Play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As a twenty-three-year-old law student, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began work on what would later become his most famous work. Inspired by the injustice perpetrated by the justice system against the alleged infanticide Margaretha Brandt, he drafted the drama about a young woman who is seduced by an older man, left pregnant and ultimately executed for the murder of her child in accordance with the law in force at the time. The original draft of Germany's best-known drama focuses on the fate of a young woman and her downfall
in an inhumane system. It was only many years later, and at the urging of his friend Schiller, that Goethe reworked the original material into his great explanation of the world.
For ages 16 and up
