Watch on the Rhine

Watch on the Rhine is a play by Lillian Hellman in which Sara Mueller, her European, anti-fascist husband, and their three children, visit Sara's wealthy mother and brother in Washington, DC. There, Sara's mother, Fanny, is already housing the odious, meddling Teck de Brancovis and his wife. Published in 1941, the play premiered at the Martin Beck Theatre the same year.

The play opens during the spring of 1940. Fanny Farrelly is at her home in Washington, DC, waiting for her daughter Sara to arrive with her family from Europe. It will be the first time that Fanny has met Sara's European husband, Kurt, and the couple's three children: Babette, Bodo, and Joshua.

Marthe and her husband, Teck De Brancovis, have fled Europe as well and are living with Fanny and her son, David. Their marriage is in trouble, and David has been flirting with Marthe. Fanny expresses privately that the couple has overstayed their welcome.



Sara and her family arrive early. Kurt reveals that he and his family have been moving for his work and living very simply. He says that their trip to Washington is only a holiday and that he considers himself an anti-fascist. Suspicious of the new arrivals, Teck rifles through the family's luggage.

A week later, Teck tells the household that he plans to leave and that Sara's family will be going as well. Fanny disagrees, as she has already begun plans for a birthday celebration for Babette.

Fanny later reveals that Teck has been visiting the German Embassy, where he has been playing poker with arms dealers and Nazis. During this discussion, Kurt plays an anti-fascist song on the piano. Meanwhile, Teck tries to get information out of Sara's children.



Marthe has gone to town to pick up dresses for the new arrivals, and she returns just as Kurt leaves to make a phone call. Teck interrogates David about a sapphire bracelet he suspects David bought for his wife, Marthe. David admits that he bought the bracelet, and Marthe says that she loves David. She tells Teck that she's leaving him and that she's staying in Washington, DC to be close to David.

Kurt returns from his call. Teck tells the household that he suspects Kurt is part of an anti-fascist resistance group led by Max Friedank, a man whom authorities had recently captured in Europe. Kurt admits that he is a part of the resistance and that he is wanted. Kurt had previously worked on the Dornier Air Craft as an engineer before joining the resistance group. With the resistance, he fought in Spain and Germany before fleeing with his family to the U.S.

Teck has decided to blackmail Kurt, and the play ends as Kurt considers what he should do.



The title of the play comes from a poem written by Max Schneckenburger in the mid-nineteenth century. The poem, "Die Wacht am Rhein," or "The Watch on the Rhine," describes the Rhine crisis of 1840 during which France claimed ownership of the Rhine River that borders the two countries. The poem expresses Germans citizens' fears that France would take possession of the left bank. A patriotic piece, the poem called for a unified state from the German principalities. Later, Karl Wilhelm adapted the poem into a song, and German soldiers sang it while marching into battle during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The song remained somewhat of a national anthem for German until 1941. In 1944, "The Watch on the Rhine" was used by the German army as a code name for the Battle of the Bulge.

The play was well-received by critics and audiences. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote that the play was well-rounded and "full of flavor and good people, and the characters control its destinies." Atkinson would later say that the structure of Watch on the Rhine was not up to par with some of Hellman's other plays, but he reiterated his respect for it, calling the play "the finest thing she has ever written." Notably, Atkinson said that the play "ought to be full of meaning a quarter of a century from now when people are beginning to wonder what life was like in America when the Nazi evil began to creep across the sea."

Life Magazine, too, had praise for the play, calling it "the most eloquent" of its subject matter, while Communist magazine The New Masses criticized her vague treatment of fascism, but also celebrated Hellman's writing. The play received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the best American play of the season in 1941.



In 1943, Herman Shumlin directed a film adaptation of the play starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas. The film won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Lukas won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his role as Kurt Miller.