Name Grete Weil Role Writer | Libretti Boulevard Solitude | |
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Died May 14, 1999, Grunwald, Germany Spouse Walter Jokisch (m. 1960–1984) Books Meine Schwester Antigone, Tramhalte Beethovenstraat People also search for Hans Werner Henze, Walter Jokisch, John Barrett | ||
Grete Weil (18 July 1906 – 14 May 1999) was a German writer of Jewish origin. She was born Margarete Elisabeth Dispeker, the daughter of a prominent lawyer in Munich. She studied German literature in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Munich, and Paris. In 1932 she began writing her dissertation, and also completed her first story, "Erlebnis einer Reise" (Experience of a trip).
In 1932, she married Edgar Weil, a playwright at the Munich Kammerspiele. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Edgar lost his position and was also briefly detained by the police. The couple made the decision to emigrate to the Netherlands. Edgar traveled there first, and established a pharmaceutical company, based on his experience with his family's pharmaceutical business in Frankfurt am Main. During this time, Grete broke off her literature studies, and trained as a photographer. In 1935 she followed her husband to Amsterdam, where she operated a photo studio. In June 1941, the year following the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis, Edgar was arrested and soon transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was killed, within just a few months of his arrest. Grete went into hiding and survived the Holocaust. She eventually returned to Germany in 1947.
Back in Germany, Weil lived at first in Darmstadt, and later in Stuttgart, Berlin, and Hannover. She settled in Frankfurt am Main in 1955. In 1949 her short novel Ans Ende der Welt (To the end of the world), which she had written while still in Amsterdam, was published by an East Berlin publishing company. After that, she wrote librettos for works by Hans Werner Henze (Boulevard Solitude, 1951) and Wolfgang Fortner (Die Witwe von Ephesus, 1952), and worked on a novel, "Antigone," which remained unpublished. To earn a living Weil also wrote articles for the theater periodical Das neue Forum (Darmstadt), and translated books from English for the Limes publishing house in Wiesbaden.
In 1960, Weil married her longtime friend, the opera director Walter Jockisch, with whom she had been together since her return to Germany. After Jockisch's death, in 1970, Weil increasingly turned to her writing. In 1974, she moved to Grünwald near Munich.
Weil is one of the major proponents of Holocaust literature. Her important works are listed below. Her books have been translated into all the major European languages.
Weil was a member of the German PEN Centre. Among her awards are the Wilhelmine-Lübke-Preis (1980), the Tukan Prize from the city of Munich (1983), the Geschwister Scholl-Preis (1988), the Carl-Zuckmayer Medal of Rhineland-Palatinate (1995) and the Bavarian Order of Merit (1996).
She died in Grünwald in 1999.