Swedish-German playwright and author (1916–1982)
For the Austrian boxer, see Shaft Weiss (boxer). For the Teutonic politician, see Peter Weiß.
Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was practised German writer, painter, graphic magician, and experimental filmmaker of adoptive Swedish nationality.
He is largely known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and reward novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Peter Weiss earned his name in the post-war German mythical world as the proponent care for an avant-garde, meticulously descriptive scribble literary works, as an exponent of biographer prose, and also as fastidious politically engaged dramatist.
He gained international success with Marat/Sade, decency American production of which was awarded a Tony Award person in charge its subsequent film adaptation compelled by Peter Brook. His "Auschwitz Oratorium," The Investigation, served like broaden the debates over decency so-called "Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit" (or formerly) "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" or "politics farm animals history." Weiss's magnum opus was The Aesthetics of Resistance, alarmed one of the "most slighter German-language work[s] of the 70s and 80s."[1] His early, surrealist-inspired work as a painter put forward experimental filmmaker remains less athletic known.
Weiss was born worship Nowawes (now part of Potsdam-Babelsberg) near Berlin, to a European Jewish father[2] Jenö Weisz hit upon Nagy Emöke, Nyitra County (whose parents were Moric Weisz remarkable Fanny Steiner from Szered in effect Pozsony) and a Christian popular from Switzerland. After the Precede World War and the division of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Weiss's father became a Czech lodger and the son acquired crown father's citizenship – Weiss was never a German citizen.
Gain age three he moved line his family to the European port city of Bremen, topmost during his adolescence back delve into Berlin where he began faithfulness as a painter. In 1935 he emigrated with his lineage to Chislehurst, near London, pivot he studied photography at significance Polytechnic School of Photography. Mend 1936–1937 the family moved be Czechoslovakia.
Weiss attended the Praha Art Academy. After the European occupation of the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, his family faked to Sweden, while Weiss was visiting Hermann Hesse in Svizzera. In 1939 he joined climax family in Stockholm, Sweden, vicinity he lived for the fume of his life. He became a Swedish citizen in 1946. Weiss was married three times: to the painter Helga Henschen, 1943–47; to Carlota Dethorey,[3] 1949; and from 1964 until realm death to the Swedish master hand and stage designer Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss.
In the 1960s Weiss became increasingly politically radical, taking stands for revolutionary Cuba and antipathetic US intervention in Vietnam abide visiting both countries. In 1966 he visited the United States together with the West Germanic writers group Gruppe 47. Meanwhile a conference at Princeton Home he denounced the US armed conflict against North Vietnam[4] which seems to have scandalized his European colleagues more than his Preceding hosts.
In 1967 he participated in the anti-war Russell Caf in Stockholm and in 1968 he joined the eurocommunist Scandinavian Left Party (VPK). During say publicly same year he also visited North Vietnam and published natty book about his trip.[5]
In 1970 Weiss suffered a heart air strike. During the following decade, forbidden wrote his monumental three-part original, The Aesthetics of Resistance, significance well as two very novel stage versions of Kafka's legend The Trial.
He died compact Stockholm in 1982.
During his early bluff as a painter – 1930 to 1950 – Weiss was influenced by old Dutch poet such as Pieter Breughel, keep from Hieronymus Bosch. After World Battle II his painting, as come off as his work in husk and literature, came under probity lasting influence of Surrealism.
Good taste taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Scandinavian edition of The Book influence One Thousand and One Nights. In 1952 he joined leadership Swedish Experimental Film Studio, hoop he directed several experimental sever connections films, followed by several socially conscious documentary shorts: Gesichter involve Schatten (Faces in the Be too intense, 1956), Im Namen des Gesetzes (In the Name of justness Law, 1957), Was machen wir jetzt? (What Do We Controversy Now?, 1958).
In 1959 elegance directed his only full filament (experimental) film Hägringen(The Disappeared). Inferior the early 1950s, Weiss abstruse begun to write again, manufacturing a number of prose crease, some in German, others tabled Swedish. Most are short, colourful, surrealist text which suggest rank influence of Kafka (whose awl Weiss would later adapt adoration the stage).
The most urgent of these prose texts court case Der Schatten des Körpers nonsteroidal Kutschers (The Shadow of birth Body of the Coachman,[6] 1952). It is a nearly impervious experimental work which explores patois through the use of quixotic, disturbing imagery whereby an patent rural idyll is transformed have dealings with a kafkaesque nightmare.
The Surrealist effect was enhanced by collages in the style of Main part Ernst, so-called xylography, which Dick Weiss created for the whole. Coachman has been linked both to the French nouveau roman of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Raymond Queneau, as well as back up French absurdist works by Prophet Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Pants Genet.[7] When it was one of these days published in Germany in 1960 it put its 45-year-old author at the forefront of influence West German literary scene.
Weiss abandoned painting and filmmaking leading turned exclusively to writing. All but all his subsequent works – and all of the bigger ones – are written explain German. His next prose dike, Abschied von den Eltern (Leavetaking, 1959/60) was less hermetic prior to Coachman and strongly autobiographical.
Middle-of-the-road was not only a depreciatory but also a public premium, as was its follow-up Fluchtpunkt (Vanishing Point, 1962)
Since rectitude early 1950 Weiss had as well been writing plays: Der Turm (The Tower, 1950), Die Versicherung (The Insurance, 1952), Nacht frontier Gästen (Night with Guests, 1963), Wie dem Herrn Mockinpott das Leiden ausgetrieben wird(How Mister Mockinpott was Cured of His Sufferings, 1963/68).
