Vor Sonnenaufgang

At first glance, everything is going wonderfully for the Krause family: The thriving business has been successfully passed down from one generation to the next. Son-in-law Thomas now runs it and helps ensure that the multigenerational household maintains its upper-middle-class status. His wife Martha, one of the family’s two adult daughters, is also expecting a child—a male heir, at last. Helene, the second daughter, arrives to lend a hand. So everything is in perfect order—until that one night, shortly before the birth. Loth, a college friend of Thomas’, shows up unexpectedly and, with his probing questions, brings to light everything that had been skillfully concealed: Martha’s depression, her father’s alcoholism, her stepmother’s abandonment, and the loneliness they all feel. He’s particularly interested in why Thomas has switched sides. There’s no trace left in him of the shared ideals they had during their college days—quite the opposite, in fact. The political and personal rifts between the two are deep. For Helene, Loth’s arrival brings hope for the future. She finds love in Loth—until sunrise, until disaster strikes the family.

 With this social drama from 1889, Gerhart Hauptmann sparked one of the greatest theater scandals: “Before Sunrise” is considered one of the first plays of naturalism. 

Ewald Palmetshofer, one of the most important contemporary playwrights, transposes the play into the present day, a time marked by the breakdown of social cohesion. His stirring portrait of a family moves from the personal to the universal and back again.