Oskar Gitzinger, radio editor and journalist, wrote the libretto for Bertold Hummel's chamber opera"Des Kaisers neue Kleider" in 1954/55.
In his poetry collection Nacht und Brand, which he dedicates to "Allen, die es erlitten 1939-45", he processes his personal war experiences in 44 poems. At the end of the volume, which was published by C.F. Müller in Karlsruhe in 1947, he wrote the following

Biographical note

I belong to the generation that experienced the collapse after the Second World War as a formative experience. Of Alemannic descent, I was born on 26 August 1923 in Freiburg im Breisgau and spent my youth there. I was seriously wounded in 1944 and was in a military hospital at the end of the war, where I wrote the first poems in the volume "Nacht und Brand". After I was discharged and returned home to Freiburg, the present cycle was completed. Poems were written early on. In 1942 I was awarded the Scheffel Prize of the Volksbund für Dichtung as a school leaver, which published my first poems shortly afterwards.

Freiburg, July 1947.
Oskar Gitzinger

His legend, also published in 1947 by the Volksbund der Dichtung (formerly the Scheffelbund) as the twenty-second gift to its members, contains the following

Epilogue

Oskar Gitzinger was born on 26 August 1923 in Freiburg i. Br. He spent his youth there and was honoured with the Scheffel School Prize of our association in 1942 when he graduated from business school. Gitzinger experienced the end of the war as a soldier; he was seriously wounded in a military hospital when the war broke out.

As early as 1942, we were able to publish the first poems by our prizewinner in the "Mitteilungen". In the summer of this year, a cycle of poems entitled "Nacht und Brand" was published in book form by C. F. Müller, Karlsruhe, and a further volume of Gitzinger's poetry has been accepted for publication by Stahlberg-Verlag, Karlsruhe.

If in "Nacht und Brand" the shattering lament of youth for a shattered life and lost meaning resounds, and only a few poems foreshadow a brighter future, then in the legend "Wie drei Bettler zu Königen des Lebens werden", published here for the first time, the breakthrough to a deeper spiritual foundation of life has become an image.

Our youth is in an unparalleled state of outer and inner decay. In its best endeavours, it is struggling for a new image of the human being. We may assume that we are giving our members a welcome Christmas joy by presenting them with this gift of a mature testimony to such a struggle.

Karlsruhe, September 1947.
Volksbund für Dichtung, formerly the Scheffelbund.

Oskar Gitzinger was working at Südwestfunk Baden-Baden (Youth Radio Department) at the time the opera was written (1954/55). In 1963, together with Margret Liede, he took over the management of SWF-Jugendfunk, before moving to the Third Radio Programme in the early 1970s.

(see: Christoph Hilgert: Die unerhörte Generation - Jugend im Westdeutschen und britischen Hörfunk 1945-1963, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015, p. 111)

Oskar Gitzinger: Libretto "The Emperor's New Clothes"