Peter Weiss
Encyclopedia
Peter Ulrich Weiss was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, and artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 of adopted Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade
Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...

and The Investigation
The Investigation (play)
The Investigation is a play by Peter Weiss written in 1965 which depicts the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. It premiered on October 19, 1965 on stages in fourteen West and East German cities and at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. It carries the subtitle "Oratorio in 11 Cantos"...

and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.Spanning from the late 1930s into World War II, this historical novel dramatizes anti-fascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe...

.

Life

Weiss was born in Nowawes (now part of Potsdam-Babelsberg
Potsdam-Babelsberg
Babelsberg is the largest district of the Brandenburg capital Potsdam in Germany. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as for Studio...

), Brandenburg
Province of Brandenburg
The Province of Brandenburg was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1815 to 1946.-History:The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Suevi. They were succeeded by the Slavonians, whom Henry II conquered and converted to Christianity in...

, to a Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 Jewish father and Christian mother. At age three he moved with his family to Bremen
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

, and then during his adolescence to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 where Weiss began training for a career as a visual artist. In 1934 he emigrated with his family to Chislehurst
Chislehurst
Chislehurst is a suburban district in south-east London, England, and an electoral ward of the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...

, near London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, where he studied photography at the Polytechnic School of Photography
University of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...

, and then in 1937-1938 attended the Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 Art Academy. After the German occupation of the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

 in 1938, his family moved to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, and Weiss himself removed to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. In 1939 he again emigrated to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden, where he lived for the rest of his life. He became a Swedish citizen in 1946.

Weiss was married three times: to the painter Helga Henschen, 1943; to Carlota Dethorey, 1949; and to the hereditary baroness Gunilla Palmstierna, 1964. He was politically active as a member of the Communist Party of Sweden
Left Party (Sweden)
The Left Party is a socialist and feminist political party in Sweden, from 1967 to 1990 known as the Left Party – The Communists .On welfare issues, the party opposes privatizations...

, and in 1967 participated in Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

's tribunal against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 in Stockholm.

In 1970 Weiss suffered a heart attack. During the following decade his writing turned away from plays and focused on his three part novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.Spanning from the late 1930s into World War II, this historical novel dramatizes anti-fascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe...

. He died in Stockholm in 1982.

Art and literature

Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age...

. Since the early 1950s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. Among the short films by Weiss The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows a persisting link of the emigrant Weiss to a German cultural background. One of the better known films made by Peter Weiss is the experimental production The Mirage (1959). In Paris, Weiss directed another film together with Barbro Boman called Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German) in 1960.

Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade
Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...

(1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, the legendary director Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...

 staged a famous production in London which subsequently transferred to New York City. The play examines the power in society through two extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...

, a brutal hero of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, and the Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...

, for whom sadism
Sadism and masochism
Sadomasochism broadly refers to the receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation. The name originates from two authors on the subject, Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch...

 was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses the technique of presenting a play within a play: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out."

In 1965, Weiss wrote the documentary play The Investigation
The Investigation (play)
The Investigation is a play by Peter Weiss written in 1965 which depicts the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. It premiered on October 19, 1965 on stages in fourteen West and East German cities and at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. It carries the subtitle "Oratorio in 11 Cantos"...

(Die Ermittlung) on the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, known in German as der Auschwitz-Prozess or der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess, was a series of trials running from December 20, 1963 to August 10, 1965, charging 22 defendants under German penal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the...

. A translation of Weiss' The Investigation was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.

Between 1971 and 1981 Weiss was working on his three part novel on the European resistance against Nazi Germany, The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance
The Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.Spanning from the late 1930s into World War II, this historical novel dramatizes anti-fascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe...

.

Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize
Heinrich Mann Prize
The Heinrich Mann Prize is a literary award given annually by the Berlin Academy of Art . The prize given for works with socially critical aspects in a character that would honor Heinrich Mann...

, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize
Georg Büchner Prize
The Georg Büchner Prize is the most important literary prize of Germany. It was created in 1923 in memory of Georg Büchner and was only given to artists who came from or were closely tied to Büchner's home of Hesse...

, 1982.

Selected works

All works were originally written in German unless otherwise noted. English translations are in parentheses.

Plays

  • 1949 Der Turm (The Tower)
  • 1952 Die Versicherung
  • 1963 Nacht mit Gästen (Night with Guests)
  • 1963/5 Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
    Marat/Sade
    The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...

    ) - generally known as Marat/Sade
  • 1963/8 Wie dem Herrn Mockinpott das Leiden ausgetrieben wird (How Mr. Mockinpott was cured of his Sufferings)
  • 1965 Die Ermittlung (The Investigation
    The Investigation (play)
    The Investigation is a play by Peter Weiss written in 1965 which depicts the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. It premiered on October 19, 1965 on stages in fourteen West and East German cities and at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. It carries the subtitle "Oratorio in 11 Cantos"...

