Earth Spirit (Erdgeist) - A Tragedy in Four Acts

"Earth Spirit" (Erdgeist) is a play by the German dramatist Frank Wedekind. It forms the first part of his pairing of 'Lulu' plays. The second is "Pandora's Box" (1904), both of which depict a society "riven by the demands of lust and greed". In German folklore an erdgeist is a gnome, first described in Goethe's Faust (1808). Together with "Pandora's Box", Wedekind's play formed the basis for the silent film Pandora's Box (1929) starring Louise Brooks, and the opera "Lulu" by Alban Berg in 1935 (premiered posthumously in 1937). In the original manuscript, dating from 1894, the ‘Lulu’ drama was in five acts and subtitled ‘A Monster Tragedy’. Wedekind subsequently divided the work into two Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. The premiere of "Earth Spirit" took place in 1898, in a production by Carl Heine, with Wedekind himself in the role of Dr Schön. Wedekind is known to have taken his inspiration from at least two the pantomime Lulu by Félicien Champsaur, which he saw in Paris in the early 1890s, and the sex murders of Jack the Ripper in London in 1888. Also available in this restored, uncensored "Pandora's Box - A Tragedy in Three Acts - Uncensored Edition"