‘Scene 3: 4–5 Petrol drums (with etiquette), cleaning waste, notebook (policeman), briefcase, wristwatch (Biedermann to wear).’

The Volksteater was a non-profit, independent organization that nevertheless shared many of the apartheid government’s ideals. Founded in 1935 with the name ‘Ons Teatertjie-toneelgroep’, the collective known from 1937 as Volksteater was aimed self-consciously at developing an Afrikaans theatre in the service of the Afrikaner volk.5 See Binge, Ontwikkeling van die Afrikaanse toneel, 188. To this end, it took a leading role during the Afrikaner nationalist celebrations in 1938, staging full-length productions and re-enacting historical scenes that would later be depicted on the walls of the Voortrekker monument. Its co-founder and leading figure during its early years was Anna Neethling-Pohl, an actress and director committed to using her talent ‘in the service of her own population group’ and believing in theatre as a powerful tool ‘to reach the soul of the volk’.6 ‘in diens van haar eie volksgroep’, ‘om die volksiel te bereik’. Ibid., 203.

By the time they crossed paths with Schiess, they had been somewhat eclipsed by the NTO, the first government-funded theatre organization that Neethling-Pohl herself had been instrumental in establishing. Yet of the many amateur organizations active in the Transvaal in 1962, the Volksteater remained the most respected. By then they had staged over 100 productions. Many had been original Afrikaans plays, though many had been translations, as was their very first play, an Afrikaans version of Ibsen’s Bygmester Solness.7 See Ludwig Binge, ‘Pretoria se Volksteater – ’n bittersoet geskiedenis’, Die Huisgenoot, January 13, 1961, 30–3.

Schiess directed in Afrikaans and had evidently picked up the language very quickly. But he didn’t do any translating himself. Instead, the Volksteater commissioned translations of whatever Schiess wanted to direct. For Biedermann und die Brandstifter, they approached Rita Elferink (née Van der Merwe) and Marie van der Merwe (née Olivier).

Elferink was born in the small South African town of Ceres in 1910. Having studied archaeology, art, and theatre in Amsterdam, she settled in Johannesburg where she worked as a journalist and theatre critic. In 1959 Elferink joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) where she worked as a translator and as a presenter for the foreign service, translating a great many European plays, including French, German, Swiss, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. A glance at Elferink’s personal letters reveals that she was especially well connected in the South African arts scene.8 Elferink’s letters are housed in the Stellenbosch University Library Document Centre in the Rita Elferink Collection, MS334. Not only was she friends with prominent Afrikaans writers such as Elisabeth Eybers and N. P. van Wyk Louw, but she also corresponded with the celebrated artists Pierneef and Bettie Cilliers-Barnard.

Born in 1915 on a farm near Oudtshoorn in South Africa’s Klein Karoo region, Van der Merwe was similarly embedded in the Afrikaans literary scene. Besides N. P. van Wyk Louw, she counted the writers G. A. Watermeyer and S. J. Pretorious as her friends. Van der Merwe joined the SABC as a secretary in 1938 already, during what she describes as ‘a time of cultural awakening for the Afrikaner’.9 ‘’n tyd van kultuur bewuswording van die Afrikaner’. Marie van der Merwe, ‘Marie van der Merwe se notas oor haar betrokkenheid by die SAUK’, n.d., manuscript, private collection. There she met her future husband, Fritz van der Merwe, a prolific translator who, she wrote, brought European literature into the living room of the average Afrikaner by way of the radio.10 Ibid. Later, she began to translate as well, working for a short stint as a theatre translator at the SABC before she became the secretary to its head, Piet Meyer, a post she held for nineteen years. During this time, she also wrote and published a historical novel, Die offers van ’n erfenis.

Elferink and Van der Merwe knew each other through their work at the SABC, South Africa’s public broadcaster since its founding in 1936. A radio service until the introduction of television in 1976, it was a powerful tool of the apartheid government, instrumental in disseminating state ideology and shaping public attitudes towards race relations.11 See Charles Hamm, ‘“The constant companion of man”: Separate development, Radio Bantu and music’, Popular Music 10, no.2 (1991): 147–73; see also Marlene M. Breytenbach, ‘The manipulation of public opinion by state censorship of the media in South Africa (1974–1994)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, 1997). That two employees of the SABC were approached by the Volksteater to translate a Swiss play (one that – as I argue here – had enormous potential to challenge average Afrikaner audiences), points not to sudden ideological changes within these organizations. Rather, it shows the premium placed on European literature at the time and, in particular, on European literature in Afrikaans, and its perceived contributions to the broader project of Afrikaner nationalism.

