Theatre
Niemcy
Not translated into English
Leon Kruczkowski · 1949
Synopsis
In 1943, in a German family house, Professor Sonnenbruch, a renowned scholar who never supported Nazism without ever fighting it, celebrates his thirty years of teaching. His son Willy is an SS officer; his daughter Ruth plays the piano in occupied France. A series of more or less expected visits brings out all the possible attitudes towards the regime around him, until the arrival of his former assistant, the communist Joachim Peters, an active opponent.
Context
Written in 1949, the play was premiered at the Stary Teatr in Kraków and won its author international recognition: performed on nearly twenty Polish stages and translated into fourteen languages, it was staged in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Brussels, Prague, Rome, London, Helsinki and Tokyo. In 1951, the East German state studios made a film of it in East Berlin, Die Sonnenbrucks, directed by Georg C. Klaren. Long on the school curriculum, it has been removed from it, and its author's name has disappeared from many streets and schools.
Who it is for
A play of about a hundred pages, made up of conversations between the members of a family and their visitors.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's best play and his best-known work, in Poland as abroad.
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