About the work
Bertolt Brecht wrote this one-act play in 1919 as a 21-year-old student under the title 'Die Hochzeit'; only later did he expand and rename it 'Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit' ('A Respectable Wedding'). It premiered on 11 December 1926 at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, directed by Melchior Vischer. Its broad situational comedy already shows the influence of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin.
Plot
At a petit-bourgeois wedding celebration, everything spirals out of control: the talkative father of the bride keeps telling embarrassing anecdotes, the heavily pregnant bride tries in vain to stop him, and the cheap, homemade furniture falls apart piece by piece — from a table leg to the sofa to the marital bed, which finally collapses with a crash. The guests leave in disgust, leaving behind wrecked furniture and an exposed bourgeois facade.
Cultural significance
The play shows the young Brecht, still before he developed epic theatre, as a sharp observer of petit-bourgeois ritual, and it remains a popular short chamber piece on German-language stages today.