About the work
Ödön von Horváth's „Tales from the Vienna Woods" was premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 1931 and awarded the Kleist Prize that same year. The „Volksstück" exposes the brutality, mendacity and social coldness behind Viennese cosiness. Horváth's characters speak a self-betraying „jargon of education".
Plot
Marianne, daughter of the toy-shop owner everyone calls the „Magic King", is to marry the worthy butcher Oskar at her father's wish. But on an outing into the Vienna Woods she falls in love with the charming idler and gambler Alfred and breaks out of the prescribed order. She moves in with Alfred and has a child, but the money is not enough; Alfred turns away, Marianne must perform as a nude dancer in a variety show and falls foul of the law. The child is given to Alfred's grandmother in the Wachau, who lets it perish in the cold. In the end the broken Marianne returns repentant to the „Magic King" and the forgiving Oskar — the apparent reconciliation, to the strains of tavern music, is of icy irony.
Cultural significance
„Tales from the Vienna Woods" is regarded as a masterpiece of the critical Volksstück. Horváth uses waltz-bliss and tavern atmosphere as a foil against which the egoism and cruelty of the petite bourgeoisie stand out all the more sharply. The play belongs to the core repertoire of German-language theatre; productions at the Berlin Schaubühne and the Vienna Burgtheater, as well as Maximilian Schell's film (1979), are among the references.