SOURCE: White, Alfred D. “Max Frisch Revisited: Blaubart. Monatshefte 78, no. 4 (winter 1986): 456-67.

In the following essay, White discusses the major thematic and stylistic elements of Blaubart.

Frisch's Blaubart, Eine Erzählung was written in 1981. Interviewing Frisch for his seventieth birthday, Peter Wapnewski found him unenthusiastically at work on what is then described as a novel (the finished work is under 40,000 words).¹ In November Frisch read from the manuscript at a symposium in Graz.² From 22 February to 17 March 1982 Blaubart was serialized in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung before publication in book form.

Blaubart is based on an authentic Zürich Schwurgericht case.³ A doctor, Felix Schaad, several times divorced, has been accused of the murder of one of his ex-wives, Rosalinde Zogg, but acquitted, as the evidence is entirely circumstantial. At the outset he wrestles with the problem of his “Freispruch mangels Beweis” (8).⁴ It later appears he never heard this...