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Some of them were first stirred to action by Wedekind's powerful drama "The Awakening of Spring," which, with Teutonic grimness, thrusts over the footlights the lesson that death and degradation may be the fate of a group of gifted school-children, because of the cowardly reticence of their parents.
Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world forever hindering individual and social emancipation. Max Halbe's JUGEND and Wedekind's FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature.
The cleverest of this group of plays strictly intended for sexual education—as Shaw's “Mrs. Warren's Profession” or plays of Pinero and similar ones would belong only indirectly in this circle—is probably Wedekind's “Spring's Awakening.” It brought to Germany, and especially to Berlin, any education which the Friedrichstrasse had failed to bring.
Shaw is right in saying that if you wish to make swift propaganda seek the theatre, not the pulpit, nor the book. With the majority Wedekind's name was anathema. A certain minority called him the new Messiah, that was to lead youth into the promised land of freedom.
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