4 - From His Point of View: Max Frisch's Mein Name sei Gantenbein

Summary

MORE THAN ANY OTHER GERMAN-LANGUAGE WRITER of the 1950s and 1960s, the Swiss writer Max Frisch is identified with the representation of the problems of masculine identity in the period of societal restoration following the end of the Second World War. His reputation in this respect is based above all on three prose works: Stiller (1954), Homo faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964). The subject of this chapter is the last and, in terms of its narrative structure, most complex of these works, read both on its own terms and as a partner-text to Bachmann's Malina for its illumination from the alternative perspective of the male writer of issues of subjectivity and gender in the postwar period.

Malina and Gantenbein: An Established Pairing

A shared history links the composition of Bachmann's Malina to Frisch's Mein Name sei Gantenbein (literally, Let my Name be Gantenbein), so that coming to Frisch's chronologically earlier novel after the consideration of Bachmann's not only enables a contrastive examination of differing gender perspectives on questions of subjectivity, but also adds a further layer to the reading of Malina given in the previous chapter. In 1974, almost immediately after Bachmann's death, Lore Toman published a short article in which she proposed that the two novels were to be seen as “two sides of the same life.” The basis for her claim was the perceived connection to the intimate personal relationship between Bachmann and Frisch that began in 1958 and ended, with a great deal of injury on both sides, in 1962.