Friedrich Forster

Waldfried Burggraf (11 August 1895 – 1 March 1958), known by his pseudonyms Friedrich Forster and Friedrich Forster-Burggraf, was a German dramatist, screenwriter, dramaturge and actor. His early plays explored controversial subjects, like anti-war sentiment, social reform, and same-sex bonding. When confronted with Nazi censorship, he adapted by authoring two plays perfectly attuned to the government's propaganda requirements. His best-known work is the play Robinson soll nicht sterben!, one of several of his plays later adapted for motion pictures.

Biography Waldfried Burggraf was born in Bremen on 11 August 1895. His father was Julius Burggraf, a Protestant pastor and literary scholar. He attended the Schnepfenthal Salzmann School in Thuringia and the in Bremen. 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.

Some of his early works addressed homoerotic themes. In 1920, the gay newsletterDer Eigene announced that its own publisher would soon make available Burggraf's 1918 play Die Nacht in Neapel. His expressionist monologue for Achilles, Flammen! Patroklus!, was staged at Berlin's Theater des Eros in 1921.

In 1931 he changed his name to Friedrich Foster because he thought his birth name sounded itself like a pseudonym adopted to appear German. 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. In 1932 the play received the Literature Prize of the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna.

His play Robinson soll nicht sterben! (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. It was his greatest popular success. Forster's 1942 novella of the same name was adapted for a motion picture of the same name in 1957 and screened under the title The Girl and the Legend starring Romy Schneider. 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."

In 1933, however, he found that his success could not shield him from the censorship of the Nazi regime. His latest work Die Gesteinigten which treated the rebellion of the troops of Alexander the Great, was banned and all printed copies pulped.

Forster quickly repaired his relationship with the authorities. The play's Swedish hero Gustav Wasa liberates his people from Danish oppression, a model for Nazi leadership and the German Volk.

In 1933 he became acting director of the and artistic director of the Bayerische Landesbühne in Munich. When dismissed four years later, he settled in Schlehdorf in Bavaria and wrote screenplays for the motion picture production company Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, including several for children.

He later returned to Bremen where he died on 1 March 1958 at the age of 62.

Works Plays Opfer, 1918 Mammon, 1918 Madelaine und ihr Page Hyazint, 1919 Flammen! Patroklus! Eine szenische Dichtung 1920 Die Nacht in Neapel, 1918, text apparently lost Prinzessin Turandot, 1923 (after a piece by Carlo Gozzi) Weh um Michael, 1927 Der Graue, 1931 Robinson soll nicht sterben!, 1932 Wendelin, 1932 Die Gesteinigten, 1933, censored Alle gegen Einen, Einer für Alle, 1933 Der Sieger, 1934 Die Weiber von Redditz, 1934 Die Verschwender, 1939 Gastspiel in Kopenhagen, 1940 Ariela, 1941 Die Liebende, 1945 Candide, 1948 Ariel und die Schwestern, 1949 Screenplays Dreiklang, 1938 Prinzessin Sissy, 1939 Hotel Sacher, 1939 The Waitress Anna, 1941 Bergkristall, 1954, for television, based on Adalbert Stifter's novella Bergkristall Novellas Matrosen in Würzburg, 1932 Robinson soll nicht sterben, 1954 Fairy tales Hampelmann und Hampelfrau, 1940 Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (1941) Die Dunkelgräfin, 1944