Die Soldaten
He wrote "Die Soldaten" (1930) based the 1776 play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and "Nana" (1932) based on the novel by Émile Zola. In the former he anticipated the operatic treatment of the same Lenz play by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, which premiered in 1965. In "Nana" he took on a subject similar to Berg's "Lulu", also written 1933, but not premiered till 1937. Gurlitt's "Nana" had a libretto by Max Brod, and productions were cancelled because Brod's Judaism and Zola's politics offended Nazi ideology in Cologne and Mannheim.