Oskar Gitzinger, a radio editor and journalist, wrote the libretto for Bertold Hummel’s chamber opera*The Emperor’s New Clothes* in 1954–55.
In his collection of poems *Nacht und Brand* (Night and Fire), which he dedicated “To all who suffered between 1939 and 1945”, he recounts his personal wartime experiences in 44 poems. At the end of the volume, published in 1947 by C.F. Müller in Karlsruhe, he provides the following

biographical note
I belong to that generation for whom the collapse following the Second World War was a defining experience. Of Alemannic descent, I was born on 26 August 1923 in Freiburg im Breisgau and spent my youth there. In 1944, I was seriously wounded and, at the end of the war, was in a military hospital, where I wrote the first poems in the collection *Nacht und Brand*. After my discharge and return home to Freiburg, I completed this cycle of poems. I began writing poetry at an early age. In 1942, as a school-leaver, I was awarded the Scheffel Prize for Poetry by the Volksbund, 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

Afterword
Oskar Gitzinger was born on 26 August 1923 in Freiburg im Breisgau. He spent his youth there and, as a school-leaver from the Wirtschaftsoberschule in 1942, was awarded our association’s Scheffel School Prize. Gitzinger experienced the end of the war as a soldier; at the time of the collapse, he was seriously wounded in a military hospital.

As early as 1942, we were able to publish our prize-winner’s first poems 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 collection of Gitzinger’s poems has been accepted for publication by Stahlberg-Verlag, Karlsruhe.

Whilst in *Nacht und Brand* the heart-rending lament of youth resounds over a shattered life and a lost sense of purpose, and only a few poems foreshadow a brighter future, the legend ‘How Three Beggars Become Kings of Life’—published here for the first time—has come to embody the breakthrough to a deeper spiritual foundation of life.

Our youth finds itself in a state of unparalleled external and internal disintegration. Even among its finest, it is struggling to forge a new conception of human nature. We may assume that we are bringing our members a welcome Christmas joy by presenting them, through this gift, with a mature testimony to such a struggle.

Karlsruhe, September 1947.
Volksbund für Dichtung (formerly Scheffelbund).

At the time the opera was composed (1954–55), Oskar Gitzinger was working at Südwestfunk Baden-Baden (Youth Broadcasting Department). In 1963, he took over the management of SWF Youth Radio together with Margret Liede, 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 for “The Emperor’s New Clothes”