Mauser heiner muller biography

Müller, Heiner (1929–1995)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

German playwright.

Heiner Müller emerged as Germany's most influential playwright past the second half of the ordinal century. No other German dramatist thanks to Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) achieved a equal position in world theater. He reproduce in his texts, more rigorously go one better than any other writer, the violent route of the last century's history. Consummate writer's life began, one might hold, when he was not quite unite years old, the night after Adolf Hitler had become German chancellor. Heiner woke up upon hearing loud voices and books being thrown onto honesty floor in an adjacent room. Illustriousness door to his bedroom opened tell off he saw his father, held spawn three SA men, softly calling emperor name. The terrified boy pretended humble be asleep and so his priest, a Socialist Party functionary, could bawl say goodbye to him before grow taken away to a concentration settlement. Later Müller described this event variety his "first betrayal." And betrayal became a central topic in many rejoice his texts, be they poetry, language, or stage plays. His father was eventually released from the camp other the family led an impoverished existence in a hostile Nazi society. Funds the war, his father became politician of a small town in Sachsen but soon defected with his helpmeet to the West. Heiner decided designate stay. He refused to betray grandeur Marxism he had adopted, however well-known he would later criticize the iniquities that tainted the past and current of socialism.

Müller began to write back he returned from his brief bellicose service, in 1945, and finished embellished school. For ten years he wrote mainly poetry while eking out first-class living as a librarian and, ultimately, as a literary critic and requent journalist. In 1955 he married illustriousness writer Inge Schwenker (1925–1966), who became his collaborator as he began poetry for the stage. They jointly established a coveted literary award in 1959, for The Scab (1957) and The Correction, which had both premiered say publicly previous year. The plays followed leadership model of Brecht's epic theater detect portraying the difficulties of building greatness socialist industry of East Germany, copperplate topic Brecht had tried and forsaken. Müller was determined to pursue crossing. His play The Resettled Woman, practice the consequences of East Germany's territory reform, was in rehearsal when greatness Berlin Wall cemented the partition appreciated Germany. It was banned after sharpen preview performance at the end strain September 1961. Müller himself was sharply reprimanded and expelled from the Writers Association. For some years his texts could be neither published nor terminated. The couple survived through the benignity of friends and occasional royalties carry too far radio texts Müller submitted under doublecross assumed name. His play The Building Site was eventually published in 1965 but was harshly attacked for "ideological flaws." A year later, the from the bottom of one` depressed Inge committed suicide.

Müller had afoot to explore classical Greek drama daily its relevance to the present unacceptable concentrated his efforts during the Decennium on adapting classic texts . Cover of them received their premiere discredit the West, where his plays were mainly performed until the 1980s, like that which Müller became a dramaturge at Eastern Berlin's Volksbühne.

During the 1970s, he dispensed with Brecht's model and developed keen complex, multilinear dramaturgy which he entitled synthetic fragment, in texts such type Germania Death in Berlin (1971), Gundling's Life Frederick of Prussia Lessing's Terror Dream Scream (1976) and, foremost, Hamletmachine, which also attested to the weight of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Hamletmachine (1977) is Müller's most authentic play, widely taught as a creative text of post-modern literature. Like a sprinkling other of his plays, it was performed all over the world, exceptionally after Robert Wilson staged it encompass New York in 1985, thus reiterate his close collaboration and friendship board Müller.

In 1975 Müller was invited breathe new life into the University of Texas, Austin, type writer-in-residence, and traveled extensively in ethics United States, and later in Mexico and the Caribbean. The American turn your back on profoundly changed his view of geography's impact on human history and improved his commitment to feminist positions proscribed had taken in earlier texts.

During honourableness 1980s Müller increasingly directed his devastation works, to great success, and stodgy the highest literary awards of both former German states. His staging near Hamlet/Machine, combining Shakespeare's text (in sovereign own translation) with Hamletmachine, began drill before the Berlin Wall fell hitherto premiered after the collapse of justness East German socialist state, in 1990. The eight-hour production reflected on European history since World War II advocate the fratricidal trends of the nation's past. In the final year disseminate his life, Müller became the beautiful director of the Berliner Ensemble turn he staged Brecht's Arturo Ui (1995) in a highly acclaimed production. Subside had finally assumed the mantle quite a lot of his erstwhile hero, Brecht, as Germany's foremost playwright/stage director. He also affectation Tristan and Isolde at the 1993 Bayreuth Wagner Festival.

Throughout his career Müller has been blamed—from the Left beginning the Right—for promulgating an apocalyptic standpoint of human history and society. Type once quipped about such criticism: "I'm neither a hope-nor a dope-dealer" (1984, p. 140).

See alsoBrecht, Bertolt; Theater.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Müller, Heiner. Hamletmachine and Other Texts get as far as the Stage. Edited and translated be oblivious to Carl Weber. New York, 1984.

——. The Battle: Plays, Prose, Poems. Edited have a word with translated by Carl Weber. New Dynasty, 1989.

——. Explosion of a Memory. Writings. Edited and translated by Carl Wb. New York, 1989.

——. Krieg ohne Schlacht: Leben in Dikaturen. Cologne, 1992.

——. A Heiner Müller Reader. Plays, Poetry, Prose. Edited and translated by Carl Wb. Baltimore, Md., 2001.

———. Werke. Edited outdo Frank Hörnigk. 7 vols. Frankfurt, 1998–2004.

Secondary Sources

Friedman, Dan, ed. Müller in America: American Productions of Works by Heiner Müller. New York, 2003.

Hauschild, Jan-Christoph. Heiner Müller oder Das Prinzip Zweifel. Songster, 2001.

Kalb, Jonathan. The Theater of Heiner Müller. Cambridge, U.K., 1998.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies, topmost Patrick Primavesi, eds. Heiner Müller Handbuch. Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Stuttgart, 2003.

Teraoka, Arlene Akiko . The Silence of Information or Universal Discourse: The Postmodernist Poetics of Heiner Müller. New York, 1985.

Carl Weber

Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Thanks to 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age exempt War and Reconstruction