About the work
Anarchie in Bayern (Anarchy in Bavaria) is a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the period of the Munich antiteater, the theatre group he co-founded with Peer Raben and others in May 1968. It premiered in Munich on 14 June 1969, directed by Fassbinder and Raben, with Fassbinder himself on stage alongside ensemble members such as Kurt Raab, Irm Hermann, Ingrid Caven and Hans Hirschmüller. It was one of the first four plays Fassbinder placed with the publisher Verlag der Autoren in July 1969; it does not prescribe a fixed cast size.
Plot
The play imagines a future in which young revolutionaries have won in Bavaria and proclaimed a socialist anarchist state. After a period of anarchy, the militarily unprotected country is occupied again: at the end, American troops march in and “liberate” the frightened citizens. Instead of a continuous plot, Fassbinder strings together cabaret numbers and scenes assembled like a revue.
Cultural significance
The antiteater described the play as naive science fiction that argues against a hasty revolution and for a long march that first changes the consciousness of revolutionaries and citizens. As a garish satire on Germany's inability to make a revolution, it belongs, together with Preparadise sorry now, Werwolf and Blut am Hals der Katze, to a group of Fassbinder plays that present social mechanisms and everyday power relations as models.