Summary
Georg Kaiser: From morning to midnight
Drama in two parts
The drama From morning to midnight is Kaiser's second great literary and theatrical success. Published two years after Citizens of Calais in 1916, the play was staged at Munich's Kammerspiele in April 2017, just a few months after Citizens of Calais premiered in Frankfurt am Main. A few years later, in 1920, a film based on Kaiser's model was also made, with Ernst Deutsch in the lead role of the Treasurer, directed by Karlheinz Martin. Why did the play become so popular on German stages in the 1920s, and is it still performed and translated all over the world today? The simplest thing would be to say that with this drama, the Kaiser successfully conveyed the spirit of the times of then Imperial Germany in the context of the tragedy of the First World War and the general breakdown of social and moral values. The new historical period caused a stormy artistic reaction, a paradigm shift in the literary and stage-practical sense, so instead of plunging into the psychological states of the characters within the framework of realistic theater, a new face of expressionist dramatic creation and its presentation appeared on stages across Europe. German authors became leaders of a new dramatic form and a new style in the first decades of the twentieth century...
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