Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald

Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, a Volksstück in three parts by Ödön von Horváth. Published and first performed in Berlin in 1931, it describes the tragic victimization of Marianne, daughter of the Zauberkönig, owner of a toyshop selling ‘magic’ and toy soldiers (wounded ones are popular), and specializing in doll repairs. She has been promised to Oskar, a butcher in the same street (Vienna, 8th District). The Zauberkönig and his party enjoy a picnic outing to the Vienna Woods in celebration of the engagement. But Marianne, in love with the impecunious philanderer Alfred, breaks off the engagement when her romance by the Danube is discovered that night. Abandoned by her father, she lives with Alfred and bears a son. Hoping that she will earn some money, Alfred soon places the infant in the care of his mother, who lives with his grandmother at the foot of a ruin in the Wachau. Although she has served a prison sentence for a theft, allegedly committed while working in the cabaret ‘Maxim’—the play's central scene (Act III, scene 2), in which she suffers the most devastating humiliation as a daughter and a woman—Marianne is allowed to return to her father. She owes this reconciliation to Valerie, proprietress of the tobacconist's shop next door, who herself forgives her disloyal Alfred. At long last, it seems, Marianne will be able to claim her child, to whom she is so devoted that she cannot even express regret for its birth in sin when pressed to do so by the priest. A happy party arrives in the Wachau, only to find that the infant has just died, having been exposed to cold air and fatal illness by the evil grandmother. Oskar, who has waited for the day when he will be able to claim Marianne, does so when she collapses into his arms.

The waltz (‘G'schichten aus dem Wiener Wald’) by J. Strauß and the idyllic settings create true atmosphere, but they are also anti-illusionary devices; another is the frequent interruption of the dialogue (and music) by moments of silence (Stille) that are meant to encourage reflection on the part of a Kleinbürger society, which is as alienated from its innate humanity (for example, in its ever-present exploitation of women) as it is from its dialect. Written in High German with a touch of Viennese, the play's language, spiced with the pretentious, shallow, bourgeois Bildungsjargon of the period, heightens, like the schoolgirl's unmusical piano playing in the background, the play's ironic and grotesque effects. Nominated by his friend C. Zuckmayer, Horváth was awarded the Kleist prize in the year of the play's publication. Arguably the most important 20th c. Volksstück, it was filmed by M. Schell in 1979 and translated into English by C. Hampton as Tales from the Vienna Woods (first performed at the National Theatre, London, in 1977).