Born in Czechoslovakia in the so-called Sudetenland region, Franz Fühmann followed an eventful path that led him from voluntary enlistment in the ranks of the SA to the deliberate choice, upon his return from captivity in the USSR and after his participation in an anti-fascist re-education program, to settle in the GDR, where he became a recognized writer but was increasingly critical of real socialism in East Germany. Fühmann made a particular name for himself as a children's author. It was also through this medium that he came to puppetry, first by writing a play for a ten-year-old admirer, the future director and puppeteer Joachim Damm: Der glückliche Ritter von Trinitat (1976). This very private play is the writer's first attempt at theatrical playwriting, although he also had experience as a screenwriter for the cinema. In the last ten years of his life, he experimented with different theatrical forms: radio plays, ballet, tragedy, etc. He returned to puppetry in the year of his death, with two plays that were published posthumously in 1985 in the collection Schlipperdibix und Klapperdibax!