1918: Arthur Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi

The stage play Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler was submitted by the author to the censorship authorities of the city of Vienna in the fall of 1912. Its staging was shortly thereafter banned due to a fear of public unrest. The premiere of this play therefore took place at the end of 1912 at the Kleines Theater in Berlin. In Vienna, Professor Bernhardi was finally staged for the first time at the end of the First World War, in December 1918. This made it one of the first staged plays in the Republic. “Professor Bernhardi, a Jew, denied a Catholic priest access to the deathbed”, concluded the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung on December 23, 1918.

It was initially banned because of its open discussion of anti-Semitism and abortion. In the play, Bernhardi did not want to allow a priest to go to a woman who was unaware that she was about to die, due to complications from an abortion, to let her know that she was going to die. This denial of the final Christian sacrament led to a conflict between Bernhardi and a Catholic doctor, both of whom were also competing for the top position at the clinic.