase, the canonization of the novel, which is now generally regarded as a modern classic has been. With the publication of Frisch's collected works in 1976, a third phase of interest in the novel arose. He was now primarily understood in the context of his work, and in the midst of Stiller and Mein Name sei Gantenbein as part of a trilogy of Frisch's central novels. The fourth phase of reception, facilitated by the paperback edition of the novel, finally established homo faber as school reading. As a result, numerous didactic edits, collections of materials and reading aids for teachers and students were published.

Three quarters of the more than 100 contemporary reviews of the novel with attribution came from the Federal Republic of Germany, 20 came from Switzerland, six from Austria and one from the GDR. Two thirds of them came to a positive verdict. So called Erich Franzen 's novel "a masterpiece", Beda Allemann "not only the most closed, but also the most disturbing work of Frisch's". Otto Basler spoke of “his best narrative work to date”, and for Georg Hensel , Frisch and Homo faber “not only succeeded in his masterpiece - it is a masterpiece of international standing”. Nevertheless, the 23 negative reviews were a relatively high number compared to the usual intake of literary criticism. According to Viehoff's investigation of the negative judgments, these were particularly often based on political, historical or religious evaluations. Konrad Farner , for example, saw “Max Frisch with his 'homo faber' in the midst of the long line of those who are only able to question human work”, other reviews criticized Faber's affirmation of the abortion. On the other hand, Walter Jens's objection , according to which the novel remained in the shadow of its predecessor Stiller , was less ideological than artistic : “In truth, 'homo faber' is nothing more than an arabesque to the great novel of 1954 - what has been done is transferred, the painting sketched again ... not always very happy, unfortunately. "

Film adaptations and dramatizations

Julie Delpy (1991), the Sabeth of the film

In 1991, Volker Schlöndorff's film was released under the title Homo Faber . The roles of Faber, Sabeth and Hannas were played by Sam Shepard , Julie Delpy and Barbara Sukowa . The film stayed close to the original in its dialogues, but made changes to the novel in details. So Faber became an American who was no longer terminally ill. The plot focused on the encounter between Faber and Sabeth. Max Frisch, who died shortly after the premiere of the film, took an active part in the filming in the months before. The film was largely rejected by the critics because it reduced the complexity of the original "to a somewhat banal love story". In 2014 Richard Dindo filmed the novel again in a mixture of documentary and feature film under the title Homo Faber (Three Women) .

The novel has been adapted for the stage several times. Stefan Pucher staged Homo faber at the Schauspielhaus Zurich in 2004 in a musical revue with six main characters. In 2006 Claudia Lowin and Christian Schlueter brought Homo faber to the Bielefeld theater laboratory, Lars Helmer to the Burghofbühne Dinslaken . In his 2007 production at the Alten Schauspielhaus Stuttgart, Volkmar Kamm split the protagonist into a reporter and an experiencer, "Homo" and "Faber". In 2008, Armin Petras staged his play Oedipus in Cuba based on Frisch's motifs at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater in Berlin . His Faber, who ends up stranded in Cuba, becomes a symbol of colonization .

literature

expenditure

  • Max Frisch: Homo faber . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1957 (first edition).
  • Max Frisch: Homo faber . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977 (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch. Volume 354), ISBN 3-518-36854-0 (the page numbers given refer to this edition).
  • Max Frisch: Homo faber. With a comment by Walter Schmitz (= Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek Volume 3). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-18803-8 .
  • Max Frisch: Homo faber. A report. With drawings by Felix Scheinberger . Gutenberg Book Guild , Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-7632-6379-0 ( images ).

Audio book

Brief orientations

Secondary literature

  • Hans Geulen : Max Frisch's "Homo faber". Studies and Interpretations. De Gruyter, Berlin 1965.
  • Manfred Jurgensen (Ed.): Materials. Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Klett, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-12-357800-3 .
  • Mona Knapp, Gerhard P. Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and thoughts Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-425-06043-0 .
  • Manfred Leber: From the modern novel to the ancient tragedy. Interpretation of Max Frisch's "Homo faber". De Gruyter, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-11-012240-5 .
  • Melanie Rohner: Confessions of color. Postcolonial perspectives on Max Frisch's “Stiller” and “Homo faber”. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8498-1063-4 .
  • Klaus Müller-Salget: Explanations and documents Max Frisch Homo faber (= RUB . No. 16064). Revised and expanded new edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008 [first edition 1987], ISBN 978-3-15-016064-0 .
  • Walter Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-518-38528-3 .
  • Walter Schmitz: Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Materials, comment. Hanser, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-446-13701-7 .

