DER UNZUGEHÖRIGE. PETER WEISS - LEBEN IN GEGENSÄTZEN

Peter Weiss (1916-1982) has always felt like an outsider, within his country, his family, society, and in the literary and political world, just like the characters about which he wrote: Marat and Sade, Trotzki, Hölderlin, Kafka. In early childhood in Bremen and Berlin, he is already considered a "foreigner" at school, being the son of a Jewish Hungarian and a Swiss. In the 1930's he then emigrates with his parents to Sweden and definitely loses any sense of a "homeland". He feels foreign within his own family which he defines as an empty place without any feelings. His only support is his six year-old sister. Shocked by her sudden death, the 18 year-old Weiss tries to transcend his pain through the arts. He starts painting apocalyptic pictures; Influenced by Hermann Hesse, Kafka, and, in particular, psychoanalysis and surrealism. He makes some experimental films and starts writing. It is not until the 1960's that he becomes political, using his literary work as a forum for the liberation movements in the third world. But he soon realises that this politicisation of his work reduces its literary qualities and he returns to his early preoccupations: the relationships between dreams and being awake, History and individual feelings, realism and vision.