Peter Hacks – Communist with a Parlor

Sunday, October 8, at 3 p.m.

Schloss Wiepersdorf

Free Admission

Peter Hacks – Communist with a Parlor

The Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf and the Kleist Museum, Frankfurt (Oder) jointly invite you to a talk about Peter Hacks with the authors Matthias Dell and Ronald Weber at Schloss Wiepersdorf. Hacks was a guest there in 1973.

Peter Hacks (1928-2003) was one of the most powerful linguistic dramatists of the GDR. It was not only after the end of the GDR that he became a controversial figure due to his political statements. The occasion for the event of the Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf is the new publication Peter Hacks auf der Fenne in Groß Machnow [1974-2003] in the series "Frankfurter Buntbücher", in which Matthias Dell tells about the private Peter Hacks and his years-long search for a suitable summer house. In 1973 Peter Hacks leased an old brickyard in the open field between Mittenwalde and Groß Machnow. The 'Fenne' was not only a summer house, the idiosyncratic location contributed much to the stylization of Hacks as an elite poet figure in the GDR. Since 1991, the Kleist Museum has been investigating the relationship between writers and places in the series "Frankfurter Buntbücher," now edited by Anette Handke and Anke Pätsch, with the area of the Mark Brandenburg being at the center of attention.

Ronald Weber is the author of the biography Peter Hacks - Leben und Werk, published in 2018 by Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin. In it, he not only describes the private circumstances of Peter Hacks' life, but also introduces his literary work and poetics and interprets his plays against the political background of their creation.

In the guest book of Wiepersdorf Castle, Peter Hacks left the following two-liner in 1973:

"Wo, oft in Schwermut, selten in Gedanken,
Die deutschen Dichter alle Pilsner tranken.“

(Where, often in gloom, rarely in thought / The German poets all drank Pilsner beer.)

An event in cooperation with the Kleist Museum, Frankfurt (Oder)

Matthias Dell, born in 1976, works as a freelance editor and author for Deutschlandradio, writes reviews for Tagesspiegel, Cargo and Merkur, and publishes the weekly "Obduktionsbericht," a review of the current "Tatort"/"Polizeiruf 110" on Zeit.de. For the Münster "Tatort" he published the book: "Herrlich inkorrekt. Die Thiel-Boerne-Tatorte" (2012, Bertz + Fischer).

Ronald Weber, born in 1980, wrote his doctoral thesis on the drama aesthetics of Peter Hacks and Heiner Müller, for which he received the Göttingen Dissertation Prize. Since 2016, he has worked as an editor at the daily newspaper "junge Welt." His book "Peter Hacks. Leben und Werk" was published in 2018 by Eulenspiegel-Verlag, Berlin.