Peter Hacks (21 March 1928 – 28 August 2003) was a German playwright, author, and essayist. Hacks was born in Breslau (Wrocław),

Lower Silesia Lower Silesia ( ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ) is a historical and geographical region mostly located in Poland with small portions in the Czech Republic and Germany. It is the western part of the region of Silesia. Its largest city is Wrocław. The first ...

. Displaced by

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Hacks settled in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

in 1947, where he made acquaintance with

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

and

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

. Hacks then followed Brecht to

East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...

in 1955. However, a continued cooperation between him and Brecht did not arise. From 1960 Hacks worked as a dramaturge at the Deutsches Theater (DT) in Berlin. When the staging of his play ''Die Sorgen und die Macht'' (1962) sparked criticism from officials, he gave up his position as a dramaturge at the DT and lived again as a freelance writer. His success on the world stage – most notably with ''Ein Gespräch im Hause Stein über den abwesenden Herrn von Goethe'' (English title: ''Charlotte'') – led to his literary acceptance within GDR and West-Germany. Hacks was a communist and supported the East German government's 1976 expatriation of the singer

Wolf Biermann Karl Wolf Biermann (; born 15 November 1936) is a German singer-songwriter, poet, and former East German dissident. He is perhaps best known for the 1968 song " Ermutigung" and his expatriation from East Germany in 1976. Early life Biermann was ...

. His correspondence with the communist historian Kurt Gossweiler has been published. He won the Alex Wedding Prize (1992) and the

Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis The (German Youth Literature Award) is an annual award established in 1956 by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth to recognise outstanding works of children's and young adult literature. It is Germany's only ...

(1998). Hacks died in Groß Machnow. Together with his wife Hacks used the pseudonym Saul O’Hara through which they could write and publish boulevard comedies (''Risky Marriage'').

Publications

* With Kurt Gossweiler, in: ''Am Ende verstehen sie es: Politische Schriften 1988–2003''. (Edited by André Thiele.) Berlin: Eulenspiegel, 2005. * '' Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin'', fairy-tale, base for an opera by

Udo Zimmermann Udo Zimmermann (6 October 1943 – 22 October 2021) was a German composer, musicologist, opera director, and conductor. He worked as a professor of composition, founded a centre for contemporary music in Dresden, and was director of the Leipzig ...

References

External links

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Peter Hacks
at Internet Off-Broadway Database 1928 births 2003 deaths Writers from Wrocław People from the Province of Lower Silesia East German writers Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Heinrich Mann Prize winners Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany German male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century German dramatists and playwrights German-language poets German male poets 20th-century German male writers {{Germany-writer-stub