Peter Weiss is regarded as one of the few major European authors of his generation. A central figure in the German-Jewish literary tradition, he was among the first and most important writers to address the horrors of the Holocaust. His early autobiographical texts Abschied von den Eltern [Leavetaking, 1962] and Fluchtpunkt [Vanishing Point, 1963] are modern German classics. His opus magnum, the three-part Die Ästhetik des Widerstands [The Aesthetics of Resistance, 1975-81], an epic roman d’essai about the antifascist resistance movement from the late thirties to 1947, is acknowledged today as a towering achievement in German literature. With the international success of his plays <

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First published 05 October 2004

Citation: Evers, Kai. "Peter Weiss". The Literary Encyclopedia. 5 October 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5467, accessed 9 February 2010.]