Which German playwright wrote the dramas Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box about Lulu?

Frank Wedekind wrote Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, the two dramas centered on Lulu.

Wedekind was a German playwright whose work challenged bourgeois morality and conventional theatrical form. Earth Spirit was first performed in 1895, while Pandora’s Box followed in 1904. The plays present Lulu’s life through themes including sexual politics, social hypocrisy, coercion, and the instability of respectability.

His Lulu cycle later inspired major adaptations. Alban Berg transformed the material into the opera Lulu, and Georg Wilhelm Pabst adapted it for the 1929 film Pandora’s Box. These versions differ in structure and emphasis, but all retain the figure of Lulu and the tragic atmosphere associated with her story.

Wedekind’s title should not be mistaken for Hesiod’s ancient Greek myth. His Pandora’s Box is a modern European drama whose title uses the myth as a cultural and symbolic reference.