About the work
Florian Geyer: The Tragedy of the Peasants' War is a five-act historical tragedy that Gerhart Hauptmann wrote in roughly a year, in 1894–95. It premiered on 4 January 1896 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, directed by Emil Lessing with dramaturgy by Otto Brahm and Emanuel Reicher in the title role.
Plot
The play portrays the Franconian imperial knight Florian Geyer during the Peasants' War of 1525 and his fight for evangelical freedom against the resistance of the powerful.
Cultural significance
The premiere flopped; critics accused the play of archaic, monotonous language, while pro-imperial circles suspected it of sympathizing with social democracy. The failure is seen as the trigger for Hauptmann's turn, that same year, toward the verse drama The Sunken Bell.