Sternheim, Carl (1878–1942), German dramatist, at the height of his popularity in the 1920s. Banned under the Nazis, his plays have since been revived many times, and he is considered one of the few 20th-century German playwrights to have excelled in comedy. At first his clipped dialogue and grotesque situations seemed to show his affinity with
Expressionism, but in revival he appears more closely related to
realism. Several of his bitter anti-bourgeois satires follow the fortunes of one family in its rise to social eminence under the collective title of
Aus dem bürgerlichen Heldenleben (
Scenes from the Heròic Life of the Middle Classes). The first of these was
Die Hose (1911); produced by
Reinhardt in
Berlin, this caused such a scandal because of its ‘indelicate subject’—the loss of a lady's knickers in embarrassing circumstances—that it was banned, and its author left Germany to reside permanently in Brussels. In a translation by Eric
Bentley, it was seen in London in 1963 as
The Knickers. It was followed by
Die Kassette (
The Money Box, 1911) and
Bürger Schippel (1913), which shows the chief character, a plumber, rising to middle-class status; it was seen in London in an adaptation by C. P.
Taylor in 1975.
Der Snob (1914) deals with the next generation's adaptation to high society, and was the first play to be revived in Berlin in 1945. It was followed by Der Kandidat (1915),
Tabula rasa (1919), and
Das Fossil (1925). Among Sternheim's other plays
Die Marquise von Arcis (1919) was adapted by Ashley
Dukes in 1935 as
The Mask of Virtue, in which Vivien
Leigh made her first outstanding success in London.
