‘Scene 6: Left overs of goose, candelabras etc., as for scene 5, Dr Phil’s card, cigars, coffee service, document, matches.’

Little reception history has survived. The reviewer for the Pretoria News called Die Brandstigters ‘political satire’ but felt that ‘the cast too often played for laughs, the satire – and biting satire it often is – losing force in becoming too blatant farce’.3 P. A. K., ‘Fire-Raisers raise a laugh’, Pretoria News, 12 October 1962. Die Vaderland picked up on the same theme, but instead of blaming the actors, found fault with the work itself, finally raising the question, ‘of is dit die vertaling?’ (‘or is it the translation?’).4 R., ‘Aanval op die skynheiliges onder ons’, Die Vaderland, 12 October 1962. But it also called it an attack on hypocrisy and on the unjust in society who insist on maintaining their innocence. One of the Afrikaans newspapers commented: ‘Die Brandstigters doesn’t digest easily, in spite of the comical. Because it remains a serious work, an attack, really, on ourselves, on the way in which we practise our religion – you can’t help but think.’5 ‘Die Brandstigters verteer nie maklik nie, ten spyte van die komiese. Want dit bly ’n ernstige werk, ’n aanval eintlik op onsself, op die manier waarop ons ons godsdiens beoefen – mens kan nie help om na te dink nie.’ Ibid.

Schiess responded to this criticism in an essay entitled ‘The Satire on the Stage’.6 Mario Schiess, ‘The Satire on the Stage’, n.d., manuscript, private collection. This essay was found among Schiess’s papers and it is not known whether it was published in the press, as he had clearly intended. Referring to Dürrenmatt’s writings on the subject, he underlined the power of comedy to create a collective that can be ‘attacked, seduced, tricked into listening to things which it would not listen to under different circumstances’, concluding that ‘the message of the play is clear, so clear that no amount of laughter can obscure it’. Despite his convincing argument, the criticism he received was most likely valid. After all, staging a comedy is not the same thing as playing for laughs: an audience can be seduced by the humorous without being told that it’s funny.

But there is evidence that audiences appreciated the ideas behind the farcical, and that they rose to the occasion of participating in the play’s meaning-making. Another Afrikaans critic wrote: ‘Even after the actors have partially filled in the lines between this think-together piece, more than enough room remains for drawing one’s own conclusions.’7 ‘Selfs nadat die spelers die ruimte tussen die reëls van hierdie saamdink-stuk gedeeltelik ingevul het, is daar nog oorgenoeg plek vir eie gevolktrekkinge.’ L. W. B., ‘“Brandstigters” knap gespeel in Afrikaans’, Die Vaderland, n.d.

The clearest indication of this comes from Schiess himself. Explaining in his letter to Frisch how rare it was to find theatre in South Africa concerned with ‘a real-life problem’, he conceded that it was the irreverent ‘Nachspiel’ that had caused the most controversy.8 ‘einem Problem des tatsächlichen Lebens’. Schiess to Frisch, circa 1963. ‘It made many people stop and think’, he wrote, and was still the subject of heated conversations three months later.9 ‘viele hat es zum Nachdenken angeregt’. Ibid. ‘But what was particularly astonishing’, he continued, ‘is that suddenly, the silent, shrugging, lychee-chewing young Afrikaners were transformed into serious discussion partners. For example, in an office where one of the actors works, religion was discussed for four solid hours on the day after the performance. This is a truly astonishing event!’10 ‘Was aber besonders erstaunlich war ist dass sich plötzlich die schweigsamen, achselzuckenden, Lischee-kauenden jungen Afrikaner in ernste Diskussionspartner verwandelten. So z.b. wurde am Tag nach der Aufführung in einem Bureau, in dem einer der Schauspieler arbeitet, geschlagene vier Stunden über Religion diskutiert. Das ist ein ganz erstaunliches Ereignis!’ Ibid.

Yet for all this, Schiess had in his programme notes defended the play’s suitability for local audiences by stressing its compatibility with Afrikaner values of the 1960s.11 Programme for Die Brandstigters. He also defended it from a reading not dissimilar to my own, claiming that his German production had erroneously been read as anti-bourgeois and pro-communist. He even defended the ‘Nachspiel’ from an anti-religious charge, reframing it as an attack on false Christians like Biedermann. Approached in this manner’, Schiess concluded, ‘the contentious Epilogue becomes a religious piece that asks critical questions and offers a highly moral answer which rhymes fundamentally with our religious understanding.’12 ‘Op hierdie manier benader, word die omstrede Epiloog ‘n godsdienstige stuk wat lewensbelangrike vrae stel en ’n hoogs sedelike antwoord daarop gee wat wesentlik te rym is met ons godsdienstige opvattings.’ Ibid.

This reads almost as a disavowal of any uncomfortable questions its audience may have been left with. But Schiess was not a religious man. Having married his wife in an Anglican ceremony, he had refused to kneel during mass. And, as his daughter Michèle explains: ‘He was a spiritual person, and he didn’t mind us being religious. But he was quite, sort of, you know, when given the chance, he would be irreverent.’13 Michèle Schiess, author interview, 9 June 2024. Instead, Schiess’s comments were most likely strategic – enabling him to stage the play in the first place, and this in Afrikaans, despite the potential meanings that hovered barely beneath the surface. Here we have the first example of many where ‘ambiguity’ enabled a provocative play to be staged in the suffocating environment of apartheid South Africa.

From the perspective of organizations like the Volksteater, Die Brandstigters merely joined other translations of continental theatre in the service of the development of Afrikaans literature and culture. ‘Culture’ had, after all, long been co-opted as a barometer of civilization, considered crucial to the survivor of the white minority at the tip of Africa.

The connection between culture and civilization is intimated in Biedermann und die Brandstifter itself when one of the arsonists protests: ‘Woher soll unsereiner ein Benehmen haben! Hungern und frieren, Madame, das macht mir nichts, aber – keine Bildung, Madame, kein Benehmen, Madame, keine Kultur …’ (‘From whence should we have manners? Starving and freezing, Madame, I can handle that, but – no education, Madame, no culture …’).14 Frisch, Stücke 2, 108. The Afrikaans translation renders ‘Bildung’ as ‘ontwikkeling’, ‘development’, a word that jumps out as a key term in lexicon of apartheid, which itself was sometimes euphemised as ‘afsonderlike ontwikkeling’ or ‘separate development’.

Yet the idea that Frisch develops in his sketchbook is that culture does not guarantee civilized behaviour. To the contrary, it is but a poor alibi for the barbarous. Referring to the events of the Second World War and the atrocities committed under Nazi rule, he points out that ‘people imbued with this sort of culture, connoisseurs who can converse intelligently and reverently about Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruckner, can equally well turn out to be butchers; both beneath the same skin. […] Culture in this sense is a false deity which, while apparently content with our artistic or scientific offerings, drinks the blood of our brothers behind our backs. Culture as a form of moral schizophrenia – and this, in our era, is in fact its usual form.’15 Frisch, Sketchbook, 230–1. Frisch wrote these words in November 1948 at the dawn of formal apartheid, not intimating that they would eventually be applicable to twentieth-century South Africa as well, nor that his own plays would one day resonate so powerfully there.

Biedermann und die Brandstifter was the first of a series of Swiss plays that Schiess would stage in Afrikaans translation with the Volksteater in the 1960s. That is, until Schiess’s ‘problem plays’ became rather too problematic for the Afrikaans theatre establishment in Pretoria, and for the Volksteater itself.