(This new anthology traces the multifaceted evolution of H...)
This new anthology traces the multifaceted evolution of Heiner Müller the playwright, poet, and eloquent observer of his century’s violent trajectory. The writings collected here range from Müller’s earliest work, including short stories and early poems from the 1950s, to some of his last works, including Germania 3Ghosts at Dead Man. His work presents a phantasmagoric vision of culture and history. This new anthology traces the multifaceted evolution of Heiner Müller the playwright, poet, and eloquent observer of his century’s violent trajectory. The writings collected here range from Müller’s earliest work, including short stories and early poems from the 1950s, to some of his last works, including Germania 3Ghosts at Dead Man. His work presents a phantasmagoric vision of culture and history.
(Collected here are three of his plays—Philoctetes, The Ho...)
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."
Heiner Müller was a German playwright, dramatist and poet. He was also a theatre director, and short story writer, and worked in libraries and government offices of Neubrandenburg, Germany in the late 1940s.
Background
Heiner Müller was born on January 9, 1929, in Eppendorf, Germany. He was the son of Paul Wilhelm Müller, an office worker, and Elfriede (Rudholzner) Müller.
During the Weimar Republic, Müller's father became an activist in the Social Democratic Party, which opposed Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists, or Nazis, who eventually took control of Germany. In 1945, with Hitler nearly defeated and World War II drawing to an end, Müller was forced to join the German Army. He was soon captured by American soldiers, but was only held for two days before he escaped and returned home to find his father serving the Social Democratic cause.
Education
Heiner Müller was educated in public schools of Waren.
Career
Following the end of World War II, with Germany divided both geographically and politically, Müller resumed his education and commenced working in various libraries and obtaining positions as a government clerk. At this time Müller began attempting his first writings for the stage. In addition, he supplied essays to various publications and became active in the League of German writers.
Müller’s first produced play, Zehn Tage die die Welt erschütterten, is derived from communist American journalist John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World, an account of the Russian Revolution. The play, which Müller wrote with Hagen Stahl, appeared in late 1957 and was followed a few months later by Der Lohndrücker, which Müller wrote with his wife. Der Lohndrücker concerns a foundry worker who saves his employers time and money and thus runs afoul of his co-workers. Because of the provocative nature of the play, Die Umsiedlerin; oder, Das Leben auf dem lande, Müller was dismissed from East Germany’s official writers’ organization and denied production and publication of his works. Two years passed before Müller returned to publication with a pair of poems supplied to the periodical Forum, and four more years elapsed before he once again saw his work produced on the stage. In the interim, Müller completed translations of various Greek classics, including Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Aeschylus’s Prometheus. Müller’s translations of these and other works enabled him to re-establish himself as a pro-communist playwright.
In the ensuing years Müller continued to produce works in support of communism and socialism. In 1971, for instance, he completed Germania Tod in Berlin, an ambitious account of notable events in German history from Biblical times to the early 1950s. A few years later, he completed Tsement, which concerns workers’ efforts to restore Russia after the revolution and ensuing civil war. In 1975 Müller was invited to the University of Texas, Austin, as writer-in-residence, and traveled extensively in the United States, and later in Mexico and the Caribbean. The American experience profoundly changed his view of geography's impact on human history and reinforced his commitment to feminist positions he had taken in earlier texts.
During the 1980s Müller increasingly directed his own works, to great success, and received the highest literary awards of both former German states. His staging of Hamlet/Machine, combining Shakespeare's text (in his own translation) with Hamletmachine, began rehearsal before the Berlin Wall fell yet premiered after the collapse of the East German socialist state, in 1990. The eight-hour production reflected on German history since World War II and the fratricidal trends of the nation's past. In the final year of his life, Müller became the artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble where he staged Brecht's Arturo Ui (1995) in a highly acclaimed production. He had finally assumed the mantle of his erstwhile hero, Brecht, as Germany's foremost playwright and stage director. He also staged Tristan and Isolde at the 1993 Bayreuth Wagner Festival.
Heiner Müller is known as a radical German writer who won widespread recognition as a provocative playwright. Müller is also known for his uncompromising efforts at excavating the contradictions of German culture and history. His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and post-dramatic theatre.
His major works are Poem - Ich setzte den Fuß in die Luft und sie trug (2003), Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1996) and Wie es euch gefällt (1968).
For a while Müller supported the communist party line in his plays from the 1950s, he ran afoul of authorities when Die Umsiedlerin; oder, Das Leben auf dem lande was produced in the early 1960s.
Such plays as Tsement and Mauser have prompted comparisons between Müller and Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Indeed, Müller conceded, in a Grand Street interview, that his support for the German Democratic Republic had to do with Brecht. Aside from Brecht there were hardly any writers in the GDR who held any significance for him, but he legitimized support for the system. Proof of the system’s superiority lay in the fact that its literature was better. But if Brecht’s presence as an East German playwright influenced Müller, so too did Müller’s notions of Brecht shape the manner in which that playwright has been perceived.
Despite his support of communism, Müller drew the ire of East German authorities with Hamletmaschine, which he completed in the late 1970s but failed to stage in his native land until the late 1980s. This play, one of several works derived by Müller from William Shakespeare’s plays, functions as an extended interior monologue shared by Hamlet and Ophelia. The play includes scatological references and grim imagery, and it compelled Stanislaw Baranczak to speculate in the New Republic on “how cheap an artist Müller is.”
Connections
First, Müller was married to Rosemarie Fritzsche. They divorced in 1954, and Müller married Inge Müller. Ingeborg died in 1966. Then, Müller married Ginka Tscholakowa, a writer, in 1970, but they divorced and Heiner married Brigitte Maria Mayer. Müllerhad one son.
Father:
Paul Wilhelm Müller
Mother:
Elfriede (Rudholzner) Müller
late-wife:
Inge Schwenkner
13 March 1925 – 1 June 1966
Inge Müller, born Inge Meyer, was an East German author and the second wife of East German playwright Heiner Müller.
The Theater of Heiner Müller
This is the first comprehensive study in English of Heiner Müller, arguably the most important figure in the German theatre after Brecht.
