In his legendary “Questionnaire” from 1966, the author Max Frisch asked this question: “If you meet a person in their swimming trunks and don’t know anything about their living conditions, how do you recognize the rich?” A popular parlor game is to get answers to Frisch’s question collect. It is noticeable that the actually obvious idea that one cannot look at a naked body whether a person is rich or poor is hardly considered by anyone. Instead, there are assumptions about a “well-groomed and lifted body” that allow conclusions to be drawn about the wealth of women and men. Others claim to have noticed the “yacht key on the wrist” as an indicator of wealth. Still others think that the swimwear man must be misanthropic, bad-tempered, because “people who have money always complain”.
Last week we were in an outdoor pool again for ages. What else are you supposed to do in the heat? The pool is called “Rheinuferpark” and is located in Gailingen on the High Rhine, roughly halfway between Lake Constance and Schaffhausen. The opposite side of the Rhine in Diessenhofen belongs to Switzerland; there is also an outdoor pool called “Rhybadi”. Everything is top-notch in the two lidos: clean changing rooms and sanitary facilities, playgrounds and paddling pools for the little ones, plus a shady beer garden. Because the High Rhine has a good current, you just have to let yourself drift downstream with light swimming movements. A blast, almost effortless. Entrance fees are not required in the Rheinuferpark, which was laid out so nicely just ten years ago. We were guests of the commune, so to speak – very generous, I thought. Thank you at this point.
Frisch knew about bathing establishments
Such a bathing afternoon awakens youthful memories of the Stuttgart Inselbad. Images, sounds, smells: the exuberant screaming of the children or the splashing after jumping from the five-man tower. The chlorine water, the fries, the “Fürst Pückler ice cream” – and the curious looks of the girls who didn’t want to cross my eyes. Back then, the beauty of young bodies did not need to be covered with tattoos.
The swimming pool has always been a place of longing. Classes and occupational groups mixed there, cultural milieus and social circles crossed, noted the philosopher Siegfried Kracauer in October 1932. The “similar clothing” reinforces the impression of “homogeneity”. In the bathing establishment, no one can “immediately guess that the guests come from all sorts of classes and parties, no one can tell the student from the worker at first or second glance”. An intimate anonymity allows “to be able to observe each other extensively”.
Incidentally, Max Frisch was familiar with bathing establishments. In his first job as an architect, he built the Letzigraben outdoor pool in Zurich from 1947 to 1949. I don’t think that Kracauer’s utopia of the “classless bathing society” would have convinced him. At the same time, Frisch didn’t even know about the reports of violent attacks in German multicultural baths. News of fights and attacks against lifeguards meanwhile call private security services to the scene. I imagine classless communism differently.
