About the work
Frank Wedekind's tragedy „Earth Spirit" was premiered in Leipzig in 1898 and is the first of the two „Lulu" dramas, continued in „Pandora's Box". At its centre stands Lulu, an enigmatic female figure and force of nature on whom the bourgeois world of men is destroyed. The play is regarded as a forerunner of expressionist theatre.
Plot
Lulu, a young woman of seductive, innocently amoral sensuality, passes through a series of men who desire her and perish by her. She is married to the elderly medical councillor Dr Goll, who collapses dead at the sight of her infidelity. She then marries the painter Schwarz, who cuts his throat when he recognises Lulu's past and nature. Behind it all stands the powerful newspaper publisher Dr Schön, Lulu's discoverer and secret master, who repeatedly passes her on „generously". Lulu finally forces Schön to break off his respectable engagement and marry her. When, in a scene of jealousy, he tries to force her to shoot herself, she turns the weapon on him and kills him. The drama ends with Lulu's arrest.
Cultural significance
„Earth Spirit" and its sequel created, in the figure of Lulu, one of the most influential myths of modernity about female sexuality, desire and male projection. The material became the basis of Alban Berg's opera „Lulu" (1937) and of Georg Wilhelm Pabst's film „Pandora's Box" (1929) with Louise Brooks. Wedekind's anti-bourgeois provocation and his garish, montage-like language made him a forerunner of Expressionism and epic theatre.