DER PRÄSIDENT (The President) , premiered on the 17th May 1975 in the Burgtheater of Vienna,  is the first play of political genre by  Thomas Bernhard. Its  action takes place partly in Portugal, in Estoril, still at the time of the dictatorship.  
The President of a country whose name is not indicated, but is supposedly located in Central Europe, escapes by chance from an attack perpetrated by "anarchists", among which is his own son, and comes to Portugal to rest accompanied by his mistress, a second-class actress, while his wife goes to the mountains, probably also with a lover. In the last scene, very brief, the president's corpse, who finally died in an attack, presumably by his own son, is lying in the funeral room.
The references of the president to the "pleasant atmosphere" of the "Atlantic coast", on addressing Portuguese officials that are with him in the Casino Estoril, show his affinities with Salazar's Portugal where "without danger / without the worry of being shot", one can "eat and drink well". "And because you here", the president adds "have a whip hand on everything /  you don't have the luxury of having anarchists", since "the great number of your prisons /  guarantee / tranquillity and order."  
Thomas Bernhard – it is clarified - was not a politician, and we can even state that he disliked politics and politicians. And the first words pronounced by the president’s wife ("ambition / hate / nothing else"), repeated several times during the play, constitute, so to speak, a slogan of politics, even for the author himself, that we can consider something as  "elitist."
ANTÓNIO PALMA CAETANO, TRANSLATOR OF DER PRÄSIDENT (THE PRESIDENT)

Production: ALMADA THEATRE