Heiner Muller – författare

A collection of work by the great German dramatist, including the text of his classic piece of postdramatic theatre, Hamletmachine.The playwright Heiner Müller was born in East Germany in 1929. His large, complex body of work written since the early 1960s made him one of Europe's leading dramatists. This book contains an introduction to Müller's work by Marc von Henning, and a selection of his poetry, short prose, essays and works of postdramatic theatre, including Hamletmachine and Quartet.

With poignancy and skill, Heiner Müller’s Waiting on the Opposite Stage comprises a personal retelling not only of post-war German history but also of the communist spirit and pathos that gave rise to the Berlin Wall and its fall. The overarching irony of this book is that the author witnessed the rise of his fame due to his country’s ruin. Müller, whose creative life spanned the existence of East Germany, is best known today for his play Die Hamletmachine, which established him as the successor to Bertolt Brecht and gained him international recognition as a post-dramatic playwright. Waiting on the Opposite Stage reveals Müller as a poet, which he chiefly was during his time.  Arranged in four parts, this book collects over 400 poems written from 1949 to 1995, including a section with the poet’s unpublished drafts and fragments. With helpful notes and an extensive afterword on Müller’s life and work, James Reidel has carefully preserved the layout of the original German poems with his translations. In verse and prose poetry, this important collection ranges from paeans to Stalin to Müller’s self-awareness of his own human scale and fame to his final eloquent months, when his creative life was cut short by cancer.

Despite being widely acknowledged as one of the most important German dramatists since Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller (1929–95) still remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. This collection of plays aims to change that, presenting new translations and opening up his work to a larger audience.Collected here are three of his plays—Philoctetes, The Horatian, and Mauser—whose poetic texts evidence the influence of Shakespeare, classical Greek tragedy, and avant-garde political theater on his works. Together they constitute what Müller called an "experimental series," which both develops and critiques Brecht’s theory of the Lehrstück, or "learning play."Based on a tragedy by Sophocles, Philoctetes dramatizes the confrontation between politics, morality, and the desire for revenge. The Horatian uses an incident from ancient Rome as an example of ways of approaching the moral ambiguity of the past. Finally, Mauser, set during the Russian civil war, examines the nature and ethics of revolutionary violence. The plays are accompanied by supporting materials written by Müller himself, as well as an introduction by Uwe Schütte that contextualizes the plays and speaks of their continued relevance today.

An important contribution to modern drama.--Choice

Krieg ohne Schlacht - Heiner Müllers fesselnde Autobiografie über ein Leben zwischen Ost und West, Kunst und PolitikHeiner Müller, einer der bedeutendsten deutschsprachigen Dramatiker der Nachkriegsgeschichte, erzählt anekdotenreich, klar und ehrlich aus seinem Leben. Geboren 1929 in Sachsen, wurde er noch kurz vor Kriegsende zum Reichsarbeitsdienst und zum Volkssturm herangezogen und geriet dann in amerikanische Gefangenschaft. Nach wissenschaftlicher und journalistischer Arbeit kam er Ende der 50er-Jahre zum Theater.In seiner Autobiografie Krieg ohne Schlacht spricht Müller offen über seine Auseinandersetzungen mit der allgegenwärtigen Partei- und Staatszensur in der DDR und schildert jene Vorgänge, die 1961, nach der Uraufführung des Stückes »Die Umsiedlerin«, zu seinem Ausschluss aus dem Schriftstellerverband der DDR führten. Vor allem aber berichtet er eindringlich über seine langjährige Arbeit als Dramatiker und Regisseur, erst am Berliner Ensemble und dann, ab 1976, an der Volksbühne.Die Beschreibung der Theaterarbeit zwischen Ost und West, zwischen künstlerischer Freiheit, politischem Engagement, dem Ausloten von Möglichkeiten und der Erfahrung von Unterdrückung und Repression zeichnen ein anschauliches und genaues Bild des Kultur- und Geisteslebens in den Zeiten der deutschen Teilung und des Kalten Krieges. Ergänzt um bislang unveröffentlichte Dokumente aus dem Nachlass, ist Krieg ohne Schlacht nicht nur eine beeindruckende Lebensgeschichte, sondern vor allem ein unersetzliches zeitgeschichtliches Dokument und ein Klassiker der deutschen Literatur.