Two Plays of Weimar Germany ― Youth Is a Sickness and Criminals

Ferdinand Bruckner (born Theodor Tagger on 26 August 1891 in Sofia, Bulgaria) was an Austro-German writer and theatre manager. His father was an Austrian businessman and his mother a French translator. After the separation of his parents, he spent time in Vienna and Paris, and in Berlin where he began to study music. However, impressed by the Expressionist literary scene in Berlin, in 1916 he moved away from music and devoted himself to poetry. In the following years, he published several poetry collections and in 1917 he began the literary magazine Marsyas with texts from authors like Alfred Döblin and Hermanne Hesse. In 1922, he founded, in his real name, the Berlin Renaissance Theater, whose leadership he gave to Gustav Hartung in 1928. In 1929 and 1930 he released the pieces Krankheit der Jugend (Pains of Youth) and Elisabeth von England (Elizabeth of England) using the pseudonym Ferdinand Bruckner. After the success of these works, he revealed their authorship, although he changed his name permanently to Bruckner in 1946. In 1933 he emigrated to Paris and worked on the anti-fascist play Die Rassen. In 1936, he moved to the USA, although he achieved little success there. Twenty years after his flight from Germany in 1953 he returned to Berlin where he worked as an advisor to the Schiller Theater. He died in Berlin on 5 December 1958.