Carl Zuckmayer

„It’s a big joke. In the first act when the song about „Rehlein“ is sung; when the Rhinelanders are quarreling about what to sing; then, when the big fight breaks loose and when they drink to it, and this resonates in German hearts: then the audience roars even more than the actors.
I don’t spoil the fun. Why? Because it might save the theatre today from the unbridled literary rubbish: from the ambitious powerlessness, from the drivelling chaos…. and it might build a last dam against the already predominant cinema.” (Alfred Kerr on the world premiere in 1925)