In a conversation with Lania which had taken place about the time when we were founding our theater (I had put up Lania’s General Strike [Generalstreik] for performance at the Volksbuhne at the time of the English miners’ strike, because the subject and the form seemed to me worthy of production), he had suggested an idea for a comedy which I liked very much. What he had in mind was to show how profiteers use revolutions, and to prove that the revolutionary idea also triumphs over the personalities who try to misuse it.