Bauer, Wolfgang

(1941- )

   Playwright. Bauer was a Viennese playwright whose hilarious depictions of "swinging Vienna" in the late 1960s enjoyed enormous popularity and then quickly faded into obscurity. They included Magic Afternoon, which many observers at the time considered the seminal play of the "68ers" — students in both Germany and Austria who began clamoring for a confrontation with the Nazi past. Magic Afternoon had nothing whatsoever to do with Nazis, however. Its subjects were sex, drugs, rock and roll, violence, and boredom on one afternoon in Vienna. His subsequent efforts included Change (1969), Party for Six (1969), and Gespenster (Ghosts, 1974), none of which were as popular as Magic Afternoon. Yet they established him as a popular playwright, with his hand temporarily on the pulse of the postwar generation.