Which playwright wrote the 1904 drama Pandora’s Box that inspired Pabst’s 1929 film?

Frank Wedekind wrote the 1904 drama Pandora’s Box that inspired Pabst’s 1929 film.

Frank Wedekind was a German playwright whose Lulu dramas became important works of modern European theater. Pandora’s Box, published in 1904, is the second of the two plays centered on Lulu; the first is Earth Spirit, published in 1895. Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1929 film combines material from both plays.

Wedekind’s Lulu is not Pandora from Hesiod’s Greek mythology. She is a modern dramatic character whose sexuality, social position, and relationships expose hypocrisy and power struggles. The shared title connects the play and film to the older myth through metaphor, suggesting that Lulu’s presence releases destructive consequences.

The work was controversial because of its frank treatment of sexuality and social conventions. Its stage history and later adaptations helped establish Lulu as a recurring figure in twentieth-century theater, opera, and cinema. Alban Berg later adapted the Lulu material into the opera Lulu, but Wedekind remains the original playwright behind the two dramas.