At least since publication in 1989 of Monika Albrecht's meticulously documented study, andere Seite: Zur Bedeutung von Werk und Person Max Frischs in Ingeborg Bachmanns Todesarten, reading Malina as Bachmann's targeted response to Mein Name set Gantenbein has been well established. Bachmann, so conventional wisdom goes, recognized herself all too clearly in figure of Lila Gantenbein and was deeply offended by Frisch's indiscreet exploitation of their relationship-they lived together on and off from 1958 to 1963-as literarisches Material.2 She wielded her revenge in form of her own roman a clef in which Frisch appears camouflaged as Ivan. Indeed, entire Todesanen project may be read as Bachmann's coming to terms with Max Frisch both personally and professionally, her planned trilogy (Malina, Das Buck Franza, and Requiem fur Fanny Goldmann) conceived as countertexts to Frisch's own (Stiller, Homo faber, and Mein Name Gantenbein).3 In her monumental study on Bachmann, Sigrid Weigel has recently challenged this view. Dismissing Frisch's incorporation of his affair with Bachmann into Gantenbein and Bachmann's embittered, vengeful response to it in Malina as no more than a rumor (337), she posits that it rather with Paul Celan's poetic work that Bachmann enters into a cryptogrammic intertextual dialogue (411). And while Weigel careful to emphasize that character of is not Celan -[d]ie Bedeutung Celans fur Malina ist nun keineswegs so zu verstehen, dass Celan sei (emphasis Weigel, 417)-her very juxtaposition of their assonant names (Ivan/Celan) more or less forces equation. She qualifies her claim by localizing Bachmann/Celan correspondences in what she calls eine Form Sprachmagie: Es sind weniger Motive oder Themen, eher einzelne Worter, sprachliche Bilder oder Schriftbilder, die zwischen der Lyrik Celans und Bachmanns kursieren (426). This she substantiates with a four-page list of lyrical allusions in Malina to Celan's poetry (420-23), most from twenty-eight poems Celan had personally dedicated to Bachmann, and most contained in fairy tale Die Geheimnisse der Prinzessin von Kagran embedded into first chapter of her novel. Yet either/or question of whether Max Frisch or Paul Celan served as a model for Ivan-however disguised or artistically sublimated-belies long recognized polyphonic complexity of Malina. No doubt both men, and other men, meld into a composite much like catchall figure of Hans, Ungeheuer in story Undine geht, of whom narrator says, das ihr alle so heist, einer wie der andere [...] (Bachmann 2: 253). The name Ivan, which calls forth familiar epithet the Terrible, would speak for an interpretation along these lines: for female Ich, all men are terrible in same all-encompassing sense.4 That historic Ivan der Schreckliche appears in Frisch's play Chinesiscke Mauer as epitome of patriarchal power politics-a correspondence not yet pointed out-lends further credence to Frisch's role in Bachmann's casting of figure. Weigel's outright dismissal of Frisch connection, her refusal to acknowledge any influence on Bachmann whatsoever, seems to say more about her own (negligible) relationship with Swiss author than it does about Bachmann's. Weigel's position all more perplexing since she so careful to qualify Bachmann's allusions to Celan. Her recognition of their localized quality within Malina and especially her claim that Bachmann and Celan do not share motifs and themes speak for existence of another intertextual site at which thematic concerns are in fact addressed. I will argue that, indeed, Frisch's Mein Name Gantenbein constitutes that site. The remarkable congruence of motifs and themes between Malina and Gantenbein attests to a much more fundamental correspondence between two works than has thus far been assumed. This applies especially to what has long been recognized as central theme in Malina but has yet to be acknowledged as central to Mein Name Gantenbein as well: annihilation of female subjectivity. …