Frankenburger Würfelspiel

The Frankenburger Würfelspiel (Frankenburg Dice Game) is a Thingspiel (a Nazi-era multi-disciplinary open-air drama) by Eberhard Wolfgang Möller based on the historical event of the same name in Frankenburg am Hausruck, Upper Austria. It received its première in Berlin in association with the 1936 Summer Olympics and the inauguration of the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne, the Berlin Thingstätte which is now the Waldbühne (Forest Stage), and was the most successful Thingspiel.

In May 1625, during the Counter-Reformation, Baron von Herberstorff, Governor of Upper Austria and acting on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, tried to forcibly reintroduce Catholicism in Frankenburg. The Lutheran peasants resisted, so he made 36 men roll dice against each other in pairs for their lives; the losers were hanged. The incident touched off a peasants' revolt in Upper Austria, the last Peasants' War. Möller's work based on the event was the only drama of the Third Reich which was written as a ministerial commission; Möller, who was one of the prominent theorists of the Thingspiel movement, was asked by the Olympic Committee to write a play for the inauguration of the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne (the Berlin Thingstätte named for Dietrich Eckart) at the upcoming Berlin Olympics, and from the ideas he submitted, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels chose the Frankenburg story. Möller said that "he felt [the Frankenburg event] called from beyond the grave for [judgement]," and that in writing the drama about it he used as models: "in addition to Orestes, Ludus de Antichristo, and a few mystery plays, George Kaiser's expressionist play Die Bürger von Calais (The Citizens of Calais) and Stravinsky's Ödipus Rex (Oedipus Rex)."

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