ZUCKMAYER, Carl (LITERATURE)

Born: Nackenheim, Germany, 27 December 1896. Education: Educated at the Gymnasium, Mainz, 1903-14; studied biology at the University of Heidelberg, 1918-20. Military Service: Volunteer with the German army in France, 1914-18: lieutenant. Family: Married 1) Annemarie Gans in 1920 (divorced 1921); 2) the actress Alice Frank in 1925, two daughters (one adopted). Career: Voluntary worker and freelance writer, Berlin, 1920; visited Norway and Lapland, 1920-22; director, Stadttheater, Kiel, 1922-23; worked for Max Reinhardt, Berlin, 1923-25 and with Bertolt Brecht, 1924; plays banned by the Nazi regime; lived in Austria, 1925-38; moved to Switzerland after the German annexation of Austria; emigrated to the United States, 1939; worked briefly as a scriptwriter in Hollywood;lecturer, Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop, New School for Social Research, New York, 1941; farmer, Barnard, Vermont, 1941-46; returned to Germany as cultural adviser for the American Military Administration, 1946; divided his time between homes in the United States and Europe, 1947-58; settled in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, 1958; gave up American citizenship. Awards: Kleist prize, 1926; Buchner prize, 1929; Heidelberg Festival prize, 1929; Goethe prize, 1952; Vienna Culture prize, 1955. Great Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, with Star, 1955. Died: 18 January 1977.

Publications

Plays

Kreuzweg (produced 1920). 1921.

Eunuch, from a play by Terence (produced 1923).


Pankraz erwacht; oder, die Hinterwalder (produced 1925). 1978.

Kiktahan; oder, Die Hinterwalder (produced 1925). 1925.

Der frohliche Weinberg (produced 1925). 1925.

Schinderhannes (produced 1927). 1927.

Rivalen (produced 1928). 1929.

Katharina Knie (produced 1928). 1929.

Kakadu-Kakada (for children; produced 1929). 1929.

Der Hauptmann von Kopenick (produced 1931). 1930; as The Captain of Kopenick, translated by David Portmann, 1932.

Kat, with Heinz Hilpert, from a novel by Ernest Hemingway (produced 1931).

Der Schelm von Bergen (produced 1934). 1934. Ulla Winblad; oder, Musik und Leben des Carl Michael Bellman (produced as Bellmann 1938). 1938; revised version (produced 1953), 1953.

Somewhere in France (produced 1941).

Des Teufels General (produced 1946). 1946; as The Devil’s General, translated by Robert Gore Browne, 1953; also translated by Ingrid G. and William F. Gilbert, in Masters of Modern Drama, edited by Haskell M. Block and Robert G. Shedd, 1962.

Die deutschen Dramen. 1947.

Barbara Blomberg (produced 1949). 1949.

Der Gesang im Feuerofen (produced 1950). 1950.

Herbert Engelmann, completion of the play by Hauptmann (produced 1952). 1952.

Das kalte Licht (produced 1955). 1955. Dramen. 1960.

Die Uhr schlagt eins (produced 1961). 1961.

Der Kranichtanz (produced 1967). In Die neue Rundschau, 74(4), 1961.

Mainzer Umzug, music by Paul Hindemith (produced 1962). 1962.

Das Leben des Horace A. W. Tabor (produced 1964). 1964.

Der Rattenfanger (produced 1975). 1975.

Screenplays: Qualender Nacht, 1925; Der blaue Engel, 1930; Escape Me Never, 1935; Rembrandt, 1936; De Mayerling a Sarajevo, 1940; Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach, 1953.

Fiction

Ein Bauer aus dem Taunus und andere Geschichten (stories). 1927.

Die Affenhochzeit. 1932; as Monkey Wedding, translated by F.A. Beaumont, in Argosy, (23), 1938.

Eine Liebesgeschichte. 1934; as Love Story, translated by F.A. Beaumont, in Argosy, (22), 1937.

Salware; oder, die Magdalena von Bozen. 1936; as The Moons Ride Over, translated by Moray Firth, 1937; as The Moon in the South, translated by Firth, 1937.

Ein Sommer in Osterreich. 1937.

Herr uber Leben und Tod. 1938.

