Max Frisch
Frisch's dramas up until the early 1960s are divided by the literary commentator into three groups: (1) the early wartime pieces, (2) the poetic plays such as "" ("Don Juan oder Die Liebe zur Geometrie") and (3) the dialectical pieces. It is above all with this third group, notably the parable "The Fire Raisers" (1953), identified by Frisch as a "lesson without teaching", and with "Andorra" (1961) that Frisch enjoyed the most success. Indeed, these two are among the most successful German language plays. The writer nevertheless remained dissatisfied because he believed they had been widely misunderstood. In an interview with Heinz Ludwig Arnold Frisch vigorously rejected their allegorical approach: "I have established only that when I apply the parable format, I am obliged to deliver a message that I actually do not have". After the 1960s Frisch moved away from the theatre. His late biographical plays "" ("Biografie: Ein Spiel") and "" were apolitical but they failed to match the public success of his earlier dramas. It was only shortly before his death that Frisch returned to the stage with a more political message, with "Jonas and his Veteran", a stage version of his arresting dialogue "Switzerland without an army? A Palaver".
Max Frisch
Frisch's social criticism was particularly sharp in respect of his Swiss homeland. In a much quoted speech that he gave when accepting the 1973 he declared: "I am Swiss, not simply because I hold a Swiss passport, was born on Swiss soil etc.: But I am Swiss by quasi-religious confession." There followed a qualification: "Your homeland is not merely defined as a comfort or a convenience. 'Homeland' means more than that". Frisch's very public verbal assaults on the land of his birth, on the country's public image of itself and on the unique international role of Switzerland emerged in his polemical, "Achtung: Die Schweiz", and extended to a work titled, "Wilhelm Tell für die Schule" ("William Tell for Schools") which sought to deconstruct the defining epic of the nation, reducing the William Tell legend to a succession of coincidences, miscalculations, dead-ends and opportunistic gambits. With his "" ("Dienstbüchlein") (1974) Frisch revisited and re-evaluated his own period of service in the nation's citizen army, and shortly before he died he went so far as to question outright the need for the army in "Switzerland without an Army? A Palaver".