Franz Xaver Kroetz -- banana-cutter, hospital orderly, fledgling actor and, more significantly, Germany's most popular contemporary dramatist of the seventies and early eighties. This study, which situates Kroetz's aesthetics in a political context, focuses on four plays that mark crisis points in his development of a political aesthetic. The breaks in otherwise very successful aesthetic models occur as Kroetz responds to changing social conditions.All those interested in Kroetz, as well as in broader aesthetic questions, will find that this book makes important breakthroughs.