Peter Jelavich is Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin.

[This] excellent book deals with many manifestations of theatrical modernism in the pre-war Bavarian capital, including the ‘carnivalesque’ works of Frank Wedekind and Oskar Panizza, the political cabaret of groups like the Elf Scharfrichter, and the efforts to fuse Catholicism and modernism in the erotic drama of Heinrich Lautensack… A thoughtful as well as a richly detailed cultural history.