Tankred Dorst

Tankred Dorst was born in 1925 in Oberlind near Sonneberg (Thuringia). He is one of the most eminent German playwrights of the past decades. While still at school, he was conscripted in 1944 and spent the years until 1947 in various British and American prisoner of war camps. He passed his Abitur in 1950 and began to study German language and literature, history of art and theatre studies (without completing the degree) in Bamberg and Munich. During his studies, he worked with the student puppet theatre “Das kleine Spiel”. In the 1960s and 70s, he worked in film, radio and publishing. He was editor of the series “collection theater werkbücher” and translated plays from French (Diderot, Molière) and English (O’Casey). He was a guest professor numerous times and undertook many lecture tours. Tankred Dorst is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, the German Academy of Performing Arts in Frankfurt/Main, the German Academy of Language and Literature in Darmstadt, the Academy of Science and Literature in Mainz and the German PEN-Centre. Between 1978 and 1983, he directed the films “Klaras Mutter”, “Mosch” and “Eisenhans”, and he was a founding curator of the theatre biennial “New Plays from Europe” in Bonn in 1992. In 2006, he directed Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs” at the Richard-Wagner-Festspiele in Bayreuth. Since 2013, Tankred Dorst has been living in Berlin with his wife Ursula Ehler, who has been his artistic collaborator and life partner for several decades. He received numerous awards for his literary oeuvre, among them the Georg Büchner Prize in 1990, the Honorary Cultural Award of the State Capital of Munich in 2005, the Schiller Memorial Award in 2010 and the theatre award Der Faust for his life achievements in 2012. On December 19 2015, Tankred Dorst will celebrate his 90th birthday.

As of November 2015