The widow Werner lives with her young son Ludwig in misery: a sad Christmas is coming. To surprise her son, Mrs Werner goes out to buy a small pine tree and some apples. In her absence, Ludwig writes a letter to baby Jesus, asking for an illustrated Bible: he throws the letter out of the window addressing it to the angels. On Christmas morning, a package is delivered containing the Bible he asked for. The donor is Friedrich Walter, an old friend of the deceased Karl Werner: he has just returned from a long trip to the Orient and is inquiring at the police station about the widow's address, when some officers tell him of the amusing discovery of Ludwig's letter. Friedrich Walter takes the widow and child under his protection.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Germany

Munich

Printed

Poverty

Reading

Education

Hanswurst

Kasperl

Bible

Childhood

Crib

Piety

Sentimentalism

Social realism

Christmas

Realist

Pathetic

German

Metatheatre

Monologue

Letter

Transforming scenery

Chorus

Deus ex machina

Der Weihnachts-Brief

Christmas Letter

The Viennese public attends a puppet show in the Prater. The play in question features a hero who is unwillingly involved in a foursome with his lover Liesl and the Duke and Duchess of Lawin. The duel between him and the Duke is cancelled, but he loses the interest of the Duchess and the love of Liesl in the process. Death comes. The audience, which has not stopped commenting on the play, intervenes more and more loudly and the performance turns into a scandal. It is no longer clear who is a spectator, who is a puppet, until a man in a blue coat enters the stage... and cuts the strings of the puppets with a sword, thus discriminating between animate and inanimate.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Schnitzler Arthur

Austria

Vienna

Berlin

Representation

Unfaithfulness

Duel

Self-consciousness of puppets

Local color

Argument

Wrangle

Uproar

Lust

Entertainment

Burlesque

Satirical

Marionetten

Burleske in einem Akt

Director

Poet

Bourgeois

Fille

Comte

Soldier

Waiter

Child

Duke

Le père

Husband

Raisonneur

Wrestler

Dead woman

Valet

Death

Puppet theatre within the theatre

Metadiscourse on puppet theatre

Address to the public

Pantomime

Parody of formal language

Prologue

Versified passages

Stichomythia

Metamorphosis

Character thrown out of the scene

Zum großen Wurstel

To the big sausage

In Bavaria, Kaspar learns that Professor Johann Christoph Gottsched is conspiring against him. He goes to Leipzig to work as a servant, under a false name, in the house of Gottsched and his friend, the actress and theatre director Caroline Neuber. During a performance, Caroline Neuber symbolically banishes Kaspar’s character from the stage and dismisses the actor who successfully played him, Silvio. But Gottsched's ward, Lucinde, is in love with the actor: the two young people defy Gottsched's dismissal and marry in secret. In search of a new actor to play the comic role in a play by the student Gotthold Ephraim, Caroline Neuber offers the position to Kaspar, who declines and then reveals his true identity. The actress breaks up with Gottsched and hires Silvio again, as well as Lucinde. Kaspar is arrested by the Bavarian policeman Stadelmann, who has set out after him, but is finally released by Gotthold Ephraim and is praised by the entire audience.

Der Weihnachts-Brief

Zum großen Wurstel

Burleske in einem Akt

Kaspar stirbt nicht!

Puppenkomödie aus dem alten Leipzig