The daily journal of a giant of German literature, touching subjects
ranging from everyday life to the political and social conditions in
East Germany as viewed from West Berlin.
Max Frisch (1911-91) was a giant of twentieth-century German literature.
When Frisch moved into a new apartment in Berlin's Sarrazinstrasse, he
began keeping a journal, which he came to call the Berlin Journal. A
few years later, he emphasized in an interview that this was by no means
a "scribbling book," but rather a book "fully composed." The journal is
one of the great treasures of Frisch's literary estate, but the author
imposed a retention period of twenty years from the date of his death
because of the "private things" he noted in it. From the Berlin
Journal now marks the first publication of excerpts from Frisch's
journal. Here, the unmistakable Frisch is back, full of doubt, with no
illusions, and with a playfully sharp eye for the world.
From the Berlin Journal pulls from the years 1946-49 and 1966-71.
Observations about the writer's everyday life stand alongside narrative
and essayistic texts, as well as finely-drawn portraits of colleagues
like Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson, Wolf Biermann, and Christa Wolf, among
others. Its foremost quality, though, is the extraordinary acuity with
which Frisch observed political and social conditions in East Germany
while living in West Berlin.
