Götz von Berlichingen

   by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Premiered 1774. Goethe based this play on a Franconian knight who lost his hand in a 1504 battle and thereafter used an iron prosthesis (hence the play's subtitle, With the Iron Hand). Götz von Berlichingen became known to most Germans through the publication of his autobiography in 1731, and Goethe based much of his play on that publication. In the play, Goethe portrays Götz as a swashbuckling freedom fighter frequently at odds with establishment figures like bishops and dukes. Götz reluctantly joins his friend Franz von Sickingen on the side of the peasants in the Peasants' Revolt of 1524-1525; he is eventually captured and dies in prison, "Freedom! Freedom!" his final utterance. Götz von Berlichingen was Goethe's first stage hit, and it helped to inaugurate the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement in German drama.