Csokor, Franz Theodor (Vienna, 1885-1969, Vienna), was an officer in the Austrian army 1915-18. He had previously been a régisseur in St Petersburg, and after the war he returned to this occupation in Vienna, first at the Raimund-Theater and later at the Deutsches Volkstheater. In 1938 the German invasion of Austria drove him to Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. He was arrested on the island of Korc̆ula, interned, and released in 1945. From 1946 he lived in Vienna. He was a prolific dramatist in the Expressionist manner (see Expressionismus). His first plays concerned humanity and war: Die Sünde wider den Geist, Die rote Straße (both 1918), and Der Baum der Erkenntnis (1919). Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte (1929) is a play about G. Büchner whom Csokor admired. He was inclined to group what were originally single plays into series, as in his Europäische Trilogie, which consists of plays written over seventeen years: 3. November 1918 (1936, a portrayal of the dissolution of the Austrian army), Besetztes Gebiet (1930, on the French occupation of the Ruhr), and Der verlorene Sohn (1947). The religious trilogy Olymp und Golgatha consists of Kalypso (1941), Cäsars Witwe (1953), and Pilatus (1949). He also wrote a so-called ‘Dramatisches Diptychon’, Die Kaiser zwischen den Zeiten (1965), dealing with Christianity under Diocletian and Constantine. Other plays are Gewesene Menschen (1932), Gottes General (1938), Wenn sie zurückkommen (1940), Die Erweckung des Zosimir (1960), and Das Zeichen an der Wand (1962). Csokor also wrote comedies (Die Weibermühle, 1932, Treibholz, 1959). He is the author of poetry (Der Dolch um die Wunde, 1918, Das schwarze Schiff, 1944, and Immer ist Anfang, 1952). His only novel (about the Anabaptist rising in Münster 1534-5) appeared in 1933 as Das Reich der Schwärmer and was republished in 1955 as Der Schlüssel zum Abgrund. The collection Ein paar Schaufeln Erde. Erzählungen aus 5 Jahrzehnten appeared in 1965; correspondence, Zeuge einer Zeit. Briefe aus dem Exil 1933-1933, in 1964.

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