The Drama of Obedience: Introduction

In Germany, where, compared to other large European countries, the theatre had long been marginalized to local courts, Latin schools, and wandering troupes, the mid to late eighteenth century brought about tremendous change, effected by the productive collaboration of theatre directors, actors, critics, and writers. In the generations of Friederike Caroline Neuber and Johann Christoph Gottsched, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Conrad Ekhof, German drama and theatre were progressing at a higher pace than ever before, and German playwrights were at the forefront of innovation in Europe. In this period, as still through much of the nineteenth century, drama was the most prestigious of literary genres, and German playwrights had now caught up to recent developments. They were eagerly adopting the new bourgeois tragedy from England as well as the serious comedy from France, while also developing, in the Sturm und Drang, a distinctly new form of playwriting. Moreover, attempts were being made to establish stages on which at least some of the new German production of drama could find its home — from the short-lived Hamburger Nationaltheater (1767–69) to the reinvention of Vienna’s court theatre under Joseph II as Nationaltheater in 1776. For once, drama and theatre appeared to be crucial concerns of directors, writers, and (enlightened) statesmen alike.