Murderer, the Hope of Women

Murderer, the Hope of Women has often been called the first Expressionist drama due to its symbolic use of colours, innovative lighting, and the movements of the actors.

On the night of its first performance, soldiers from a nearby barracks watched the play from the edge of the garden and, upon the Man’s branding of the Woman, rushed through the barrier.

[3] The play is characteristic of the internal and external struggle consistent with the artistic and literary works of Vienna at this time, as is evident through the plot.

In his biography, Kokoschka describes his battle to come to terms with the "existential malaise" that he felt had gripped the world and the disbelief of the "possibility of individual action or the control of one’s own future.

The playwright Paul Kornfeld praised the revolutionary drama as a breakthrough art form, calling it a "verbally supported pantomime.".

In the 1917 edition of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Bernhard Diebold condemned the play as nothing but a collection of "screaming images" and a "pretentious Decoration Drama.".

[5] The drama critic Walter Sokel has admired the play's departure from realism and its exploration into the surrealism underlying its biblical and mythical allusions.

[7] Paul Hindemith's expressionist opera in one act Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen used a 1917 version of the play, revised by Kokoschka himself, as libretto.