He first received recognition for his work as a leading representative of German literature abroad in 1932 and 1934, when he was awarded the short story prize of Die neue Linie.

As an officer and political activist he was commissioned to edit a publication of poems for soldiers at the front: Feldpostausgaben deutscher Dichtung.

[2] Between 1952 and 1963 Zillich was president of the Association of Transylvanian Saxons in Germany (German: Landsmannschaft der Siebenbürger Sachsen), and published in the radical right-wing press during the same period.

The only difference from his literary and publicistic writings in the pre-war period is the renunciation of homages to the National Socialist system and to Adolf Hitler personally.

For the rest, his writings covered all the nationalist themes debated obsessively and consistently over the past century, to which were now added relativisations of the Holocaust and attacks on West German and American democracy.