[…] The suffering weavers are the heroes; each of the characters is merely a trait of this hero, a line in his portrait. The playbill, itself an interesting document in theater history, lists fifty characters, more than any other drama in stage literature […]
The characteristic feature of the weavers’ uprising, the absence of any political element and any actual revolutionary impulse, made the portrayal clearly effective. One could sense it: here, it was not utopian dreamers who rose up to attack the existing state; here, it was only a frenzy of despair, a delirium of hunger that had caused an excess; here, one stood before people who, full of reverence for the existing order, even accepted starvation as their fate within the beloved world order and resisted only starvation itself. The intended provocative effect was as little apparent as it was intended.
Isidor Landau – Berliner Börsen-Courier 28.2.1893