Peter Weiss
| Peter Weiss | |
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Weiss speaking during the acceptance ceremony for the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982
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| Born |
Peter Ulrich Weiss 8 November 1916 Nowawes, Brandenburg, Germany |
| Died | 10 May 1982 (aged 65) , Sweden |
| Citizenship | Swedish |
| Alma mater | Polytechnic School of Photography; Academy of Fine Arts, Prague |
| Works | Marat/Sade; The Aesthetics of Resistance |
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Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Peter Weiss earned his reputation in the post-war German literary world as the proponent of an avant-garde, meticulously descriptive writing, as an exponent of autobiographical prose, and also as a politically engaged dramatist. He gained international success with Marat/Sade, the American production of which was awarded a Tony Award and its subsequent film adaptation directed by Peter Brook. His "Auschwitz Oratorium," The Investigation, served to broaden the debates over the so-called "Vergangenheitspolitik" or "politics of history." Weiss' magnum opus was The Aesthetics of Resistance, called the "most important German-language work of the 70s and 80s. His early, surrealist-inspired work as a painter and experimental filmmaker remains less well known.
Weiss was born in Nowawes (now part of Potsdam-Babelsberg) near Berlin, to a Hungarian Jewish father and a Christian mother. After the First World War and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Weiss's father became a Czech citizen and the son acquired his father's citizenship – Weiss was never a German citizen. At age three he moved with his family to the German port city of Bremen, and during his adolescence back to Berlin where he began training as a painter. In 1935 he emigrated with his family to Chislehurst, near London, where he studied photography at the Polytechnic School of Photography. In 1936–1937 the family moved to Czechoslovakia. Weiss attended the Prague Art Academy. After the German occupation of the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, his family moved to Sweden, while Weiss was visiting Hermann Hesse in Switzerland. In 1939 he joined his family in , 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, 1943-47; to Carlota Dethorey, 1949; and from 1964 until his death to the Swedish artist and stage designer Gunilla Palmstierna.
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