Volksstück

Volksstück, a play written in local dialect and intended for popular audiences, often monopolizing a particular theatre (Volkstheater). Although Hamburger Volksstücke were written by F. Stavenhagen and Münchner Volksstücke by L. Thoma, these are late 19th-c. off-shoots of Naturalism (see Naturalismus) and their dialect speech is an aspect of Heimatkunst. The Munich Volkstheater influenced B. Brecht, and the 1960s produced the ‘critical Volksstück’.

The real home of the Volksstück is Vienna (Wiener Volksstück), where it was indigenous from the early 18th c. The Viennese Volksstück makes frequent use of extravagant scenic display and stage machinery. The initiators of the tradition in the 18th c. were the actor and director of the Kärntnertor Theater J. A. Stranitzky and his protégé G. Prehauser, both of whom had the gift of comic extemporization in Viennese dialect and played the part of Hanswurst. The site of this theatre is near where the Opera now stands. Though extemporization was officially banned in 1768, the popular tradition maintained itself with P. Hafner and J. von Kurz, and the Volksstück took on a new lease of life when K. von Marinelli opened the Leopoldstädter Theater in 1781 expressly for it and engaged J. Perinet as one of his principal playwrights. In 1788 the Josefstädter Theater and in 1801 the Theater an der Wien were also opened and used for Volksstücke.

The Volksstück took two main forms: the ‘magic play’ (Zauberstück), descended from baroque drama, offering lavish transformation scenes in a fairy world, through which a simple-minded or caustic-witted Viennese tradesman made his homely way, and the Lokalstück without magic, making comic use of realistic elements and poking fun at contemporary fashions or fads. An offshoot of the former was the moral Besserungsstück, in which a character was cured of some fault by the imagined experiences of a dream; not all Besserungsstücke were, however, intended as Volksstücke, Grillparzer's Der Traum ein Leben being a notable example. Most Viennese Volksstücke have inserted songs, many of them by the gifted Wenzel Müller. These songs often possess great charm and humour. Among the writers at the end of the century were K. F. Hensler, J. F. Kringsteiner, and E. Schikaneder, who, as the librettist of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, collaborated in the only Zauberstück to achieve an international reputation.

At the beginning of the 19th c. J. A. Gleich, K. Meisl, and A. Bäuerle were prolific in their output. F. Raimund raised the Volksstück to a higher level, though he was not able to realize his own aspirations. All his works were Zauberstücke, and these began to lose their attraction after 1830. The Volksstück reached its zenith with the plays of J. N. Nestroy. He concentrated mainly on the Lokalposse without magic and wrote parodies. While he retained many traditional elements, Nestroy broke new ground by introducing trenchant satire into his Volksstücke. His major contribution to the form, however, is to be found in his verbal dexterity: dense imagistic wordplay and lively dialogue which exploits the tension between Viennese dialect and High German. F. Kaiser survived Nestroy and saw the disappearance of the Volksstück in its old form.

By 1870 the public had changed and the Volksstück had lost its impetus. L. Anzengruber turned for his Volksstücke to rural settings, and although he is the author of some Lokalstücke (at times ‘mit Gesang’), the simple bonhomie was yielding to a more sophisticated and serious tone. The last representative of the Lokalstück was C. Karlweis. Later local writing tended to merge into the general pattern of commercial comedy and farce, common to other European capitals, though the use of Viennese dialect did not die out. See also Dialektdichtung. Alt-Wiener Volkstheater (7 vols.), ed. O. Rommel (no dates) contains plays by Hensler, Schikaneder, Kringsteiner, Meisl, Gleich, Bäuerle, and Kaiser. The collection Barocktradition im österreichisch-bayrischen Volkstheater (6 vols.), ed. also O. Rommel, was published 1935-9.

Both Carl Zuckmayer (Der fröhliche Weinberg, 1925) and Brecht ( Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, 1940) attempted to revive the form, alongside Ödön von Horváth and Marieluise Fleißer. It was not until the restless 1960s and early 1970s that Horváth's and Fleißer's works were revived on stage and championed by playwrights as representing a ‘realistic’ Volksstück, on which the contemporary ‘critical’ Volksstück should be modelled. Its main aim was to brandish social ills and any fascist tendencies, and its representatives included Franz Xaver Kroetz and the less well-known Martin Sperr. It differed from traditional Dialektdichtung in that dialect became a more radical means of social identification. In general terms, Horváth's Volksstück is considered to mark a new phase in the development of the genre in both Austria and Germany.