Heiner Müller

Professor Heiner M]ller

This best-selling volume contains several of the German author's most controversial dramas, in which he radically questions how culture, myth, art, and social relations create history. Includes: "Hamletmachine, Correction, The Task, Quartet, Despoiled Shore," and "Gundling's Life." One of the most original theatrical minds of our time, Muller, who resided in East Berlin before his death in 1995, was a frequent collaborator of Robert Wilson.

Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage

Verkommenes Ufer, Medeamaterial, Landschaft mit Argonauten

Hamlet - Machine and Other Texts for the Stage (PAJ Playscripts)

Heiner Muller lived through Germany's tumultuous history from Hitler's rise through Soviet occupation to the building and eventual demolition of the Berlin Wall. One of his earliest memories was of his father being beaten by Brownshirts and taken away to a concentration camp; later, Muller chose to stay in the Soviet Zone even when his father defected to the West. His work presents a phantasmagoric vision of culture and history. Though a committed Marxist, Muller loathed the East German government, and his works were often censured for their caustic portrait of a Germany whose history was an unending act of division and violence.

Plays, Poetry, Prose

A Heiner Müller Reader

Reflections on the laws of history from the standpoint of someone straddling the Berlin Wall. Heiner Muller, East German author of Hamletmachine and Medea, was the preeminent German successor of Bertholt Brecht at the end of the twentieth century. In this collection of essays, stories, and interviews conducted by Sylvere Lotringer, Muller reflects on the laws of history from the standpoint of someone straddling the Berlin Wall. Muller saw the wall as both repression and protection of his compatriots from the inevitable triumph of capitalism. His work evokes the wit and compactness of Brecht, with an added psychotropic dimension. Haunted by World War II, Muller was a leading figure in European contemporary literature, whose writing anticipates a future beyond the bipolarity of twentieth-century politics.

Heiner Müller: Germania

Hamlet Machine

This book journeys through Muller's diverse structures over the last 40 years to present a selection of playtexts, poems, short prose and essays. A comprehensive introduction to Muller's work is provided by the translator, Marc von Henning.

Theatremachine

The most important German playwright since Brecht.-John Rockwell, New York Times

Writings by Heiner Müller

Explosion of a Memory

Die hier vorgestellten Übersetzungen bilden einen wichtigen Bestandteil von Heiner Müllers Theaterarbeit.

Werke 7: Die Stücke 5. Die Übersetzungen

Werke

Despite being widely acknowledged as one of the most important German dramatists since Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller (1929–95) still remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. This collection of plays aims to change that, presenting new translations and opening up his work to a larger audience. Collected here are three of his plays—Philoctetes, The Horatian, and Mauser—whose poetic texts evidence the influence of Shakespeare, classical Greek tragedy, and avant-garde political theater on his works. Together they constitute what Müller called an "experimental series," which both develops and critiques Brecht’s theory of the Lehrstück, or "learning play." Based on a tragedy by Sophocles, Philoctetes dramatizes the confrontation between politics, morality, and the desire for revenge. The Horatian uses an incident from ancient Rome as an example of ways of approaching the moral ambiguity of the past. Finally, Mauser, set during the Russian civil war, examines the nature and ethics of revolutionary violence. The plays are accompanied by supporting materials written by Müller himself, as well as an introduction by Uwe Schütte that contextualizes the plays and speaks of their continued relevance today.

Heiner Müller

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