Karl Schönherr

Karl Schönherr is a minor but respected figure in Austrian literature and drama, still performed today, and important as an early twentieth-century representative of the centuries-old tradition of regional folk drama of the Alpine Tirol, where most of his plays are set. As a popular Heimat writer, he brought the dialect and culture of the rural areas to life on the prestigious stages of Vienna and other German-speaking theaters. His plays often portray the harshness of life and faults of the common people in blunt naturalistic fashion; some combine grim realism with sentimentality and melodrama. Frequent themes include peasants' love of the land, family tragedies, moral dilemmas, the battle of the sexes, and protests against dic