Stranitzky, Josef Anton

(1676–1726)

   Generally acknowledged as the father of Viennese popular theater, Stranitzky was an actor, a writer, a theatrical entrepreneur, and, until the end of his life, a practicing dentist. The leader of a group of itinerant players around Salzburg, he drifted to Vienna in 1705. There, despite the opposition of municipal authorities and the Habsburg court, which favored the numerous Italian theatrical companies in the city, he presented comic plays in German. These became very popular with the local middle classes.

   By 1712, Stranitzky was director of his Theater at the Kärntnertor (Carinthian Gate), where he and his players offered broad, often downright vulgar, spoofs and parodies of the static and pompous Baroque drama of the day. Much of the action was improvised, not scripted, and owed a great deal to the Italian commedia dell’ arte. Hanswurst, or Johnny Sausage, a German-language Harlequin, often played by Stranitzky himself, had a central role in the action. Dressed in Salzburg peasant garb and speaking the dialect of the area as well, he derided the manners and mannerisms of the high and mighty and made his way through life by nimble wit and amoral self-interest. Audiences were overwhelmingly enthusiastic. As the years went by, Hanswurst gradually became a Viennese stereotype, now using the patois of the capital city, Wienerisch. The plays themselves added many other visible Viennese figures—confectioners, bakers, recently arrived servants from the countryside, and the like.