Der Seelenbrau. 1945.

Die Erzahlungen. 1952.

Engele von Lowen. 1955.

Die Fastnachtsbeichte. 1959; as Carnival Confession, translated by John and Necke Mander, 1961.

Erzahlungen. 1960.

Geschichten aus vierzig Jahren. 1963.

Auf einem Weg im FrUhling. 1970.

Verse

Der Baum. 1926.

Gedichte 1916-1948. 1948.

Gedichte. 1960.

Other

Pro Domo (essay). 1938.

Second Wind (autobiography), translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. 1940.

Carlo Mierendorff: Portrat eines deutschen Sozialisten. 1947.

Die BrUder Grimm: Ein deutscher Beitrag zur Humanitat. 1948.

Die langen Wege. 1952.

Ein Blick auf den Rhein, with others. 1957.

Ein Weg zu Schiller. 1959.

Gesammelte Werke. 4 vols., 1960.

Ein voller Erdentag; Festrede zu Gerhart Hauptmann hundertstem Geburtstag. 1962.

Als wars ein StUck von mir (autobiography). 1966; as A Part of Myself, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, 1970.

Scholar zwischen gestern und morgen. Ein Vortrag. 1967.

Memento zum zwanzigsten Juli 1969. 1969

Uber die musiche Bestimmung des Menschen, Rede zur Eroffnung der Salzburger Festspiele (essay), edited by Max Kaindl-Honig. 1970.

Carl Zuckmayer in Mainz (address), translated by Walter Heist. 1970.

Werkausgabe 1920-1975. 10 vols., 1976.

Spate Freundschaft: Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Barth in Briefen, edited by Hinrich Stoevesandt. 1977; as A Late Friendship: The Letters of Karl Barth and Carl Zuckmayer, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 1982.

Critical Studies:

Motive und Dramaturgie im Schauspiel Carl Zuckmayers by Arnold J. Jacobius, 1971; Carl Zuckmayer by Arnold Bauer, 1976; Der Hauptmann von Kopenick: Erlauterungen und Dokumente edited by Hartmut Schieble, 1977; The Central Women Figures in Carl Zuckmayer’s Dramas by Ausma Balinkin, 1978; Ohne Glanz und Gloria: Die Geschichte des Hauptmanns von Kopenick by Winifried Loschburg, 1978; Carl Zuckmayer by Siegfried Mews, 1981; Carl Zuckmayer, ”Der Hauptmann von Kopenick": Interpretation und Materialien by Hans Gehrke, 1983; Carl Zuckmayer by Hans Waggener, 1983; Carl Zuckmayer Criticism: Tracing Endangered Fame by Hans Wagener, 1995.

Carl Zuckmayer is chiefly known as a playwright who produced stage hits in the 1920s and then again immediately after World War II. Yet Zuckmayer’s total work is fairly extensive and includes drama, prose, lyric poetry, adaptations for the stage, and film scripts—among them Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel).

Zuckmayer’s early plays, the expressionist Kreuzweg [Crossroads] and the experimental Pankraz erwacht [Pankraz Awakens], achieved neither critical nor popular success. The playwright then turned to the folk-play in the vein of the New Objectivity. In contrast to Expressionism, the New Objectivity of the 1920s concentrated on the here and now and a factual style of representation; it dispensed with the feverish atmosphere of Expressionist lays, their anti-bourgeois sentiments, and their predilection for revolutions and wars as the harbingers of a better future.

The hugely successful Der frohliche Weinberg [The Merry Vineyard] was Zuckmayer’s first play in the new mode. It is firmly rooted in the playwright’s native soil, the wine-growing Rhine region, and adopts characteristics of the region’s people and their dialect. The play’s uncomplicated plot, its employment of time-honoured come-dic devices, and its earthy humour conform to the tradition of the folk-play. Above all, the play exudes an unbridled zest for life and displays a conciliatory attitude that tends to minimize existing social barriers and humorously de-emphasize the disquieting right-wing views expressed by one character. In the play’s conventional happy ending, which features no less than four engagements, all complications are resolved.

