BLUNCK, HANS

(1888-1961)

   Playwright. Blunck was a Nazi functionary in the Propaganda Ministry, though he had experienced some minor success as a playwright in the Weimar period while employed as an administrative official at the University of Hamburg. He became a strong supporter of the Nazi movement in the later 1920s, and in the Third Reich wrote two comedies that were often in theater repertoires during the mid-1930s: Die Lügenwette (The Wager of Lies, 1933) and Der Sprung ins Bürgerliche (The Leap into Prosperity, 1934). In 1938 the regime awarded him the Goethe Medallion for his "exemplary artistic endeavors."