Carl Zuckmayer

Katharina Knie
Musical nach dem gleichnamigen Schauspiel (kleine Fassung)
3 D, 10 H, St, 1 Dek
During the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic at the beginning of the 1920s, a troupe of acrobats is experiencing an existential crisis. Alongside worries about making a living, old Knie is distressed by his daughter Katharina, who does not feel at home in a circus wagon and longs for a completely different life. During a performance in a small town in Rheinland-Palatinate, Katharina steals a few sacks of oats for her donkey from a local landowner, Rothacker. When Rothacker gets to know the girl, he withdraws his complaint to the police and offers her a position as a pupil on the farmstead. Karl Knie lets his daughter go, with the firm belief that she will come back.
One year later, the troupe is back in town, and Katharina comes to tell her father that she is going to stay on the farm and marry Rothacker. But Karl Knie believes that his daughter has come to take up her old mantel again, and dies before he learns of his error. Through this tragic event, Katharina realises where she really belongs. She breaks off her engagement with Rothacker and saves her father’s company from ruin.