About the work
Vor Sonnenuntergang (Before Sunset) is a five-act play by Gerhart Hauptmann from 1932. Its premiere on 16 February 1932 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, directed by Max Reinhardt with Werner Krauss as Privy Councillor Clausen, was Hauptmann's last major premiere and the last significant theatre premiere of the Weimar Republic.
Plot
After his wife's death, the 70-year-old Privy Councillor Matthias Clausen wants to share his remaining years with the young Inken Peters. Seeing their inheritance at risk, his children have him declared legally incompetent, driving him to his death.
Cultural significance
For the premiere, Hauptmann rewrote the fifth act at Werner Krauss's request: instead of taking poison, as in the printed text, Clausen dies of heart failure on stage. The play is regarded as an unsparing study of greed and hypocrisy within a bourgeois family.