Biedermann und die Brandstifter

Gottlieb Biedermann, successful factory owner and archetype of the well-to-do and complacent citizen, is concerned about the arson attacks reported in the newspapers. Nevertheless, despite his wife’s reservations, he lets two strangers into his house. After all, a little trust never harmed anyone! One morning, however, he discovers that his guests have been hoarding petrol drums, explosive fuses and all kinds of incendiary equipment in his attic. Biedermann tries to ignore the more than obvious warning signs that the two men are arsonists and instead invites them to dinner in the hope that if he makes friends with them, he will be safe from their machinations.

Why Biedermann fails to recognise the threat either at the beginning or later in the play, or more precisely, why he is not prepared to recognise it – why he deceives himself and forces himself to be tolerant – these are the central questions of Frisch’s »morality play without a moral«. Yet it’s precisely because the danger is so self-evident and the end foreseeable that this absurd parable can unfold in such a virtuosic and tragicomic way – right to the bitter end, when the landlord, merely to exonerate himself from the charge of mistrustfulness, even hands the arsonists the matches they then use to set fire to his house as well as all the houses in the neighbourhood.

Biedermann und die Brandstifter illustrates the dangers of looking the other way and ignoring extreme ideologies and threats. Frisch wrote this comedy in the 1950s with the Second World War fresh in his memory and the rearmament of West Germany before his eyes. It reminds us that it’s important to take action and assume responsibility instead of passively hoping that a crisis situation will get better on its own. It calls on us to think critically and to recognise the signs of the times before it’s too late.

Max Frisch, born in Zurich on 15 May 1911, initially worked as a journalist, later as an architect, until his breakthrough as a writer came with his novel Stiller (1954). This was followed by the novels Homo Faber (1957) and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964) well as short stories, diaries, theatre plays, radio plays and essays. Frisch died in Zurich on 4 April 1991.