The Visit of the Old Lady [1]
Friedrich Dürrenmatt [2]
Summary
The billionaire Clair Zachanassian comes to the impoverished and tumbledown small town Güllen, where she spent her childhood as Klara Wäscher. At that time Güllen resident Alfred III did not recognize their mutual child and bribed two witnesses, to deny his fatherhood. The child died, Clare had to abandon the Güllen and serve as prostitute for living, until she is rich with changing husbands. Now she demands justice and makes the Güllen residents an immoral offer. She offers the city a billion million for the head of Alfed III. At first of all residents reject the offer outrageously, but soon they begin to spend money which they actually do not have. In the community meetings it is argued, it is not for money, but for justice, and people hold a joined decision.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt [2]
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921 in a small place in Emmental [3]. His father, a protestant paster moved to Bern with his family in 1935, where he first studied literature and art history and later philosophy. In 1946, Dürrenmatt married the actress Lotti Geissler, with whom he had three children. Dürrenmatt’s plays, detective novels and radio plays deal primarily with the post-war period, with Swiss neutrality and the question of how man should live correctly.
[1]. Translated by me from: p. 341. Der Besuch der alten Dame. Stationen. Ein Kursbuch für die Mittelstufe. 3rd Edition. Prisca Augustyn & Nikolaus Euba. Cengage Learning. USA. 2015
[2]. Friedrich Dürrenmatt. p. 340. Ibid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_D%C3%BCrrenmatt
About The visit of the old lady
The film trailer (Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn):
Film in German:
[3]. Emmental. A valley in west-central Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmental
