Mixed Celebrations: Grillparzer and Nestroy

The most important Austrian playwrights of the mid-nineteenth century, Grillparzer and Nestroy, enjoyed public success but also mixed fortunes both in the theatre and in their private lives. Grillparzer played a part in the funerals of Beethoven and Schubert, while Nestroy was left by his wife and later lost his closest actor friend, Wenzel Scholz; as playwrights both met successes and flops on the stage, Grillparzer withdrawing from the stage after 1838, Nestroy constantly facing hostile press critics. Nowadays achievements in the theatre are celebrated in exhibition catalogues, the relative standing of the two playwrights being notably reflected in those of 1991 and 2001, the years of the bicentenary of Grillparzer's and Nestroy's births respectively.