Weiss’s substantial œuvre has become a casualty of the cold war’s end, the collapse of socialism, and the beginning of a new millennium – as one would call it. This strikes us a valid reason to reconsider Peter Weiss – to face the challenge of rethinking the work of a writer and artist who was a committed socialist and utopian thinker at a time when these very categories have been fundamentally called into question.

The Editors: Jost Hermand is the William F. Vilas Research Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research interests focus on German literature and culture from 1750 to the present, German-Jewish history, and the methodology of cultural studies. He has taught German literature, art history, and history at many German and American universities. His most recent publications are A Hitler Youth in Poland (1997) and Die deutschen Dichterbünde von den Meistersingern bis zum PEN-Club (1998). Marc Silberman is Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches twentieth-century German literature, culture, and cinema studies. He has published books, essays, and articles on GDR literature, theater, and cinema on Heiner Müller, Günter Grass, and Bertolt Brecht, and on the history of German cinema. He edited the Brecht Year Book from 1989 to 1995 and was involved in many projects surrounding the commemoration of Brecht’s one-hundredth birthday in 1998.