Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Peter Weiss (born 1916 in Germany, dead 1982 in Sweden) has a truly cosmopolitan biography. As the son of a Jewish manufacturer of Hungarian descent and a Swiss actress Weiss had German as maternal tongue, but was in fact a Czech citizen, and lived his childhood and youth in Poland as well as in Germany and Great Britain. In 1939 he migrated to Sweden - following his parents - and finally became a Swedish citizen in 1946. He wrote several books in Swedish, and was also, during the 1950s, active as an experimental filmmaker in Stockholm, acknowledged by for instance Jonas Mekas and Film Culture in New York. He had however his breakthrough as a writer in the beginning of the 1960s when he published his autobiographical novels in Germany. In 1964 his play Marat/Sade premiered at Schillertheater in West Berlin, and from that date he must be considered as one of the most important post-war European playwrights. In 1966 Weiss attended a meeting arranged by Gruppe 47 at Princeton where he made his position clear regarding the Vietnam War, giving his important speech: “I come out of my hiding place”. And when Weiss came out of his hiding place he wrote a series of political plays, turning into one of the most influential European intellectuals, a travelling spokesman for the Left. He was soon an active member of the Swedish Communist party and participated in several political manifestations, for example, the second meeting of the International War Crimes Tribunal at Stockholm in 1973.
Repository Citation
Andersson, Lars G.. "Review of The Aesthetics of Resistance, by Peter Weiss." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 9, no. 2, 2009, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol9/iss2/16