SOURCE: "Cave Matrem: The Battle of the Sexes in Ernst Barlach's Der Tote Tag," in Studies in the German Drama: A Festschrift in Honor of Walter Silz, edited by Donald H. Crosby and George C. Schoolfield, The University of North Carolina Press, 1974, pp. 225-34.

In the following essay, Hatfield examines Barlach's use of the mythic "battle of the sexes" in Der tote Tag.

Barlach's Der tote Tag (1912) has been discussed rather often; remarkably often if one remembers that this is his first, and by no means his best play. Technically it is not even a passable drama; the third act consists of less than three pages (in the standard edition) relating the killing of the magic steed; the fourth and fifth act show a cast mainly composed of highly neurotic characters who rehash in a more or less tief way what the reasonably intelligent reader or spectator has...