Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 9, 2026

A Respectable Wedding

A Respectable Wedding is a short play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in 1919 and first performed on 11 December 1926 at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt under its original title Die Hochzeit. Brecht changed the title a short time later to Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit.

Last revised
Jul 9, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
165 w
Citations
4
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Wikipedia ↗

A Respectable Wedding is a short play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in 1919 and first performed on 11 December 1926 at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt under its original title Die Hochzeit (The Wedding).1 Brecht changed the title a short time later to Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit (The Petit Bourgeois Wedding).2

Like others of Brecht's early works (Baal, Drums in the Night, and The Threepenny Opera), A Respectable Wedding is seen as a critique of bourgeois society.3

The play includes nine characters:4

  • The Bridegroom's Mother
  • The Bride's Father
  • The Bride
  • The Bridegroom
  • The Young Man
  • The Bride's Sister
  • The Woman
  • The Man
  • The Friend
References

References

  1. "Uraufführung des Brecht-Stückes Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit in Frankfurt, 11. Dezember 1926", Zeitgeschichte in Hessen (in German)
  2. "Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit von Bertolt Brecht", 24 January 2023, Bühne Magazin (in German)
  3. Squiers, Anthony (2014). An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht: Revolution and Aesthetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 33. ISBN 9789042038998.
  4. "Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit", background, plot, cast; TheaterLaien e. V., Borbeck-Mitte (in German)