Glaube Liebe Hoffnung

(Faith, Hope, and Charity) by Ödön von Horvâth.

   Premiered 1932. In this relentlessly gloomy play, neither faith, hope, nor charity is anywhere in evidence. A young woman named Elisabeth appears at the door of an "anatomical institute"—a mortuary—in an unamed Bavarian city. She tells a policeman named Alfons of her hope to sell her own corpse; she has heard that she can get 150 marks for it while still alive. Elisabeth needs the money in order to pay a fine of 150 marks the authorities have levied against her for selling corsets and ladies' underwear door-to-door without a license. An assistant mortician dissuades her, since it is not the institute's policy to purchase corpses. The assistant's boss, the chief mortician, then appears with a baron whose wife has just been killed in an auto accident. He tells the Baron he sees people like Elisabeth every day who hope to make a little money by selling their bodies. It's a sign of the times in which we live, he says. The mortician then takes temporary pity upon her and loans her the money. Elisabeth attempts to collect welfare payments from the state but is denied. "Dummheit und Stolz wachsen auf einem Holz" (Stupidity and pride grow on the same branch), jeers a clerk in the welfare office.

   All the characters seem to know each other from previous encounters. When Elisabeth makes friends with Maria, for example, she meets up with the old baron whose wife the mortician was embalming in the first scene. But the baron has reported to the police that Maria stole his cufflinks, and now she too she is arrested. Her arrest sets up the renewed acquaintance between Elisabeth and the policeman Alfons; soon they are lovers.

   On the morning following a night of lovemaking, Elisabeth makes coffee for Alfons in a scene of homey domesticity. Police then burst into the room with a warrant for Elisabeth's arrest, as she has failed to pay the fine of 150 marks. Her relationship with Alfons threatens his career, so he sorrowfully breaks it off. The final scene takes place in the police station where Alfons works. Into the station staggers the mortician from the first scene, drunk. Then bystanders bring in a listless Elisabeth; she has jumped from the bridge outside the station into the river flowing beneath it and has nearly drowned. A valiant young man in a tuxedo jumped in to save her, and he attempts artificial respiration on her. As she regains consciousness, he immediately calls his mother and tells her his picture will be in the newspaper tomorrow and everyone says he's a hero. "So—now I get the motorcycle you promised me, right?" After a pause on the phone, he exclaims, "But you promised!" Hanging up the phone, he says to her, "You old dromedary!" He was too quick to claim heroism, however, for in the commotion Elisabeth dies. "I want to confess to her murder," says the mortician; his initial pity for her probably led to her downfall. "An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Quick, hang me for it!"