Who wrote the two stage dramas that inspired the 1929 film Pandora’s Box?

Frank Wedekind wrote the stage dramas that inspired the 1929 film Pandora’s Box.

The film draws on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit, first performed in 1895, and Pandora’s Box, first performed in 1904. Both works center on Lulu, whose relationships expose hypocrisy, sexual double standards, and the vulnerability of people who try to control her. G. W. Pabst’s film combines material from the two dramas rather than simply filming one play.

Wedekind was a German playwright whose work often challenged bourgeois morality and theatrical convention. His Lulu cycle was controversial because it treated desire, exploitation, and social power with unusual directness. The cinematic adaptation made the character internationally famous through Louise Brooks’s performance, but the source material predates the film by decades. Thus, “Pandora’s Box” in this context refers to Wedekind’s modern drama, not Hesiod’s ancient Greek poem.