In his plays, which helped to initiate the literary movement of The New Realism ("Die neue Sachlichkeit") in the early twenties, Curt Goetz shoots barbs at certain types of bourgeois contemporaries, and he ridicules certain sanctified traditions and concepts, such as proof by circumstantial evidence in Hokuspokus and man's disbelief in peace on Earth, as in Der Ausbruch des Weltfriedens. In true comedy fashion, love is the central theme in Goetz' comedies. - Introduction.