Reading aids

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 198.
  2. ↑ See section: Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 43-47.
  3. ↑ Walter Schmitz: The emergence of Homo faber . A report. In: Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. P. 74.
  4. ↑ See section: Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Homo Faber. Pp. 122-124.
  5. ↑ Walter Henze: The narrative in Max Frisch's novel "Homo faber" . In: Albrecht Schau (ed.): Max Frisch - Contributions to an impact history . Becksmann, Freiburg 1971, p. 66.
  6. ↑ The paragraph summarizes: Manfred Eisenbeis: Lektürehilfen. Max Frisch: "Homo faber" . 15th edition. Stuttgart 2003 [first edition 1987], pp. 49–51 [edition 2010, pp. 48–50.].
  7. ↑ a b c Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 199.
  8. ↑ Müller-Salget: Max Frisch . Homo Faber, p. 8.
  9. ↑ See section: Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 55-58.
  10. ↑ a b See section: Schmitz: Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Materials, comment. Pp. 24-30.
  11. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 197.
  12. ↑ Walter Schenker : Dialect and written language . In: Thomas Beckermann (Ed.): About Max Frisch I. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-518-10852-2 , pp. 295-296.
  13. ↑ a b Quoted from: Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Homo Faber. P. 139.
  14. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 22.
  15. ↑ a b c Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 91.
  16. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 44, 62-63.
  17. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. P. 44.
  18. ↑ a b Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 140.
  19. ↑ Iris Block: “That man alone is not the whole!” Attempts at human togetherness in Max Frisch's work. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-631-33454-0 , pp. 188-194.
  20. ^ Gerhard Kaiser: Max Frischs Homo faber . In: Walter Schmitz (Ed.): About Max Frisch II. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-10852-2 , pp. 277-278.
  21. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. P. 63.
  22. ↑ Ursula Haupt: Femininity in Max Frisch's novels . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-631-49387-8 , p. 79.
  23. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 44, 63.
  24. ↑ Klaus Müller-Salget: Max Frisch. Literary knowledge. Reclam, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-015210-0 , p. 106.
  25. ↑ Ursula Haupt: Femininity in Max Frisch's novels. Pp. 80-81.
  26. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 65.
  27. ↑ Mona Knapp: Modern Oedipus or Blind Adaptive? Comments on homo faber from a feminist point of view . In: Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. P. 195.
  28. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 59.
  29. ↑ See section: Pelster: Max Frisch: Homo Faber. Reading key. P. 26.
  30. ↑ Leber: From the modern novel to the ancient tragedy. Interpretation of Max Frisch's "Homo faber". Pp. 57, 123-124.
  31. ↑ a b c Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. P. 64.
  32. ↑ See section: Pelster: Max Frisch: Homo Faber. Reading key. Pp. 26-27.
  33. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 168.
  34. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 177.
  35. ↑ Lachner: Interpretation aid German: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Pp. 53-55.
  36. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 63-64, 86.
  37. ↑ a b Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 107.
  38. ↑ See section: Schmitz: Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Materials, comment. Pp. 32-48.
  39. ↑ Hans Jürg Lüthi: Max Frisch. "You shouldn't make an image". Francke, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7720-1700-2 , p. 7.
  40. ↑ Kerstin Gühne-Engelmann: The subject of the missed life in Max Frisch's prose work using the example of the novels "Stiller", "Homo faber" and "Mein Name sei Gantenbein". Dissertation, Freiburg im Breisgau 1994, pp. 144-210.
  41. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 138.
  42. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 176.
  43. ↑ See the section: Meike Wiehl: Role existence and prevented experience in Max Frisch's novel Homo faber . In: Jan Badewien, Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann (Ed.): "Every word is false and true". Max Frisch - reread. Evangelical Academy Baden, Karlsruhe 2008, ISBN 978-3-89674-557-6 , pp. 44-65.
  44. ↑ a b Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 7.
  45. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 8.
  46. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 10.
  47. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 17.
  48. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 19.
  49. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 161.
  50. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 162.
