Schnitzler entrusted the play’s Hungarian translation to the dramatist Sándor Bródy; this was published in Budapest in 1904 under the imprint of Wiener Verlag’s owner, Fritz Freund. On 13 October 1912 a small avant-garde Budapest theatre, the Uj Szinpad, gave the first full staging of the whole play, in Bródy’s translation, directed by Albert Kövessy. The authorities banned it after a single performance.

Reports reached Schnitzler of unlicensed performances in Moscow and St Petersburg in early 1917, and of Austrian prisoners-of-war acting scenes from the play in a Russian camp. In November 1918, the great Austrian director Max Reinhardt approached Schnitzler for permission to stage La Ronde in Berlin. After much delay, but persuaded of the seriousness of Reinhardt’s intentions, he finally agreed. However, Reinhardt resigned in the summer of 1920, and the production was entrusted to the highly-regarded Austrian director Hubert Reusch. The premiere was announced for 23 December 1920 in the Kleines Schauspielhaus. A few hours before curtain-up, the music academy from whom the theatre was leased obtained an injunction against performance on the grounds of the play’s immorality; this was ignored and the premiere went ahead, to mostly favourable reviews. The injunction was lifted on 6 January 1921 with the judges, who had attended a performance, calling the work a ‘moral deed’. On 22 February 1921, protestors stormed the theatre. The public prosecutor’s office investigated and, after concerted lobbying from influential opponents of the play, brought proceedings for offences of public indecency against Reusch, the cast and the theatre managers. The defence marshalled a notable array of expert witnesses at the six-day trial, which resulted in the acquittal of all thirteen defendants on 18 November 1921.

Meanwhile, on 1 February 1921, La Ronde had been presented at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna: Schnitzler had monitored rehearsals and the first performance went off without protest. Some of the press praised the play’s artistic content but objected to the fact that such explicit scenes were being performed in public; the right-wing papers, however, denounced it, urging readers to make their feelings known. Several performances were interrupted by violent protestors and, in 16 February 1921, a mob of some 600 wrecked the theatre. The following day the police forbade any further performances. The Austrian government supported this move and ordered the Social Democrat mayor to follow suit; this was soon declared unconstitutional, and stormy scenes in parliament ensued, including a failed attempt to impeach the mayor. Performances resumed on 7 March 1922, in a theatre bristling with police. Productions elsewhere in Europe in 1922 each gave rise to protest and controversy, and from that year on, Schnitzler refused all requests for public performance rights.