Who wrote the 1904 play Pandora’s Box, adapted by Pabst into his 1929 film?

Frank Wedekind wrote the 1904 play Pandora’s Box adapted by Pabst into his 1929 film.

Frank Wedekind was a German playwright whose controversial dramas examined sexuality, repression, social hypocrisy, and the limits imposed by respectable society. His play Die Büchse der Pandora, usually translated as Pandora’s Box, was first published and performed in the early twentieth century. It continues the story of Lulu, a character introduced in Wedekind’s earlier play Erdgeist, or Earth Spirit.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst drew on both plays for his 1929 silent film. Louise Brooks’s Lulu is therefore a modern theatrical character, not the woman created by the gods in Hesiod’s Greek myth. Wedekind’s title uses the Pandora image as a metaphor for danger and unleashed consequences.

The play’s history includes censorship and controversy because of its frank treatment of sexuality. Its connection to the ancient myth is thematic and titular, while its plot belongs to modern German drama.