Table Of ContentPOSTWJIR GERMJIN THEJITRE
Also by Michael Benedikt
and George E. Wellwarth
MODERN FRENCH THEATRE
POSTW:ztR
GERM:ztN
THE:ztTRE
AN ANTHOLOGY OF PLAYS
EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY
Michael Benedikt yeorge E. 'Wellwarth
AND
MACMILLAN • LONDON • MELBOURNE
1968
© I967 Michael Benedikt and George E. Wellwarth
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1967
MACMILLAN AND CO LTD
Little Essex Street London wc2
and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras
Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg
The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne
The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto
ISBN 978-1-349-00393-8 ISBN 978-1-349-00391-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00391-4
INDIVIDUAL CoPYRIGHTS AND AcKNOWLEDGMENTS
GEoRG KAISER: The Raft of the Medusa. English translation copyright
© 1966 by George E. WelJwarth. Originally published as Das Floss der
Medusa by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Koln, copyright 1963.
WoLFGANG BoRCHERT: The Outsider. English translation copyright @
1966 by Michael Benedikt. Originally published as Draussen Vor Der Tur
in Draussen Vor Der Tur und Ausgewiihlte Erziihlungen by Rowohlt Verlag
GmbH., Hamburg, copyright 1956.
ERWIN SYLVANUS: Dr. Korczak and the Children. English translation copy
right © 1966 by George E. Wellwarth. Originally published as Korczak und
die Kinder by Rowohlt Verlag GmbH., Hamburg, copyright 1957.
FRIEDRICH DuRRENMATT: Incident at Twilight. English translation copy
right © 1966 by George E. Wellwarth. OriginaiJy published as Abendstunde
im Spiitherbst by Peter Schifferli Verlags AG "Die Arche," Zurich, copy
right 1959·
MAx FRISCH: The Great Fury of Philip Hotz. English translation copy
right © 1966 by Michael Benedikt. OriginaiJy published as Die Grosse Wut
des Philipp Hotz in Stiicke 2 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, copy
right 1956.
TANKRED DoRST: Freedom for Clemens. English translation copyright @
1966 by George E. Wellwarth. Originally published as Freiheit fUr Clemens
by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Koln, copyright 1962.
CARL LAszLO: Let's Eat Hair/ and The Chinese Ice-Box. English translation
copyright @ 1966 by George E. Wellwarth. Originally published as Essen
Wir Haare and Der Chinesische Kilhlschrank by Verlag H. R. Stauffacher,
Limmatquai 72, Zurich, copyright 1956. Essen Wir Haare also copyright 1956
as an opera with music by Rolf Fenkart by Verlag H. R. Stauffacher.
GuNTER GRASS: Rocking Back and Forth. English translation copyright
© 1966 by Michael Benedikt. Originally published as Beritten Hin und
Zurilck by Gustav Kiepenheuer Biihnenvertriebs GmbH., copyright 1960.
COPYRIGHTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v
WoLFGANG HrLDESHEIMER: Nightpiece. English translation copyright ©
1966 by Wolfgang Hildesheimer. OriginalJy published as Nachtstiick by
Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, copyright 1962.
PETER WErss: The Tower. English translation copyright © 1966 by Mi
chael Benedikt. OriginalJy published as Der Turm in Spectaculum by Suhr
kamp Verlag, copyright 1962.
CAUTION: AIJ Rights Reserved. These plays as printed in this volume are
designed for the reading public only. AIJ dramatic, motion picture, radio,
television, and other rights in them are fuiJy protected by aU signatories to
the Universal Copyright Convention as welJ as the Berne Convention, and
no public or private performances-professional or amateur-may be given
without written permission of the copyright owners. Inquiries about Dr.
Korc:wk and the Children by Erwin Sylvanus should be addressed to Sanford
J. Greenburger, 595 Madison Ave., New York 22, N.Y. All other inquiries
should be addressed to the copyright owners % Georges Borchardt, 14
West 55th Street, New York 19, N.Y.
CONTENTS
Introduction IX
Georg Kaiser: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA ( 1943) *
1
Wolfgang Borchert: THE OUTSIDER ( 1946) 51
Erwin Sylvanus: DR. KoRCZAK AND THE CHILDREN (1957) 115
Friedrich Diirrenmatt: INCIDENT AT TwiLIGHT ( 1959) 159
Max Frisch: THE GREAT FURY OF PHILIP HoTZ (1958) 185
Tankred Dorst: FREEDOM FOR CLEMENS ( 1961) 217
Carl Laszlo: LET's EAT HAm! ( 1956) 251
Carl Laszlo: THE CHINESE lcEnox (1956) 257
Gunter Grass: RocKING BACK AND FoRTH (196o) 261
Wolfgang Hildesheimer: NIGHTPIECE ( 1962) 277
Peter Weiss: THE ToWER (1948) 315
* The date in parentheses indicates the year in which the play was com·
pleted.
