Friedrich Forster

[2] Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen hired him as dramaturge and director at the Meiningen Court Theatre and then he served in the German military in the First World War.

Under this pseudonym he enjoyed great success with Der Graue, one of the season's biggest hits, an exploration of the sympathetic relationship between teacher and student.

(1932) imagined the final years of the English writer Daniel Defoe and the adventures of the children who recover the stolen manuscript of Robinson Crusoe and restore it to him.

[9] On 28 August 1942 Gerhart Hauptmann wrote to Forster: "I'm no softie, but I'm sure I've seldom cried so readily as in the last fourth of this work, for which I predict German immortality.

His latest work Die Gesteinigten which treated the rebellion of the troops of Alexander the Great, was banned and all printed copies pulped.

[1] In the mid 1930s, many dramatists attempted to satisfy Nazi propagandists with plays about the Saxons' struggle under the leadership of Widukind to free themselves from Frankish domination in the eighth century.

It proved popular but received a mixed reception from critics and political commentators as they sorted out the complex figure of Charlemagne, oppressor of the Saxons but founder of the first German Reich.

[7] When dismissed four years later,[1] he settled in Schlehdorf in Bavaria and wrote screenplays for the motion picture production company Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, including several for children.