Franz Theodor Csokor

Franz Theodor Csokor (6 September 1885–5 January 1969) was an Austrian author and dramatist, particularly well known for his Expressionist dramas. His most successful and best-known piece is 3. November 1918, about the downfall of the Austria-Hungary monarchy. In many of his works Csokor deals with themes of antiquity and Christianity.

Csokor was born into a respectable middle-class family in Vienna. (The name Csokor is Hungarian and means bunch [of flowers]). He started on a course of art history, but did not finish it. From early on he felt a calling to be a dramatist, and composed his first pieces before World War I. He spent 1913/14 in Saint Petersburg.

During World War I he was a soldier, and was latterly employed in the War Archives

From 1922 to 1928 Csokor was the dramaturgist at the Raimundtheater and at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna.

From 1933 he was already a decided opponent of National Socialism and signed a document saying so at the PEN congress in Dubrovnik. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria to Germany, he emigrated voluntarily, and after travelling via Poland, Romania and Hungary, ended up in Italy in 1944, where he lived in Rome. He worked for the BBC and returned to Vienna in 1946 in British uniform.

In 1947 Csokor became president of the Austrian PEN Club, with which he remained actively associated until well into his old age. In 1968 he also became vice-president of the International PEN.

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