After attending a performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s (1874–1929) mystery play “Jedermann” (Everyman), which was staged at the Schumann Circus, Käthe Kollwitz wrote to her son Hans in January 1912:
“In the evening we went to see Jedermann. […] I thought it was wonderful, and Moissi in particular was enchantingly charming and spirited. […] This role seems to have been made for him. He plays Hamlet, but here he is the spoiled, beautiful, charmingly weak young man who finds dying so terribly difficult. How he finally understands what dying means and that none of his earthly pleasures remain, how he takes off his thick gold chain and throws it far away, his rings far away, with the expression of a spoiled, dear boy who feels that he is being treated very unfairly and is about to cry. It was all wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And in this naive spectacle, which operates with the Grim Reaper, angels, and devils as if, God knows, we weren’t living in the 20th century, one becomes—at least I do—so completely gripped by the horror of inexorable death.”