The following two dramas from the late 1920s are also in the tradition of the folk-play and take place in the playwright’s home region. Schinderhannes is named after protagonist Johannes (Hannes) Wilhelm Buckler, a kind of German Robin Hood of the late 1700s. Although Zuckmayer portrays Schinderhannes as a friend of the people, the outlaw is not primarily motivated by social compassion or the attainment of political goals: he simply follows his natural inclination for showing off his strength and prowess. Schinderhannes’s execution cannot prevent the triumph of the life force, symbolized in Schinderhannes’s surviving child. Katharina Knie features a courageous and determined heroine who returns to the family circus and assumes its directorship after the death of her father. The conflict between two antithetical modes of existence, the artists’ and the middleclasses’ ways of life, is not fully developed, and the play suffers from a heavy dose of sentimentality.

Zuckmayer’s best-known play, Der Hauptmann von Kopenick (The Captain of Kopenick), is based on a historical incident, the impersonation of a captain by the ex-convict and unemployed cobbler Wilhelm Voigt in 1906. Voigt’s theft of the city’s municipal funds in the town of Kopenick (then outside the city limits of Berlin) was widely interpreted as an indictment of German-Prussian militarism and the reverence for uniform in imperial Germany. But Zuckmayer’s criticism of a social system that attributes exaggerated importance to the military is muted. There are no real villains in the play, and most of the representatives of the system appear in a sympathetic light. In fairytale-like fashion the captain’s uniform assumes a life of its own and displays magical powers that seem to absolve its wearers from responsibility for their acts. The non-antagonistic ending—Voigt bursts out laughing when he sees himself for the first time in the captain’s uniform—confirms the play’s status as ”metaphysical” theatre. Its thrust is not directed against specific political institutions or specific individuals functioning in a social context; rather, it takes issue with the system’s underlying abstract ideas and general principles.

Zuckmayer’s involuntary exile from Germany during the Nazi period—first in Austria and, after the Anschluss of 1938, in the United States—seriously affected his creativity and severely curtailed his publishing opportunities. Since plays were difficult to stage, Zuckmayer primarily wrote prose fiction and film scripts. But during his World War II exile in remote Vermont, he created what was to become his most controversial play, Des Teufels General (The Devil’s General). An ambitious attempt to offer an explanation for many Germans’ backing of Hitler, the play was intensely debated in post-war Germany owing to Zuckmayer’s portrayal of a great number of characters with a wide range of views on Nazism—from outright opposition to whole-hearted and unequivocal support. The protagonist, Nazi general Harras, solves his moral dilemma of being both an opponent of Hitler and his servant by submitting to ”divine judgement.” He flies a defective aeroplane in which he crashes and is killed. Harras’s death does not answer the question of how to combat the demonic forces of evil; hence the message of the play remains ambivalent. Despite Zuckmayer’s ultimately placating stance towards Harras and his wavering attitude towards the chief representative of the anti-Nazi resistance, the drama played a vital role in Germany’s coming to terms with the Nazi past, the so-called Vergangenheitsbewaltigung.

None of Zuckmayer’s subsequent dramas struck as responsive a chord as The Devil’s General. Plays such as Der Gesang im Fueurofen [The Song of the Fiery Furnace], which deals with the theme of resistance and betrayal, and Das kalte Licht [Cold Light], which is loosely based on the story of atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, treat political and topical issues related to World War II and the Cold War—albeit in humanitarian and individualistic rather than political terms. However, Zuckmayer’s autobiography, Als wars ein Stuck von mir (A Part of Myself), was enthusiastically received, and its publication in 1966 confirmed his position as ”the grand old man of German letters.” ”Portrait of an Epoch,” the subtitle of the abridged English translation, provides an indication of the range that Zuckmayer’s personal history encompasses—from the turn of the century to the 1950s and beyond. One of the significant themes of the autobiography is that of friendship; friendship is the bedrock of Zuckmayer’s humanitarian vision and optimistic outlook on life.

Presumably, Zuckmayer’s comparatively limited reception in the English-speaking world is attributable to the fact that he is a quintessentially German author whose best plays address incisive moments in 20th-century German history. As a contemporary fully attuned to the problems of his times, the playwright manages in some of his plays to transcend mere topicality and to provide in masterfully realistic and nonideological fashion insights into the dilemmas human beings in our century were confronted with.

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