About the work
Festival Play in German Rhymes was a commissioned work by Gerhart Hauptmann for the centenary of the Wars of Liberation. Directed by Max Reinhardt, it premiered on 31 May 1913 in the newly built Centennial Hall in Breslau; the piece is not divided into acts but structured through stage directions.
Plot
Apart from the director and his assistant Philistiades, every character appears as a marionette played by a live actor. The play's underlying anti-war, pacifist stance sat uneasily with the patriotic occasion it was written for.
Cultural significance
After protests from veterans' associations and pressure from the exhibition's patron, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the play was withdrawn on 18 June 1913 after just eleven of the fifteen planned performances — one of the biggest theatre scandals of the Wilhelmine era.