Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned for obscenity. Schroeter alternates scenes from the Panizza’s work with a dramatization of his trial, presenting the play as an expressionist spectacle performed by actors wearing exaggerated makeup who gesture and grimace grotesquely. The film thus forms a bridge between Schroeter’s use of tableaux in his early experiments with the political urgency of his 1980s films. On the eve of the AIDS crisis, Schroeter is presciently worried about disease as an excuse for governmental repression and the oppression of sexuality. - Harvard Film Archive

Dieu et la Vierge Marie, écoeurés par la débauche humaine, demandent au Malin de leur prêter main forte pour punir les corps tout en sauvant les âmes...

Der Dichter Oskar Panizza steht vor Gericht. Er soll Rechenschaft ablegen über ein von ihm verfasstes Theaterstück, "Das Liebeskonzil", in dem nach Meinung des Gerichts Gott gelästert wird. Die Strafe ist hoch: im Falle eines Schuldspruches droht dem Dichter ein Jahr Gefängnis. Während der Zeugenvernehmung läuft vor den Augen des Gerichts das umstrittene Stück ab.