Peter Weiss

Peter Weiss
Weiss speaking during the acceptance ceremony for the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982
Born	Peter Ulrich Weiss (1916-11-08)8 November 1916 Nowawes, Brandenburg, Germany
Died	10 May 1982(1982-05-10) (aged 65) Stockholm, Sweden
Citizenship	Swedish
Alma mater	Polytechnic School of Photography; Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
Works	Marat/Sade; The Aesthetics of Resistance
Movement	Avant-garde
Spouses	Helga Henschen (1943) Carlota Dethorey (1949) Gunilla Palmstierna (1964)
Awards	Charles Veillon Award (1963) Lessing Prize (1965) Heinrich Mann Prize (1966) Tony Award for Best Play (Marat/Sade, 1966) Carl Albert Anderson Prize (1967) Thomas Dehler Prize (1978) Cologne Literature Prize (1981) Bremen Literature Prize (1982) De Nios Prize (1982) Swedish Theatre Critics Prize (1982) Georg Büchner Prize (1982)

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 "Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit" (or formerly) "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" or "politics of history." Weiss's magnum opus was The Aesthetics of Resistance, called one of the "most important German-language work[s] of the 70s and 80s."^[1] His early, surrealist-inspired work as a painter and experimental filmmaker remains less well known.