Petty Bourgeois Wedding

Bertolt Brecht
PETTY BOURGEOIS WEDDING
September 11, 2026, at 8:00 PM
Fran Žižek Hall
More about the play: https://www.sng-mb.si/event/malomescanska-svatba/
In the one-act play Petty Bourgeois Wedding (1919), one of Brecht's earliest dramatic works written at the age of twenty-one, the author uses a wedding celebration as a microcosm through which he (post)shows numerous macro-social problems. With satire and black humor, he highlights the absurdities that arise when, behind the facade of a happy event for a respectable family, hidden truths are revealed one after another, and petty bourgeois rotten morality crumbles before the audience's eyes like the groom's homemade furniture. Many Germans, especially representatives of the largest middle class, experienced deep political, economic, social, material, and spiritual emptiness after the ignominious defeat in World War I, so they needed someone to fill the void and rekindle their faith in a life worthy of the (petty) bourgeoisie, or as Brecht writes: "They realized that without leadership they were just a flock of sheep. 'If you don't properly tighten us, yell at us, and slap us in the face, we'll remain pathetic rags,' they said, 'we can't go on like this anymore.' Fortunately, a leader was found, and they handed over power to him..."