  51. ↑ See the section: Peter Pütz : The usual and the sudden. About technology and chance in Homo Faber . In: Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. Pp. 133-141.
  52. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 92.
  53. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 93.
  54. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 15.
  55. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 69.
  56. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 94.
  57. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 100.
  58. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 134.
  59. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 143.
  60. ↑ See the section: Iris Block: “That man alone is not the whole!” Attempts at human togetherness in Max Frisch's work. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-631-33454-0 , pp. 181-194.
  61. ↑ Ursula Haupt: Femininity in Max Frisch's novels. Pp. 70-71.
  62. ↑ Achim Würker: Technology as a defense. The unconscious life plans in Max Frisch's Homo faber. Nexus, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-923301-67-7 , pp. 69-77.
  63. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 132.
  64. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 148.
  65. ↑ Frederick A. Lubich: Max Frisch: "Stiller", "Homo Faber" and "My name is Gantenbein". Fink, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7705-2623-6 , p. 57.
  66. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 192.
  67. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 136.
  68. ↑ See Rhonda L. Blair: "Homo faber", "Homo ludens" and the Demeter Kore motif . In: Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. Pp. 146-159.
  69. ^ Throne Ludovisi in the Virtual Ancient Museum Göttingen (Viamus).
  70. ↑ Medusa Ludovisi in the Virtual Ancient Museum Göttingen (Viamus).
  71. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 119.
  72. ↑ See section: Walter Schmitz: Commentary . In: Frisch: Homo faber (1998), pp. 241-248.
  73. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 170.
  74. ↑ See section: Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 68-71.
  75. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch. Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , p. 121.
  76. ↑ Joachim Kaiser : Max Frisch and the novel. Consequences of an iconoclast. In: Beckermann (Ed.): About Max Frisch I. S. 47.
  77. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 175.
  78. ↑ Manfred Jurgensen : Max Frisch. The novels. Francke, Bern 1976, ISBN 3-7720-1160-8 , pp. 165-166.
  79. ↑ Schmitz: Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Materials, comment. P. 82.
  80. ↑ Frisch: Homo faber (1977), p. 181.
  81. ↑ Petersen: Max Frisch. P. 127.
  82. ↑ Erich Franzen : About Max Frisch . In: Beckermann (Ed.): About Max Frisch I. S. 76.
  83. ↑ See section: Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 65-67.
  84. ↑ Max Frisch: Montauk . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37200-9 , pp. 166-167.
  85. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 . Limmat, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-85791-286-3 , pp. 56-57.
  86. ↑ Fresh: Montauk. P. 167.
  87. ↑ Fresh: Montauk. P. 168.
  88. ↑ Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955. Pp. 72-74.
  89. ↑ See section: Schmitz: Commentary . In: Frisch: Homo faber (1998), pp. 254-258.
  90. ↑ Max Frisch: Collected works in chronological order . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, Volume II, p. 374.
  91. ↑ a b See section: Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. Pp. 16-22.
  92. ↑ Hans Mayer : Fresh and Dürrenmatt . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-22098-5 , p. 111.
  93. ↑ Schmitz: Max Frisch: "Homo faber". Materials, comment. P. 89.
  94. ↑ a b Reinhold Viehoff : Max Frisch's Homo faber in contemporary literary criticism of the late fifties. Analysis and documentation. In: Schmitz (Ed.): Frischs Homo Faber. Pp. 244-246.
  95. ↑ Schmitz: Commentary . In: Frisch: Homo faber (1998), p. 261.
  96. ↑ All quotations from Viehoff: Max Frisch's Homo faber in contemporary literary criticism of the late fifties. Analysis and documentation. P. 271.
  97. ^ Quote from Viehoff: Max Frisch's Homo faber in contemporary literary criticism of the late 1950s. Analysis and documentation. P. 282.
  98. ↑ Walter Jens : Max Frisch and the homo faber . In: Die Zeit , No. 2/1958.
  99. ↑ See section: Viehoff: Max Frischs Homo faber in contemporary literary criticism of the late fifties. Analysis and documentation. Pp. 243-289.
  100. ↑ Urs Jenny , Hellmuth Karasek : Who will be missing? In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1991, pp. 236-251 ( online - March 18, 1991 , interview with Volker Schlöndorff ).
  101. ↑ Knapp, Knapp: Max Frisch: Homo faber. Basics and Thoughts. P. 76.
  102. ↑ Barbara Villiger Heilig: New Unobjectiveness . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of December 7, 2004.
  103. ^ Oedipus in Cuba on nachtkritik.de .
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