Die Physiker by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Dr Miss Mathilde von Zahnd runs one of the most renowned, and one of the most expensive, private psychiatric clinics in all of Switzerland. The enormous fees paid by the rich clientele — in the stage notes before the play proper, Dürrenmatt speaks of moronic millionaires, schizophrenic authors, arteriosclerotic politicians — have enabled most of the patients to move into a new building overlooking a lake in the midst of idyllic grounds that surround the von Zahnd family’s former summer villa. The villa was the first home of the clinic, and the renovation was not always architecturally kind. In the salon where the play’s action takes place the walls up to head level have been covered with institutional paint; above the original detailing remains including some remaining stucco work. Only three patients remain in the villa: one who thinks he is Sir Isaac Newtown, one who thinks he is Albert Einstein, and Johann Wilhelm Möbius, also a physicist. Unfortunately, one of the patients — the one who thinks he is Einstein — has just strangled one of the nurses. Even more unfortunately, this comes mere weeks after Newton also strangled a nurse.

The play begins with the police inspector Robert Voß taking statements from head nurse Marta Boll. That The Physicians will be a comedy, however dark, becomes apparent early on. Voß recounts the earlier killing and ventures the opinion that it would never have happened with male attendants.

Head Nurse: You believe that? Nurse Dorothea Moser [the first victim] was a member of the Women’s Wrestling Club and Nurse Irene Straub [the victim whose body is still on stage] was state champion of the national judo club.
Inspector: And you?
Head Nurse: I lift weights.
Inspector: Can I now see the murderer —
Head Nurse: Please, Herr Inspector
Inspector: The perpetrator?
Head Nurse: He’s playing the violin.
Inspector: What do you mean, he’s playing the violin?
Head Nurse: You can hear it.
Inspector: Then he should stop. [Head Nurse does not react] I have to question him.
Head Nurse: Can’t do that.
Inspector: Why can’t I do that?
Head Nurse: We can’t allow that for medical reasons. Herr Ernesti must play the violin now.
Inspector: The guy strangled a nurse after all!
Head Nurse: Herr Inspector. It is not a matter of a guy, but about an ill person who has to calm himself. And because he thinks he is Einstein, the only way that he can calm himself is to play the violin.
Inspector: Am I the crazy one here?

Soon the audience sees the first of the physicists, as the stage directions relate, “Out of room number 3 comes Herbert Georg Beutler in the costume of the early eighteenth century, with wig.” In writing the lines, though, Dürrenmatt does not call the character Beutler, but Newton.

Newton: Sir Isaac Newton.
Inspector: Criminal Inspector Richard Voß. [He remains seated.]
Newton: My pleasure. Very much my pleasure. I heard commotion, groaning, a death rattle, then people coming and going. May I ask what is going on here?
Inspector: Nurse Irene Straub was strangled.
Newton: The state champion in the national judo club?
Inspector: The state champion.
Newton: Terrible.
Inspector: By Ernst Heinrich Ernesti.
Newton: But he’s playing violin.
Inspector: He has to calm himself.

The inspector is already taking up the words that he had barely believed earlier in the scene; the roles of the people inside and outside the asylum are starting to merge into one another. Dürrenmatt plays with those blurring distinctions throughout the play, with characters picking up phrases from one another, and reversals of positions sending the action careening off into new directions.

The Physicists sends up many aspects of mid-century Swiss society. The director of the institute is straightforward about how she has used her wealth and privilege as the last descendant of a locally prominent family to build up a private realm where she rules absolutely. At the same time, she is routinely addressed as “Fräulein Doctor” — “Miss Doctor” — even though she is well into middle age and a highly regarded psychiatric practitioner. Without marriage to a man, in the prevailing view of the time, she would always be addressed (at least in part) like a little girl. Eventually Möbius’ ex-wife shows up and describes their early life together, as well as all the sacrifices she made to keep paying the institute’s fees. Her narrative shows the narrow confines of an academic’s expected life and behavior, and again points out the prevailing role of money even in the matter of medicine.

The conversations that the patients have when they claim to be Einstein and Newton are absurd (and funny), and then Dürrenmatt raises the level by appearing to have them set aside their delusions and claim to be representatives of opposing political systems. These systems are never named, but given that the play premiered in 1960 it’s easy to identify them as the Eastern and Western blocs of the Cold War. Because they are not identified, readers might think that the two are equivalent, which might have been an easier argument to make at the time than after one of the systems collapsed because the people living under it had had enough.

The later parts of the play are concerned with the role of physicists in creating the threat of a war that would end civilization. Möbius is portrayed as the greatest of all physicists, one who completes Einstein’s quest for a unified field theory and also solves problems associated with gravitation. Control of gravity and provision of unlimited energy are direct consequences of his theories, with weapons to match. Fearing what unleashing that knowledge would do to the world, Möbius has hidden himself away in an insane asylum, thereby keeping humanity safe. At least if what the three mental patients say is true. Though this makes for compelling drama and dark humor in Dürrenmatt’s play, I don’t think it fits well with the actual practice of nuclear physics. Richard Rhodes provides a more compelling vision of how the secrets of the atom were discovered, and how the immense power there was unleashed. As Rhodes puts it in his introduction to The Making of the Atomic Bomb, “Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might have hidden from the politicians and the generals. To the contrary, here was a new insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coax forth.”

As a dark comedy, The Physicists is terrific. The characters, the reversals, the escalation — they all add up to a satisfying piece of theater, and the ending is a suitable coda to the action. It’s an interesting place to start, or to keep, thinking about the mutual responsibilities between society and scientific practice. It’s often taught in schools in the German-speaking countries for these reasons. It’s definitely not the last word on the subject.

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The Physicists is in the canon of modern German theater, and I would certainly enjoy seeing a production. It was translated into English in 1964 by James Kirkup and is still performed periodically.