    )
  • 1967 Gesang vom lusitanischen Popanz (Song of the Lusitanien Bogey)
  • 1968 Diskurs über die Vorgeschichte und den Verlauf des lang andauernden Befreiungskrieges in Viet Nam als Beispiel für die Notwendigkeit des bewaffneten Kampfes der Unterdrückten gegen ihre Unterdrücker sowie über die Versuche der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika die Grundlagen der Revolution zu vernichten (Discourse on the Progress of the Prolonged War of Liberation in Viet Nam and the Events Leading up to it as Illustration of the Necessity for Armed Resistance against Oppression and on the Attempts of the United States of America to Destroy the Foundations of Revolution) - generally known as Viet Nam Diskurs
  • 1969 Trotzki im Exil (Trotsky in Exile)
  • 1971 Hölderlin
  • 1974 Der Prozeß - adaptation of Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

    's novel
  • 1982 Der neue Prozeß (The New Trial)

Fiction

  • 1944 Från ö till ö (From Island to Island; written in Swedish; German: Von Insel zu Insel)
  • 1948 De besegrade (The Conquered; written in Swedish; German: Die Besiegten)
  • 1948 Der Vogelfreie (published as Dokument I in Swedish (1949) and in German as Der Fremde under the pseudonym Sinclair)
  • 1951 Duellen (The Duel; written in Swedish; German: Das Duell)
  • 1952 Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers (The Shadow of the Coachman's Body)
  • 1956 Situationen (The Situation; written in Swedish; German: Die Situation)
  • 1960 Abschied von den Eltern (Leavetaking)
  • 1961 Fluchtpunkt (Vanishing Point)
  • 1962 Das Gespräch der drei Gehenden (The Conversation of the Three Walkers)
  • 1975-1981 Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (Published in 3 volumes, I: 1975; II: 1978; III: 1981) (The Aesthetics of Resistance
    The Aesthetics of Resistance
    The Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.Spanning from the late 1930s into World War II, this historical novel dramatizes anti-fascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe...

    )

Other writings

  • 1956 Avantgarde Film (written in Swedish)
  • 1968 Rapporte
  • 1970 Rekonvaleszenz
  • 1971 Rapporte 2
  • 1971-1980 Notizbücher

Films

  • 1952 Studie I (Uppvaknandet) Sweden, 16mm, 6min)
  • 1952 Studie II (Hallucinationer) / Study II (Hallucinations) (Sweden, 16mm, 6min)
  • 1953 Studie III / Study III (Sweden, 16mm, 6min)
  • 1954 Studie IV (Frigörelse) / Study IV (Liberation), (Sweden, 16mm, 9min)
  • 1955 Studie V (Växelspel)/Study V (Interplay),(Sweden, 16mm, 9min)
  • 1956 Ateljeinteriör / Dr. Fausts Studierstube(Atelierinterieur) (Sweden, 10 min)
  • 1956 Ansikten I Skugga / Faces in the shadow (Sweden, 13 min)
  • 1957 Enligt Lag / According To Law (co-dir. Hans Nordenström, Sweden, 16mm, 18 min)
  • 1958 Vad ska vi göra nu da? / Was machen wir jetzt? (Sweden, 20min)
  • 1959 Hägringen / Fata Morgana (Sweden, 81min) Starring: Staffan Lamm and Gunilla Palmstierna.
  • 1961 Svenska flickor i Paris / Swedish Girls in Paris

Exchanges of Letters

  • 1992 Peter Weiss. Briefe an Hermann Levin Goldschmidt|Hermann Lewin Goldschmidt und Robert Jungk
    Robert Jungk
    Robert Jungk , also known as Robert Baum and Robert Baum-Jungk, was an Austrian writer and journalist who wrote mostly on issues relating to nuclear weapons....

     1938–1980
    . Leipzig: Reclam.
  • 2007 Siegfried Unseld, Peter Weiss: Der Briefwechsel. Hrsg. von Rainer Gerlach. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
  • 2009 Hermann Hesse
    Hermann Hesse
    Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...

    , Peter Weiss. „Verehrter großer Zauberer“ – Briefwechsel 1937–1962
    . Hrsg. von Beat Mazenauer und Volker Michels. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
  • 2010 Diesseits und jenseits der Grenze. Peter Weiss – Manfred Haiduk. Der Briefwechsel 1965–1982. Hrsg. von Rainer Gerlach und Jürgen Schutte. St. Ingbert: Röhrig.
  • 2011 Peter Weiss – Briefe an Henriette Itta Blumenthal. Hrsg. von Angela Abmeier und Hannes Bajohr. Berlin: Matthes und Seitz.

External links

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