Reading Biedermann through the lens of apartheid South Africa means looking closely at Elferink and Van der Merwe’s Afrikaans translation, which in turn means keeping Schiess in the foreground. After all, in 1963 he would write to Suzanne Czech of the International Copyright Bureau, who handled the translation rights, that ‘I always produce from the German version and change the translation during production if it does not agree’.12 Mario Schiess to Dr S. Czech, correspondence, 4 November 1963, private collection.

A glance at the programme confirms that, following in the tradition of translations staged by the Volksteater, Die Brandstigters retained the original names of the characters. Yet this was a decision reached only after the initial translation had been made. Rendered in the typed script as ‘Meneer Alleman’ (an Afrikaans equivalent to Biedermann, literally ‘Mr Everyman’), handwritten corrections confirm that it was translated back to Biedermann.13 Max Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, trans. Rita Elferink and Marie van der Merwe, n.d., manuscript, private collection.

Yet it is debatable how truly foreignizing this decision turned out to be. Back in 1940 the Volksteater had staged an Afrikaans translation by F. V. Lategan of William Butler Yeats’s The Land of Heart’s Desire. Produced as Moeder Ierland, that translation, too, had pursued a foreignizing strategy that tried to keep the play in its country of origin by retaining place and character names. Yet, in response, one reviewer complained that it wasn’t the Irish who were presented on stage, but merely ‘onwaarskynlike Afrikaners’, ‘unlikely Afrikaners’.14 In Binge, Ontwikkeling van die Afrikaanse toneel, 223. This anecdote serves as a reminder that no translation can capture a text in all its foreignness; that the very act of translation into Afrikaans transplants a story onto South African soil.

Despite retaining the name ‘Biedermann’, Elferink and Van der Merwe pursued a broad domesticating strategy that allowed them to present the play’s characters and dialogue in such a way that a local audience could understand and relate to them. This included finding idiomatic Afrikaans expressions for the German equivalents – ‘aber schließlich und endlich’ (‘but finally and in the end’) rendered as ‘per slot van rekening’ (‘at the close of account’), ‘Holzwolle ist doch keine Sache’ (‘Wood shavings aren’t an issue, after all’) as ‘Houtwol is tog maklik te bekom’ (‘Wood shavings are easy to find, after all’) and so forth.15 Frisch, Stücke 2, 114, 129; Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, scene 2:11, scene 3:27. Domestic equivalents for German concepts and expressions were also found, such as substituting ‘suuruitjies’ (‘sour onions’) for ‘Gurken’ (‘pickles’).16 Frisch, Stücke 2, 94; Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, scene 1:5.

Some of these choices betray the inscription of the domestic context of Afrikaner Christian Nationalism. ‘Herrgott nochmal’ (literally ‘dear God, again’, equivalent of ‘for God’s sake’) is translated first as ‘bliksems’ (a pejorative, literally ‘lightnings’), then crossed out and retranslated as ‘vervlaks’ (equivalent to ‘blasted’), each of these representing a softening of the expression, and neither of which evokes a religious context.17 Frisch, Stücke 2, 99, Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, scene 1:9. When Biedermann admits that his hair lotion is useless and that his clients could just as well put their own urine on their hair, a cut-off line rendered in the German as ‘könnten ebensogut ihren eigenen Harn –’, the Afrikaans script omits the indelicacy entirely, replacing ‘Harn’ (‘urine’) with its near-homophone ‘haar’ (‘hair’) and opting for ‘kan net so goed hulle eie haar …’.18 Frisch, Stücke 2, 104; Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, scene 2:2.

Schiess was against these attempts at sanitizing Frisch. In his memoirs he reflects on the problems he encountered with the Volksteater committee regarding these few indelicacies. ‘I fought valiantly for a bit of dirt in the text, true to the original,’ he writes.19 Schiess, ‘Chronicle’, 34–5. ‘I didn’t get far in my theorising on the subject with the good ladies but we eventually reached a compromise going to the very edge of the acceptable for them and too inexpressive for me.’

