Wolfgang Hildesheimer

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Biography

Wolfgang Hildesheimer was born in Hamburg in 1916. The family, who was Jewish, moved to England in 1933 to avoid the Nazi persecution, where Hildesheimer completed his grammar school education. The family then moved to Palestine, where Hildesheimer studied cabinet-making, drawing and stage design. They returned to London and he continued studying stage design. He returned to Palestine in 1939, working as a teacher and then as an intelligence officer for the British government. In 1946 he worked as a translator at the Nuremberg War trials and then edited the proceedings, before moving to Bavaria to work as a painter.

He started as a writer when it was too cold to paint and he wrote a story instead. He continue to paint but also published stories, stage, radio and TV plays, novels and biographies. In 1953 he moved, with his second wife, Silvia Dillman, to Poschiavo in Switzerland, where he lived till his death in 1991. In the 1950s, he joined the Gruppe 47, a group set up to promote post-war German literature.

His fiction writing is essentially satirical and absurd, with unlikely events occurring which the characters seem to consider normal. He wrote only a few novels and is best known for his biography of Mozart, which has been translated into English and other languages. His only novel translated into English – Marbot. Eine Biographie (Marbot : a Biography) – was a satire on biography. He continued to paint and focused on painting and collages towards the end of his life.

Books about Wolfgang Hildesheimer

Volker (ed.) Jehle: Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Franka Köpp and Sabine Wolf (eds.): Wolfgang Hildesheimer : 1916-1991
Patricia Stanley: Wolfgang Hildesheimer and His Critics

Bibliography

1952 Lieblose Legenden
1953 Das Ende der Welt
1953 Paradies der falschen Vögel
1954 Die Eroberung der Prinzessin Turandot revised as 1984 Der Drachenthron : Komödie in drei Akten
1956 Begegnung im Balkanexpress
1956 Ich trage eine Eule nach Athen und vier weitere lieblose Legenden
1958 Spiele in denen es dunkel wird
1960 Herrn Walsers Raben republished as Herrn Walsers Raben; Unter der Erde
1961 Die Verspätung; ein Stück in zwei Teilen
1961 Nocturno im Grand Hotel: Eine Fernseh-Komödie
1962 Lieblose Legenden
1963 Vergebliche Aufzeichnungen; Nachtstück
1963 Betrachtungen über Mozart
1965 Tynset (Tynset)
1965 Das Opfer Helena; Monolog. Zwei Hörspiele
1966 Wer war Mozart? Becketts Spiel. Über das absurde Theater
1969 Interpretationen. James Joyce. Georg Büchner. Zwei Frankfurter Vorlesungen
1971 Mary Stuart; eine historische Szene
1971 Zeiten in Cornwall (Times in Cornwall)
1973 Masante
1974 Hauskauf: Hörspiel
1976 Theaterstücke ; Über das absurde Theater
1977 Mozart (Mozart)
1977 Biosphärenklänge
1979 Exerzitien mit Papst Johannes
1981 Marbot. Eine Biographie (Marbot : a Biography)
1983 Mitteilungen an Max über den Stand der Dinge
1984 Das Jüdische an Mr. Bloom (The Jewishness of Mr. Bloom)
1984 Endlich allein: Collagen
1984 Das Ende der Fiktionen : Reden aus fünfundzwanzig Jahren
1985 Der ferne Bach: eine Rede
1987 Nachlese
1987 The Collected Stories of Wolfgang Hildesheimer
1988 Die Hörspiele
1989 Die Theaterstücke
1989 Vergebliche Aufzeichnungen
1989 Klage und Anklage
1990 Mit dem Bausch dem Bogen : zehn Glossen mit einer Grafik
1991 Gesammelte Werke in sieben Bänden
1996 Schönheit als Therapie: Bilder gegen die Verzweiflung
1996 Warum weinte Mozart?: Reden aus fünfundzwanzig Jahren
1996 Was ist eigentlich ein Escoutadou? : Briefe mit Zeichnungen an Julie
1996 Schule des Sehens: Kunstbetrachtungen
1999 Briefe

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