High Treason and Low Comedy: Egon Erwin Kisch’s Cabaret Plays as History and Art

High Treason and Low Comedy is the first in-depth treatment in English of E. E. Kisch’s work as a playwright, a phase of his life to which he devoted considerable effort during the years 1920–1925.The translations of his two most successful works for the cabaret stages of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia form the basis of discussions that fit them into several intersecting streams: biographical, historical, and cultural. The plays are Die Hetzjagd, which describes the last day on earth of the infamous traitor, Colonel Alfred Redl, and Die Himmelfahrt der Tonka Šibenice (Galgentoni), which presents the comical, coarse, and, at times, pathetic efforts of a Prague prosti…