Franz Xaver Kroetz, the author of more than fifty plays, is the most prolific and successful representative of the

Neues

(new), also called the

Kritisches

(critical)

Volksstück

(folk play), a genre which overlaps with neo-regional, dialect, working-class and “shock” drama, all movements that flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s. Still considered significant and widely performed in the early twenty-first century, Kroetz’s folk dramas, often written in Bavarian dialect, had their greatest success in the 1970s, the decade after the sensational premieres of his brutal, naturalistic one-act pieces

Heimarbeit

[

Homework

] and

Hartnäckig

[

Stiff-necked

] in 1971. Proponents of the “new” folk play extended the tradition of the socially critical folk plays of Ödön von Horváth and…

2065 words

Citation: Saur, Pamela S.. "Franz Xaver Kroetz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 August 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12642, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12642 Franz Xaver Kroetz 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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