About the work
Donauwellen is a play by the actor and director Fritz Kortner, written during his American exile. It premiered on 15 February 1949 at the Munich Kammerspiele, after a planned Vienna production had been banned by the American occupying authorities over its portrayal of their soldiers.
Plot
The play is set in Vienna in spring 1945, as Soviet troops reach the besieged city. In the barbershop of Alois Duffeck in the city centre, a cross-section of people meet in the final days before capitulation, and Kortner unsparingly depicts their behaviour and attitudes.
Cultural significance
Rarely staged since, the play is one of the few contemporary works to directly address the end of the war and the Soviet occupation of Vienna. It was not revived until 1980, in Düsseldorf, and only reached Vienna itself in 1987, as part of the Wiener Festwochen.