This book is a lens through which the reader may view the German theatre in the middle of the twentieth century. It offers an inside look at the upheavals and personalities shaping the German theatre from 1925 to 1961, when playwright Carl Zuckmayer (1896-1977) and director Heinz Hilpert (1890-1967) together created their major works. Their partnership is the book's major focus, although Brecht, Reinhardt, Kortner, and other major German theatre artists are prominent. The lens sweeps across the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and finally the Cold War period to examine in detail many events, people, and places important in German theatre history which have, to date, remained unchronicled in English.