Kohlmayer analyses the adaptation of the society comedies of Oscar Wilde to the National Socialist ideology as it was done by the translator Karl Lerbs. He first discusses the tendency to heroize both male and female characters in the plays by changing stage directions and adapting the text itself. The second focus is on the textual changes by which Wilde was turned into a propagandist of the National Socialist society model by not propagating the anti-authoritarian utopia of individual autonomy, but the message of the collective duty to heroic self-sacrifice. The study finally deals with the reception of Wilde's adapted plays by the press and concludes that during the first years of the National-Socialist regime, theatre criticism was ideologically not as homogeneous as it has generally been assumed.