Ödön von Horváth's death in 1938 at the age of thirty-six was a loss for German drama, for the playwright was at the height of an extremely promising career. During the previous fifteen years he had written eighteen plays, as well as three novels and many short prose pieces. While in Paris to discuss plans for a film production he was killed by a branch that fell from a tree under which he had taken refuge during a thunderstorm. His work subsequently sank into oblivion and was not rediscovered until the 1960s. The debate about fascism, as part of Germany's coming to terms with its past, and the student movement of the 1960s led to a focus on the political and social issues treated in Horváth's works.

Horváth's writings portray primarily the lower middle class of blue-collar workers, shopkeepers, and...