Kaiser, Georg [key], 1878–1945, German expressionist playwright. His early plays dealt with the erotic and the psychological. In maturity Kaiser turned to social themes, glorifying the ideal of sacrifice for the mass interest and attacking the brutality of the machine age. He fled Germany for Switzerland when the Nazis came to power. Among his many dramas are The Citizens of Calais (1914, tr. 1946), From Morn to Midnight (1916, tr. 1920), and the trilogy The Coral (1917, tr. 1929), Gas (1918, tr. 1924), and Gas II (1920).
See studies by R. Benson (1984) and P. Tyson (1984).
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