About the work
Der Hauptmann von Köpenick. A German Fairy Tale in Three Acts is a tragicomedy by Carl Zuckmayer, premiered on 5 March 1931 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin — directed by Heinz Hilpert, with Werner Krauß in the title role. The play is based on the "Köpenick affair" of the cobbler Wilhelm Voigt, who in 1906, disguised as a Prussian captain, commanded a troop of soldiers, occupied the town hall of Cöpenick and confiscated the municipal treasury. Zuckmayer wrote the play in Berlin dialect; the National Socialists banned it from performance in 1933.
Plot
After his release from prison, the destitute cobbler Wilhelm Voigt is caught in an inescapable cycle of Prussian bureaucracy: without a passport he can get no work, without work no passport and no residence permit. In parallel the play follows the journey of a captain's uniform that passes from hand to hand. After Voigt is expelled once more and even a break-in at the police office fails, he buys the uniform at a junk shop. Wearing it, he commands a detachment of soldiers in the street, marches to Köpenick, has the mayor arrested and confiscates the town treasury — but fails at his real goal, for the Köpenick town hall has no passport office at all. Voigt later turns himself in and, because his story has amused all of Berlin, is in the end pardoned with the prospect of the passport he so longed for.
Cultural significance
Der Hauptmann von Köpenick is Zuckmayer's most successful stage work and one of the sharpest satires on the Prussian authoritarian state, on militarism and on the unquestioned respect for the uniform. The critic Alfred Kerr remarked that in the first part the spectator dies of laughter, and in the second some realise they are still alive. The work has been filmed several times — most famously in 1956 with Heinz Rühmann — and remains a fixture of German-language stages to this day. Jan Bosse staged it anew in 2018 at the Deutsches Theater, on its original premiere site.