Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy

Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy is an 1891 bildungsroman by the German playwright Frank Wedekind. The play chronicles a group of teenagers struggling to navigate puberty in the sexually repressive environment of fin-de-siècle provincial Germany. In its indictment of repressive bourgeois mores, the play addresses topics that prevented it from being performed until 1906, including gay relationships, masturbation, suicide, and rape. This foundational work of Modern theater is notable for the amorality of its teenage protagonists.

This guide refers to the 2007 Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, translated by Jonathan Franzen.

Content Warning: Spring Awakening depicts rape and death by suicide.

Act I opens with Wendla Bergmann arguing with her mother over the length of her skirt for her 14th birthday. Wendla admits to her mother that she sometimes ponders death and asks if doing so is sinful. Her mother chides her for thinking about such things. Wendla suggests that her mother’s restrictiveness may soon lead her to rebel.

Teenage schoolboys Melchior Gabor and Moritz Stiefel confess to one another that they’ve been fantasizing about girls. Melchior taught himself about sex and consequently isn’t ashamed of his desires; in contrast, Moritz knows nothing about sex and is deeply ashamed of his desires. Melchior offers to explain sex to Moritz at his house. Moritz’s shame and stress about his homework lead him to decline, but he asks Melchior to hide an explanation of sex in his school papers for him to read.

Another day, Melchior passes Wendla and her friends Martha and Thea on the street. The girls are impressed by his good looks and his academic rank, but Martha prefers Moritz for his soulful eyes. Martha confesses that her parents frequently beat her for no reason. The girls commiserate over not being able to make their parents happy.

Moritz sneaks into the teachers’ room to look at his grades. He returns, elated, to a group of boys, including Melchior: Moritz is tied for the last passing spot with another boy, Ernst Röbel, meaning he has passed, albeit provisionally. Moritz says that if he hadn’t passed, he would have killed himself, prompting taunts from the other boys. Melchior defends Moritz.

Wendla and Melchior encounter each other in the woods. He invites her to sit with him and asks her about helping those in poverty. He laments that he doesn’t enjoy charity as she does and lambasts the Reverend Bleekhead for preaching what Melchior believes is a hypocritical view of charity. Wendla tells Melchior how much she pities Martha, and she shares an ambiguous dream she had about being a beggar who is beaten by her father. Wendla has never been beaten and asks Melchior to hit her with a switch. Melchior refuses at first but finally capitulates and hits her lightly. When she asks him to hit her harder, he explodes and beats her with his fists. He flees in tears.

Act II begins with Moritz—stressed about the prospect of expulsion—arriving at Melchior’s house to study. Moritz feels that his parents have sacrificed everything for him to attend school, and he fears that his failing will kill them. Melchior’s mother, Mrs. Gabor, enters and tells Moritz to study less. She tells Melchior he is too young to be reading Faust because it contains sex and asks him to abandon it. After she leaves, Melchior laments that sex seems to pervade every aspect of life. The two boys discuss sex. Moritz tells a story about a beautiful but headless queen who is only complete when she marries a two-headed king. Moritz wishes he could experience a woman’s orgasm because he believes it’s more pleasurable than a man’s. He confesses that sometimes he feels like the headless queen. Melchior tells him not to talk about such things.

Wendla’s mother tells her that the stork brought her sister, Ina, another baby. Wendla challenges this story and implores her mother to teach her about reproduction. Mrs. Bergmann tells her that children are the product of marital love.

Wendla finds Melchior hiding in a hayloft during a storm. Ashamed of beating her, he shouts for her to leave; she stays. Wendla begs him not to kiss her, suggesting that they risk having a baby if they’re in love. He rapes her.

The next day, Wendla picks flowers in a dreamy haze. She says she’s ready to don the adult dress her mother made her and wishes there were someone she could embrace and talk to.

Moritz writes to Mrs. Gabor, requesting money to flee to America and escape his life’s pressures. She refuses, warning him against such rash actions. She chastises him for threatening to kill himself should she deny his request, but she allows that he is young and confused.

Moritz enters the woods, intending to kill himself. He feels he has been fatally flawed since birth and that his parents will fare better without him. Ilse, a girl who graduated from his school, interrupts Moritz’s solitude. She has found freedom from her provincial upbringing in being a model and sex worker for a group of painters in the city. She invites Moritz to have sex with her; he declines, citing homework. After she leaves, he curses himself and her. He shoots himself in the head.

Act III opens with the teachers at the school deciding to scapegoat Melchior for Moritz’s death to distract from their inaction during a suicide epidemic. The school expels Melchior for his explanation of sex found in Moritz’s things, blaming his corruptive influence for Moritz’s death. At Moritz’s funeral, the adults rail against Moritz for the alleged cowardice and selfishness of his suicide, and his father disowns him. After the adults leave, Martha and Ilse lay flowers on his grave.

Mrs. Gabor sees that the school is scapegoating her son and threatens to divorce her husband if he sends Melchior to a reformatory as punishment. Mr. Gabor produces a letter from Melchior to Wendla in which he confesses his rape and begs forgiveness. Shocked and worried about this information getting out, the Gabors send Melchior to the reformatory and destroy the letter.

When Wendla falls ill, her mother tells her she is pregnant. Wendla insists this is impossible because she has never loved anyone but her mother, and she asks why her mother didn’t tell her the truth. Mrs. Bergmann arranges for an abortion to avoid the ignominy of a nonmarital child. The abortionist botches the procedure and Wendla dies.

Months later after learning of Wendla’s death, Melchior escapes from the reformatory and hides in a cemetery. Over Wendla’s grave, Melchior proclaims his guilt in her death.

The headless ghost of Moritz greets Melchior. He invites Melchior to join him in death, promising relief from his woes. Melchior is about to accept Moritz’s offer when a mysterious figure, the Masked Man, appears to stop him. The Masked Man condemns Moritz’s hollow promise of freedom and promises to guide Melchior through life’s vicissitudes. Melchior agrees, and he and Moritz share a heartfelt goodbye. Moritz returns to the empty pleasure of his grave as Melchior exits with the Masked Man.