There are three major periods of German documentary theatre: the emerging genre in the 1920s with the theatre of Erwin Piscator; the documentary drama in the 1960s; and, beginning in the late 1990s, the new forms of alternative and independent theatre that are highly experiential and question the conception and performance of historical discourses. In the context of German postwar social history, documentary theatre has contributed to the repoliticization of a society that is still processing catastrophic historical events.