A*
INTRODUCTION
CREATIVE DRAMA in Germany ended in 1933 and came to life again
in 1945· There is a clear and indeed obvious reason for this. Dra
matic form and content are conditioned by the politico-social situa
tion under which the plays are written. Under the dictatorship
which existed in Germany during the twelve-year cultural hiatus of
the Nazi regime no creative artistic work was possible. Artistically,
the Nazi regime was characterized by its maniacal orgies of public
book burning. These tremendous hysteria-inducing, latter-day
autos-da-fe served only to show up with their blackening flames
the cultural night which had descended over Germany. It was
indeed an insult during the Nazi period, as Georg Grosz com
plained, not to have one's books handed over to the secular arm
by the literary inquisitors. Grosz's works were unjustly neglected.
They deserved a nobler fate-that of his friend Bertolt Brecht's
works, which were pitched into the conflagration as a matter of
course.
Under the complete police-state that Germany was from 1933
to 1945 paintings, novels, essays, and plays were produced to order
in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Propa
ganda; and artistic activity was consequently at a standstill. Like
France and unlike England and America, Germany had produced
a truly enormous amount of interesting and significant drama be
tween the wars. Experimental and intellectual drama can only be
produced in a politically permissive society, i.e., in a democracy.
The Weimar Republic did not work, to be sure; but it was
nevertheless as pure an example of the democratic form of gov
ernment as the human race has seen since ancient Greece. Ger-
ix
X INTRODUCTION
man writers were split between despair at what had happened
and hope for the future embodied in the twin beacons of
Weimar democracy and the starry-eyed, high-minded, and deluded
idealism of intellectual Communism. In England and America,
on the other hand, victory brought an intellectually debilitating
sense of relief and self-satisfaction, leading to a desire for a re
turn to normalcy-in other words, to intellectual and artistic re
action. Only the anomalous efforts of Shaw and O'Neill con
sistently broke the rule of comfortable mediocrity in English and
American drama. The uninspired monotony of post-World War I
English and American drama is, as always, due to the national
temper. A nation that has won a war labors under the delusion
that it has won what it fought for-to wit, the preservation of the
prewar order. Subconsciously it must realize that that prewar or
der has been destroyed in the very act of being defended; and it
seeks solace for the disappointments of reality in wistfully viewing
the nostalgia-laden illusions served up on stage and screen. The
drama, which began as an extension of religious ritual, thus
comes full circle and rejoins its origins as a secondary opiate for
the masses.
In France the intellectual climate between the wars was some
what different. France, to be sure, had also won the war-officially.
Physically, it had suffered more than Germany and bore all the
visible marks of a defeated nation. Spiritually, it was fully con
scious of having been defeated and that its so-called victory was
really due to the help of Britain and America. Hemingway aptly
remarked that it was wrong to speak of a French defeat in World
War II, since they had already been defeated in World War I
and had never really recovered. France, then, was a victorious
country which had, in effect, been defeated; its postwar drama
reflected this in the cynicism of the Surrealists and the nihilism
of the Dadaists.
This is not the place to detail the fantastically varied and
lambent effiorescence of dramatic inventiveness which character
ized the democratic German theater between the wars. We are
concerned here with the drama that sprang from the pulverized
rubble of Germany's total defeat in 1945. It is, as we shall see,
a drama of criticism, of vituperation, of guilt, and, in its later
INTRODUCTION Xl
stages, of withdrawal from reality through emphasis on technical
experimentation.
The earliest of the plays in this book, Georg Kaiser's The Raft
of the Medusa, like Brecht's plays,1 actually belongs to the drama
written during the war by exiled German writers. It is included
here because it provides a link between the prewar German drama,
of which Kaiser was one of the most prominent representatives,
and the themes of a new generation of writers who became active
after the war. Kaiser began his play in 1940, basing it on an
actual occurrence which had been reported in the Swiss papers.
Completed in 1943, it was first performed in Kaiser's adopted
country in 1945, when Robert Pirk, another German exile, pro
duced it at the State Theatre in Basle. German audiences did not
see it until 1948, when Reva Holsey produced it at the Hebbel
Theatre in Berlin.
The Raft of the Medusa lacks the angry reaction so character
istic of the postwar drama. Kaiser's orientation is more traditional,
his effort more to understand and explain than to castigate. The
lifeboat on which his thirteen children float to their destiny is
a microcosm of the world, a fact which he emphasizes by making
the children English rather than German. The germ of bestiality,
of which the Nazi torpedoing of the children's ship was only one
manifestation, is present in all men at all times. The innate
decency of the rare good human being, Allan, is defeated, ironi
cally, by "civilized" society's perversion of Christianity, as per
sonified in Ann. Ann, corrupted by superstition and a perverse
misinterpretation of Christ's teachings, singlemindedly pursues
evil. Allan explicitly becomes a Christ figure at the end when he
falls into a crucified position under the German plane's gunfire.
Unable to bear the thought of living in a world where his love is
returned with evil, he chooses to sacrifice himself. Allan and Ann
represent the extremes of human conduct in the play, but it is the
other children, nameless and almost indistinguishable from each
other, who are, in a sense, the play's most important characters,
because it is they who make Ann's evil intentions possible. They
represent the followers and time-servers who, through spineless-
The editors were unfortunately unable to obtain permission to include a
1
later Brecht play in this anthology.
