If a theater-goer in Weimar Berlin were asked to name the best living German playwright, the answer would not be Bertolt Brecht or Georg Kaiser or Arnolt Bronnen. It would be Ferdinand Bruckner. And if asked, who is this Bruckner?, the Berliner would be at a loss to give you any information. In the late 1920s, the first two plays attributed to Bruckner, Youth Is a Sickness and Criminals, were “hot tickets,” but only gradually was the pseudonymous author identified. Bruckner continues to be an understudied figure in the Weimar figure, and this updated translation of two of his most well-known plays will be the definitive version for scholars and readers interested in better understanding his legacy. Youth Is a Sickness (1924) is an important document of the “lost generation” that grew up during the first World War, born in the aftermath of cataclysm, devoid of hope and ideals, lost in sex and drugs. If Youth is a compact, claustrophobic study in juvenile derangement, Criminals
