Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Peter Weiss earned his reputation in the post-war German intellectual world as the proponent of an avant-garde, meticulously descriptive writing, as an exponent of autobiographical prose, and afterward as a politically engaged dramatist. He gained international deed with Marat/Sade, the American production of which was awarded a Tony Award and its subsequent film adaptation directed by Peter Brook. His “Auschwitz Oratorium,” The Investigation, served to broaden the debates higher than the so-called “Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (or formerly) “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” or “politics of history.” Weiss’ magnum opus was The Aesthetics of Resistance, called the “most important German-language doing of the 70s and 80s.” His early, surrealist-inspired fake as a painter and experimental filmmaker remains less skillfully known.
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