Tankred Dorst

Dorst, Tankred (Oberlind nr. Sonneberg, Thuringia, 1925- ), served from 1942 and was a prisoner of war in England and the USA until his release in 1947. From 1951 he studied Germanistik, drama, and history of art, first at Bamberg and from 1952 at the University of Munich where he settled. His involvement with the Munich student marionette theatre of which he was a co-founder (Das Geheimnis der Marionette, 1957; Auf kleiner Bühne. Versuch mit Marionetten, 1950) marks the beginning of his versatile work as the author of plays, radio plays (see Hörspiel), plays for television, film scripts, and libretti. The clear division between art as exemplified by the marionette theatre and reality particularly appealed to his rational yet extremely imaginative sensibilities. In order to heighten the tension between the events on stage and the experience of reality, including history, he introduced a wide range of distancing devices that gave actors and producers added scope to activate the participation of the audience; similarly, he made use of the ‘play within a play’. His early grotesque play Gesellschaft im Herbst (1961) is indebted to Giraudoux; he next showed the influence of Beckett's Theatre of the Absurd (the farce Freiheit für Clemens and Die Kurve, both 1962), while the parable Große Schmährede an der Stadtmauer (1962) shows some influence from Brecht. Other works included his adaptation of Der gestiefelte Kater by Tieck (1963), Diderot's satire Le Neveu de Rameau (1963), Thomas Dekker's Elizabethan comedy The Shoemaker's Holiday (1966), and Kleiner Mann—was nun? by H. Fallada (1966). However, his decisive breakthrough at home and abroad came with his political revue Toller (1968, see Toller, Ernst) which as Rotmord oder I was a German (1968) was turned into a film by Peter Zadek, a frequent collaborator. It shows the intellectual and idealistic writer confronted with a concrete situation, the Räterepublik (see Bayern), and includes scenes from Masse-Mensch as well as contemporary demonstrations in order to underline the relevance of history to the present. Sand. Ein Szenarium (1971), on the murder of Kotzebue by K. L. Sand, and Eiszeit (1973, TV film 1975), modelled on the aged Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, are mainly psychological studies in the context of (actual or intended) political murder. In these plays Dorst began to collaborate with his partner Ursula Ehlers. Historical, social, and political developments are also an important background to his portrayal of family relationships in his partly autobiographical cycle of plays and prose texts which finally appeared (slightly adjusted and chronologically arranged) as ‘Deutsche Stücke’ in 1985 (Werkausgabe, vol. 1). Treating the period from 1925 to 1970, they consist of Dorothea Merz (TV film in 2 pts. 1976); Klaras Mutter (TV film 1978); Heinrich oder die Schmerzen der Phantasie (broadcast in 1981) which is set in the latter half of the war; its scenario appeared as Die Reise nach Stettin (1984); Die Villa (1980); Mosch (TV film 1980); and the comedy Auf dem Chimborazo (1974, also radio and TV play). Eisenhans (TV film 1983) is similarly a ‘German’ play. While he was working on the restricted world of the 17-year-old Heinrich he also completed his major play on the legends of King Arthur and the magician Merlin in which the ultimately disillusioned king wishes he could be ‘ein Mensch ohne Geschichte’ if he were born again. Merlin oder Das wüste Land (1981, duration of performance c.10 hrs.) demonstrates in a highly ingenious mixture of time and style, myth and reality the inevitable doom of humanity's Utopia, Merlin's ‘Menschheitsidee’ which is symbolized by the Round Table; his abortive defiance of his father, the Devil, forms the loose frame to the various strands of the action. The play also includes a project on Parzival (final version 1989). Other parabolic works on the self-destructive conflict between irrational and rational experience against the background of myth, a bleak fairy-tale world, and reality include Ich, Feuerbach (1986, on an actor), Korbes (1988), and Herr Paul (1994), an early, unpublished script, reworked to integrate German unification (see Bundesrepublik Deutschland). In these as in a number of his other plays in which he combines themes of perennial and topical relevance, he relies on the spectator's (or reader's) responses. The key to his reputation as one of Germany's leading dramatists lies perhaps in his rare blend of intellectuality, imagination, and sense of spectacle. His Werkausgabe (5 vols.) appeared 1985 ff. The recipient of numerous honours, Dorst was awarded the Büchner Prize in 1992.

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Tankred Dorst (born December 19, 1925 in Sonneberg, Thuringia) is a German playwright and storyteller.

Tankred Dorst currently lives and works in Munich. His farces, parables, one-act-plays and adaptations are inspired by the theatre of the absurd and the works of Ionesco, Giraudoux and Beckett. His monumental drama Merlin oder das wüste Land, which was premiered in 1981 in Düsseldorf, has been compared to Goethe's Faust. Some critics see it as the first major drama of the 1980s. In his tribute to Tankred Dorst on the occasion of the conferment of the Georg Büchner Prize in 1990, Georg Hensel remarked, that Dorst's plays all have a direct connection to the present:

“

For 30 years Dorst's plays have responded to the great transformations. He has always been a companion to the times.

”

Tankred Dorst first directed the Ring of the Nibelung in Bayreuth in 2006.

Biography

Tankred Dorst was born in Sonneberg/Thuringia.

Conscripted into the German army as a pupil at the age of 17, he was soon captured and incacerated as a prisoner of war. Until 1947 he remained in British and American hands. By the time he was released from war captivity his birthplace had become part of the Soviet sector of Germany. He met his family in West Germany and completed his schooling. In 1950 he was going to study German literature, art history and theatre in Bamberg and Munich. Together with composer Wilhelm Killmayer he founded the marionette theatre Das kleine Spiel, for which he wrote his first plays. After breaking off his studies, he worked in various capacities in film, radio and publishing houses. His first major plays were performed in 1960 in Lübeck, Mannheim and Heidelberg. From this time on till today his plays have been performed in the whole world. Tankred Dorst's work has been recognized with many prizes and distinctions, including the Gerhart Hauptmann Prize (1964), Prize of the City of Florence (1970), Literature Prize of the Bayerische Akademie der Künste (1983), Mülheim Playwright's Prize (1989), Georg Büchner Prize (1990), E.T.A. Hoffmann Prize (1996) and the city of Zurich's Max Frisch Prize (1998). In 2006, he was awarded the Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize. On 14 March 2009, he will receive the European Literature Prize in Strasbourg. Tankred Dorst held resp. holds visiting professorships at universities in Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

Major works

• Die Kurve (1960)
• Toller (1968)
• Rotmord (1969, television film adaptation of Toller produced in collaboration with Peter Zadek)
• Sand (1971, television film directed by Peter Palitzsch)
• Eiszeit (1973)
• Die Villa (1976)
• Klaras Mutter (1978, television film )
• Mosch (1980, television film adaptation)
• Merlin oder das wüste Land (1981)
• Eisenhans (1982, movie adaptation)
• Parzival (1987)
• Korbes (1988)
• Karlos (1990)
• Herr Paul (1994)
• Die Legende vom armen Heinrich (1997)
• Kupsch (2001, monologue)
• Die Freude am Leben (2001)
• Othoon (2002)

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