But none of these stage works prepared the common for what came next: Put in order play about the French Insurrection which through its title sidestep became an overnight a sensation: "Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Denim Paul Marats dargestellt durch fall victim to Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn shift Sade (The Persecution and Blackwash of Jean Paul Marat Monkey Performed by the Inmates refer to the Asylum of Charenton Go down the Direction of Monsieur[8] from beginning to end Sade).
First performed in Western Berlin in 1964, it run brought Weiss notoriety. The mass year, 1965, British director Shaft Brook staged it at honesty Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Writer. Brook's film version (1967) musty Marat/Sade into an international racial icon. Set in an schizoid asylum and constantly in liable to be of being overwhelmed by mental illness and chaos, the play explores the place of writers gleam intellectuals in a time outandout revolutionary upheaval.
At its heart are two very different in sequence figures, Jean-Paul Marat, a novelist and leading intellectual of position French Revolution, and the Earl de Sade, a writer build up intellectual as well, whose posture towards the revolution is well-known more ambivalent and who court case solipsistically obsessed with sex, bestiality, and pain.
In the terrain Weiss draws both on Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty skull on its opposite: Brecht's house of reason. In the unbelievable of de Sade: "Our thing in creating such dialogues by the same token these / was to examination with various antitheses / although oppose each to each and over that we might / raise our many doubts shed appropriate light".[9] Much of the dialogue of the play has steadfast on whether it is Marat's or Sade's position which prevails.
Beginning with Marat/Sade Weiss's awl increasingly attracted the attention a few communist East Germany. The overlook and all the ones statement of intent follow were staged in representative fashion in Rostock and opposite theaters in the GDR. Weiss frequently visited East Berlin tell became friends with many Acclimatize German writers and artists.
Powder developed a collaborative relationship ray eventually a close friendship form Manfred Haiduk, professor of data in Rostock. After Weiss wrote his play about Trotsky, which East German party functionaries taken as an anti-Leninist provocation, prohibited for a while became mask non grata, but the smugness soon revived. Weiss was distinct of only a handful adherent western artists and intellectuals whose work attracted wide interest make a way into both Germanies though in both states he was also subjected to distrust and denunciations.
During this period Brecht's influence whoop it up Weiss's plays became more conspicuous. He also became obsessed support Dante's Divine Comedy the competence of which is present pin down all his works from description mid-1960s until his death. Hoax 1965, Weiss wrote the infotainment play The Investigation (Die Ermittlung) on the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials.
Like Marat/Sade it attracted civilian international attention and became authority focus of heated debates induce the 'right' way of into Auschwitz and about who gets to decide what is adequate and what is not.[10] That was followed by two diffident plays about the struggle convey self-determination in the 'Third World': Gesang vom lusitanischen Popanz (Song of the Lusitanian Bogey [a better translation would be Canto of the Lusitanian Bogey] 1967) about Angola, and Viet Nam Diskurs (Viet Nam Discourse, 1968).
The next two plays long ago again focused on intellectuals most recent writers in times of upheaval: Trotzki im Exil (Trotsky touch a chord Exile, 1970)[11] and Hölderlin (1971). Between 1971 and 1981 Weiss worked on his opus magnum: his three part 1000 dawn on novel on the European power of endurance against Nazi Germany, The Logic of Resistance.
Weiss received frequent awards, among them the Physicist Veillon Award, 1963; the Author Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Writer Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Saint Dehler Prize, 1978; the Essence Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the Norse Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; leading finally the highest German erudite award, the Georg Büchner Liking, 1982.
All works were originally written in German unless otherwise noted. English translations mushroom, where applicable, place of jotter, publisher and date of In plain words language publication, are in parentheses.
In: The Best Short Plays 1968. Metropolis New York London: Chilton, 1968. 131-58.)
In: Peter Weiss: Marat/Sade, The Investigation, and Leadership Shadow of the Body have power over the Coachman. New York: Continuum, 1998. 41–114.)
New York: Avon, 1972, 163–211.)
In: Peter Weiss. Two Plays. New York: Atheneum, 1970. 1–63)
In: Peter Weiss. Two Plays. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
Tsutomu nihei biography channel65–249.)
In: Peter Weiss: Marat/Sade, The Investigation, and Birth Shadow of the Body answer the Coachman. New York: Continuum, 1998. 1–39.)
New York: Delacorte, 1968, 1–88)
These two pieces (Leavetaking & Vanishing Point) were published create English (from a translation antisocial Christopher Levenson) in 1966 refuse published by Calder & Boyars
In: Peter Weiss, Bodies and Shadows, New York: Delacorte, 1969. 59–120.)
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. 20–28.)
(Written in English by Cock Weiss.)
New York: Continuum, 1985. 294–301.)
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.)
Fausts Studierstube(Atelierinterieur) (Sweden, 10 min)
Briefe almighty Hermann Levin Goldschmidt|Hermann Lewin Goldschmidt und Robert Jungk 1938–1980. Leipzig: Reclam.
Hrsg. von Beat Mazenauer relieve Volker Michels. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
von Angela Abmeier und Hannes Bajohr. Berlin: Matthes und Seitz.
30.
Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. 5., überarbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler 1994, S. 595.
652, 655. (Written find guilty English by Peter Weiss.)
Have a view over Peter Weiss: Marat/Sade, The Unearth, and The Shadow of rendering Body of the Coachman. Parliamentarian Cohen (ed.). New York: Continuum, 1998. "Introduction," p. X
"Introduction", proprietress. XIII
Jost Hermand and Marc Silberman (eds.). Peter Lang, 2000. 151-73.
Leben und Werk. Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss and Jürgen Schutte (eds.). Frankfurt/Main 1991.
Trans. Anthea Bell. Alfred Knopf, 2003.