WEISS, PETER

WEISS, PETER (1916–1982), German playwright and author. A half-Jew, Weiss, who was born near Berlin, left Germany in 1934, spending two years in England and two more in Prague, before settling in Sweden in 1939. There he made his career as a painter, film producer, and writer. At first he wrote stories such as Der Schatten des Koerpers des Kutschers (1960) and Abschied von den Eltern (1961; Leavetaking, 1966), but broadened his scope in the novel, Fluchtpunkt (1962; Vanishing Point, 1966; together with Leavetaking as Exile, 1968). This last is an autobiographical work of passionate intensity covering the career and successive exiles of the hero from the age of 18 until his 30th year. The book reveals the young art student's rebellion against middle-class conformity, and the anguish of a Jewish manufacturer's son who, on his mother's side, belongs to the nation of the persecutor. As a dramatist, Weiss gained international fame with his play, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats … (1964; The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, 1965). In his Die Ermittlung (1965; The Investigation, 1966), Weiss made use of the documentation produced at the Frankfurt trial of the Nazi war criminals responsible for the brutalities at Auschwitz. His other works include Der Gesang vom lusitanischen Popanz ("Song of the Lusitanian Bogey," 1966), Diskurs ueber die Vorgeschichte und Verlauf des lang andauernden Befreiungskrieges in Viet Nam (1968), and, in Swedish, Sangen om Utysket ("The Song of the Scarecrow," 1968), and Trotskij i exil ("Trotsky in Exile," 1970). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Kahn, Mirrors of the Jewish Mind (1968), 232–6.