Yet it was the play’s ‘Nachspiel’ that had most potential to offend audiences, and while most of that potential survived, the Afrikaans ‘Epiloog’ also contains adjustments made for their benefit. ‘Der Herr der Unterwelt’ (‘the lord of the Underworld’) is translated as the ‘die Bestuurder van die Onderwêreld’ (‘the manager of the Underworld’), and ‘Gott’ (‘God’) as ‘die Opperwese’ (‘the Supreme Being’), linguistic deflections around the fact that God and the Devil are here being portrayed and mocked on the Afrikaans stage.20 Frisch, Stücke 2, 331, 327; Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, epilogue, 8, 4. Not too much, mind. In the Afrikaans script, the German line, ‘niemand weiß, wo Gott wohnt’ (‘no-one knows where God lives’) was first translated as ‘niemand weet eintlik presies waar die Opperwese is nie’ (‘no-one knows exactly where the Supreme Being is’), then placed in brackets, then crossed out.21 Frisch, Stücke 2, 327; Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, epilogue, 4.

Yet for all this domesticating, there is one part of Frisch’s original play to which the Afrikaans stays particularly faithful, namely his chorus of firemen. Having drawn inspiration via Bertolt Brecht from the ancient Greek chorus, Frisch wrote their lines in unrhymed dactylic verse. This is an alienation effect that establishes the Firemen as external observers. Their dialogue is written in an awkward syntax with numerous ungainly compound words – ‘Städtevernichtendes’ (‘city-destroying’), ‘Ohnmächtig-wachsam’ (‘helpless-alert’), ‘Feuerwehrgleich’ (‘fire brigade-like’), ‘nimmerzulöschende’ (‘never-to-be-extinguished’) – in contrast with the more colloquial expressions of the other characters.22 Frisch, Stücke 2, 89, 121, 156. This is a playful nod towards, and a parody of, the Classical Greek chorus. Frisch’s chorus differs from its forerunner in a number of ways, the most important of which is its insistence that fate is really human stupidity and, therefore, entirely avoidable.

The translation imitates Frisch’s chorus closely, facilitated by the fact that Afrikaans and German are a close language pair. The Afrikaans attempt at dactylic verse likewise results in an uncomfortable syntax, while the imitation of compound words – ‘stedevernietigend’ (‘city-destroying’), ‘onmagtig-waaksaam’ (‘powerless-alert’), ‘brandweer ten spyt’ (‘fire brigade notwithstanding’, a mistranslation of Frisch’s ‘Feuerwehrgleich’), ‘nimmergeblusde’ (‘never-extinguished’) – makes the Afrikaans chorus difficult to comprehend.23 Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, 1, scene 3:18, scene 6:52. Yet even this attempt at foreignization doesn’t escape the inscription of the domestic.

Establishing themselves as the tireless all-seeing guardians of the city, Die Brandstigters’s firemen underline exactly how flammable the present situation is: ‘Kyk ons, hoor ons,/ Dat ons geheime ontdek/ voor dit te laat om te blus is/ vuur wat gevaarlik is’ (‘We watch, we listen/ That we can discover secrets/ before it’s too late to put out/ fire that is dangerous’).24 Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, 1. Despite the occasional mention of modern concepts such as a telephone and petrol, there is something decidedly anti-modern about them. To my ear their chanted Afrikaans lines evoke legalese, officialdom, bureaucracy – in short, the unwieldy language of the state. The specific connotation that comes to mind is that of the omnipresent security police, a powerful force wielded by the apartheid government.

Particularly after the Sabotage Act of 1962 was passed, the Special Branch, as they were officially known, had wide-ranging powers to seek out, search and detain suspected opponents of the apartheid regime. And it wasn’t just suspected armed revolutionaries who were its targets; playwrights and directors were also among them. Fugard, for example, recalls several occasions when he and his family were woken in the middle of the night to a loud hammering at their door. What followed was an interrogation and a search of their home – an attempt to ferret out flammable secrets before it was too late.

But the vast majority of white South Africans had nothing to fear from the security police. Just as the ordinary citizens pay the salaries of Frisch’s firemen, ‘vriendelike burgers’ (‘friendly citizens’) towards whom the firemen are ‘vriendelik gesind’ (‘friendly minded’), most white South Africans – blind to the interrogations and beatings meted out behind closed doors at security headquarters – were grateful for their vigilance.25 Ibid.

Frisch’s chorus is impotent unless called upon to act by the citizens that they serve. But this is only an apparent contradiction with the powers of the security police, who relied heavily on informers to alert them to potential seditious activity. And so the line, ‘Elke man weet, dat ons daar is, en weet: HY kan ons roep’ (‘Every man knows, that we are there, and knows, HE can call us’), rings out ominously at the close of the first act.26 Frisch, ‘Jan Alleman’, scene 2:208.