With the question "if I think that the dramaturgy of Kaiser had a decisive
importance and if he has changed European stageworks", I can only answer yes.
Bertolt Brecht on Kaiser
Kaiser was the 5th of six sons of Friedrich Kaiser, an insurance seller and he was
destined the same career by studying economics. In 1898, Kaiser decides to
quit school and leave the country, to become a clerk in
Buenos Aires, Argentinia.
In 1900 he returns to Germany because of a
malaria illness (and its side effects)
for which he is treated at a
sanatorium in Berlin. Between 1902 and 1908 he lives
with his parents and does his first attempts in writing plays.
In 1908 he marries Magarethe Habenicht, a woman who comes from a rich family, and especially this marriage
enables him to pursue an artistic career. His '
The Jewish Widow' is
recognized as one of his first satirical works and is also one of his first
works to be printed by a renowned publisher. In 1913 he finishes '
The Middle class
men from Calais', a work that instantly puts him in between other
expressionist
writers. The play, which is first performed in 1917, is a success.
From that date, Kaiser starts his most productive period, until the late '20s.
First of all his house in Berlin becomes a 'Meetingpoint for talented young writers'
(
Bertolt Brecht and
Iwan Goll). His next works '
Gas I' and '
Gas II' literally
ignites the
expressionist world. His works tell about machine-age kind of heroes
who search everywhere for some kind of fulfillment (in commercial sex, in
salvationist religion) but discover through a series of nightmarish episodes
that the world is deceitful and illusory: perfectly fitting the radical ideas
that bloom around the twenties and (naturally) after
the Depression.
Kaiser, also interested in modern music trends and technologies, in the mid-twenties
gets befriended with modern composers like
Kurt Weill and stage designers
like
Caspar Neher. The rising Nazi party finds his works too '
pacifistic' and
their followers start to cause turmoils at some of his plays and stageworks, notably
his '
The Silverlake' (Der Silbersee) in 1933. He finally is removed as a member from the
Prusian Academy of Arts in 1938. When he finds out that the Nazis know that he
is writing flyers for the Resistance, he flees to
Swiss, forced to leave his
family behind.
In Swiss he continues his works, completely depending on friends and relatives and
seperated from wife and kids. He dies in
Ascona in 1945.
Source:
Jurgen Schebera's Kurt Weill biography