Tankred Dorst is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and storyteller

Storytelling

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...

.

Tankred Dorst currently lives and works in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

. His farces, parables, one-act-plays and adaptations are inspired by the theatre of the absurd and the works of Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

, Giraudoux

Jean Giraudoux

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...

 and Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

. His monumental drama Merlin oder das wüste Land, which was premiered in 1981 in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

, 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

Georg Büchner Prize

The Georg Büchner Prize is the most important literary prize of Germany. It was created in 1923 in memory of Georg Büchner and was only given to artists who came from or were closely tied to Büchner's home of Hesse...

 in 1990, Georg Hensel remarked, that Dorst's plays all have a direct connection to the present:
Tankred Dorst first directed the Ring of the Nibelung in Bayreuth in 2006.

Biography

Tankred Dorst was born in Sonneberg

Sonneberg

Sonneberg is a town in Thuringia, Germany, which is seat of the district Sonneberg.It has long been a centre of toy making and is still well known for this...

, Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

.

Conscripted into the German army as a pupil at the age of 17, he was soon captured and incacerated as a prisoner of war

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

. 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

Bamberg

Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...

 and Munich. Together with composer Wilhelm Killmayer

Wilhelm Killmayer

Wilhelm Killmayer is a German composer of classical music and an academic.-Professional career:Wilhelm Killmayer studied conducting and composition from 1945 to 1951 in Munich at Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen’s Musikseminar...

 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

Lübeck

The Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World...

, Mannheim

Mannheim

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

 and Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

. 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

Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...

 Prize (1964), Prize of the City of Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 (1970), Literature Prize of the Bayerische Akademie der Künste (1983), Mülheim Playwright's Prize (1989), Georg Büchner

Georg Büchner

Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...

 Prize (1990), E.T.A. Hoffmann

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...

 Prize (1996) and the city of Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

's Max Frisch

Max Frisch

Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...

 Prize (1998). In 2006, he was awarded the Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature

European Prize for Literature

European Prize for Literature is a European-wide literary award sponsored by the city of Strasbourg with support from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs . The prize is award by the Jurys des Grands Prix Littéraires, in Strasbourg, at the same time as the Prix de Littérature Francophone...

 (2008). 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
  Peter Zadek
  Peter Zadek was a German theatre and film director, play translator and screenwriter and is regarded as one of the greatest directors in German-speaking theater. He was the head of the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Bochum , the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg and the Berliner Ensemble from 1992 to 1996...
  
  )
• Sand (1971, television film directed by Peter Palitzsch)
• Eiszeit
  Ice Age (1975 film)
  Ice Age is a 1975 German drama film directed by Peter Zadek. It was entered into the 25th Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* O. E...
  
  (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)