The avant-garde painter Kompowski, annoyed by the critics who come to see him in his workshop, goes to the café. The drunken servant, Kasperl, takes advantage of his absence to paint a canvas with a very bad view of Munich. Gallery owners who had come to acquire the master's works bought his paintings from him for a thousand marks. The crowd comes to cheer the artist. But the critic Schaikeles eventually learns the identity of the real creator of the painting. Anzenmaier and Burger, the gallery owners, come to claim their money when Kompowski returns home, and the fight becomes widespread. Kasperl puts an end to this by smashing the paintings over the heads of the gallery owners and knocking Gombrowski out with his easel.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Blümel Otto

Germany

Munich

Printed

Painting

Futurism

Modernity

Expressionism

Art criticism

Drunkenness

Beer

Mean trick

Celebrity

Satirical

Burlesque

Farcical

German

Painter

Kasperl

Reviewer

Crowd

Monologue

Versified passages

Caricature

Off-stage voice

Song

Misunderstanding

Parody of formal language

Chorus

Instrumental tune

Brawl

Dialect

Die Maler

The painters

The count Franz Pocci comes back on Earth to see Munich, his good old city, once again. There, he encounters a series of characters that, each in their own way, prove the missteps of the Soviet Republic: the Demagogue–under the features of revolutionary Kurt Eisner; Death; the Jew and the Devil; then Kasperl and the Münchner Kindl (“Munich child”, figure inspired by the coat of arms of the city). At the end, a young war invalid arrives and gathers around him university students, workers: an exhilarated crowd, who, fulfilling the count’s wish, begins to awaken “the ancient force of the German people” (“die alte deutsche Volkeskraft”).

Adults

Pocci Ernst

Landshut

Bavaria

Revolution

People and history

Revenant

Tramway

Communism

Conservatism

Red flag

Faust

Anti-Semitism

Catholicism

Money

Politics

Spartacists

Nationalism

Polemical

Ein Puppenspiel aus der Nachkriegszeit

Franz von Pocci

Demagogue

Death

Devil

Münchner Kindl

War invalid

Blacksmith

Student

People

Apparition

Worker

Prologue

Light effects

Philosophical dialogue

Thunderbolt

Defecation on stage

Word for another

Nachtschatten

Night shadows

Polichinelle no longer wants to play traditional puppet shows. He aspires to be modern and leaves his puppeteer to become a television star. The puppeteer, who is committed to tradition, grieves for Polichinelle and continues his shows with other puppets. Polichinelle is criticized by the viewers and causes trouble for the television program. He asks for the puppeteer’s help. Eventually, he comes back to him.