Urs Bircher also focuses in on racist elements, whereby the leading characters are presented as Aryan heroic types („arische Heldenpersonal“) originating in Switzerland or Germany, inserted, using a kind of literary "Chiaroscuro technique" into a Slavo-Turkish context of characters identified as "dark skinned", "untrustworthy" or "lazy". In support of this theme, Bircher even finds a passing reference to a "small Jew" with a "dirty neck" encountered in a bazaar. However, Bircher rejects the idea that the novel's depiction of euthanasia can in any way be linked with National Socialism. Rather he sees the euthanasia theme as a measure of the "manliness" that Jürg Reinhart demonstrates in the novel's climactic event. That is also, of course, precisely the interpretation offered by the protagonist himself: "You don't become a man with a woman". You demonstrate your manhood "through a manly deed." And until you do that you will not have reached the top step of your personal development as a man. Jürgen H. Petersen sees the matter differently: "The way this novel presents the issue sounds ever more pathetic and absurd." In Frisch's presentation of "the active life" (des " tätigen Lebens“) as essential to human fulfillment Petersen detects echoes of the nineteenth century philosopher-statesman, Goethe. However, Alexander Stephan attributes the emphasis on "manly strength and maturity" and the "great deed" to nothing more mysterious than the popular mood taking hold across much of Europe during the 1930s. Relationship with the overall body of the author's work In "Jürg Reinhart" Frisch sets out, for the first time, the "identity problem" which his later works would exhibit. Jurg writes in a letter in the second part of the novel: "You see, if I am pushed around by fully-formed people, as you might say being passed from one hand to another, so that each can mold a different version of me each according to his own structures, one ends up being crumbled" This idea of the misshapen image of the self is illustrated in a later episode, in which Jurg is pressured by fellow voyagers on a boat trip into assuming the role of a famous pianist. Alexander Stephan highlights additional complex themes that were introduced in this first novel, and which returned with new emphasis in Frisch's later works: the autobiographical aspects, the artist as the outsider, the unfulfilled seeking after happiness and love, and with these, in particular, the sea as symbolizing