The German playwright Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) was the most gifted and prolific dramatist of the expressionist school. Extremely skillful and inventive, he did more than any other writer, except perhaps Brecht, to transform German theater in the 20th century.

Georg Kaiser was born on Nov. 25, 1878, in Magdeburg, the son of a businessman. He himself entered business and worked from 1898 to 1901 in Buenos Aires. Then, during years of ill health and unemployment, he turned to writing plays--Rektor Kleist (1905) and Die jüdische Witwe (1911; The Jewish Widow)--but attained wide recognition only with Die Bürger von Calais (1913; The Burghers of Calais). This play, ostensibly historical, dramatizes Jean Froissart's tale of the six Calais burghers who were to be surrendered to the English king so that he would spare the city. The play illustrates Kaiser's faith in the emergence of a "New Man," a truly altruistic human...