Carl Zuckmayer’s collected works, Werkausgabe in zehn Bänden, 1920-1975 (1976), consists of ten volumes. In addition to his plays, Zuckmayer’s works include the novel Salwàre (1936; The Moon in the South, 1937), numerous short stories and poems, as well as two volumes of an autobiographical nature—Pro Domo (1938) and Als wärs ein Stück von mir (1969; A Part of Myself: Portrait of an Epoch, 1970). He also wrote several film scripts and adaptations of American plays for the German stage.

The mention of Carl Zuckmayer’s name among reasonably educated people in the German-speaking countries invariably conjures up a number of major dramatic characters, as well as the names of great actors and actresses who embodied these characters on the stage and on the screen. People think of Curt Jürgens as Schinderhannes and as the Devil’s General, of Werner Krauss as the Captain of Köpenick, and of Paula Wessely as Barbara Blomberg. Zuckmayer’s major plays had a tremendous popular appeal. He created a dramatic universe that has become part of the cultural consciousness of generations of German-speaking people. His dramatic uvre depicts at least three distinct periods of twentieth century German history: the end of the Wilhelminian Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich. In addition to mirroring the modern age in Germany, he has written a number of remarkable historical plays that have their settings in other centuries and in other countries. Zuckmayer’s autobiographical work A Part of Myself is appropriately subtitled: It is indeed a fascinating “Portrait of an Epoch.”