Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches (Roux, act 1, scene 19)

Leipzig: Reclam. He became a Swedish citizen in 1946. In 1934 he emigrated with his family to Chislehurst near London England where he studied photography at the Polytechnic School of Photography and then in 1937-1938 attended the Prague Art Academy.

Peter Weiss earned his reputation in the post-war German literary world as the proponent of an avant-garde meticulously descriptive writing as an exponent of autobiographical prose and also as a politically engaged dramatist. His "Auschwitz Oratorium" The Investigation served to broaden the debates over the so-called "Vergangenheitspolitik" or "politics of history. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.