 A moment later, the apartment suffers a gas explosion from the stove, killing Maria and Hermann.The idea for "The Marriage of Maria Braun" can be traced to the collaboration of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander Kluge on the unrealized television project "The Marriage of our Parents" ("Die Ehen unserer Eltern"), which was developed after the critical success of the omnibus film "Germany in Autumn".Fassbinder worked on a draft screenplay together with Klaus-Dieter Lang and Kurt Raab and presented it in the early summer of 1977 to his longtime collaborator Peter Märthesheimer, who at that time was working as a dramaturge at the Bavaria Film Studios.