SOURCE: Malkin, Jeanette R. “‘Think What You Are Saying’: Verbal Politics in the Early Plays of Handke and Kroetz.” Modern Drama 33, no. 3 (September 1990): 363-379.

In the following essay, Malkin compares the play Kaspar to Franz Xaver Kroetz's dramas Stallerhof and Geisterbahn.

Peter Handke and Franz Xaver Kroetz have, as both will readily admit, very little in common.¹ If anything, they occupy opposite ends in the spectrum of contemporary German dramaturgy and, with each successive play, seem to move further apart. Handke's abstract subjectivity has in recent plays (such as Über die Dörfer, 1981) deepened into near mysticism. Kroetz, on the other hand, has moved from sub-proletarian naturalism to, more recently, an almost cinematic depiction of middle-class moral styles (as in Furcht und Hoffnung der BDR, 1984). Handke is a private person, an individualist with an aversion to labels, systems, and political affiliations.² His critical acclaim has always been greater...