Der Drachenthron: Komödie In Drei Akten

by Wolfgang Hildesheimer

German

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Wolfgang Hildesheimer was an acclaimed German-born author, playwright, and visual artist who became a central voice in post-WWII European literature. Born into a Jewish family in Hamburg on December 9, 1916, he fled the Nazi regime in 1933, moving to Britain and later to Palestine. He initially trained as a painter and stage designer in London. After the war, his deep linguistic skills led him to work as a simultaneous interpreter and court stenographer at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.

This dark historical experience heavily influenced his transition from painting to writing. He joined the influential West German literary circle Gruppe 47, establishing himself as a pioneer of the Theatre of the Absurd in Germany. His early fame grew with the short story collection Lieblose Legenden (Loveless Legends, 1952) and the deeply psychological existential novel Tynset (1965). For his profound literary contributions, he received Germany's most prestigious literary award, the Georg Büchner Prize, in 1966.

Hildesheimer achieved international bestseller status with his groundbreaking, demythologizing biography Mozart (1977). He followed this success with Marbot (1981), a brilliant postmodern satire written as a serious historical biography of a completely fictional Victorian nobleman. In his final decade, deeply concerned with global environmental destruction, he completely abandoned writing to focus on visual collage art. He lived his remaining years in Switzerland, where he died of a heart attack on August 21, 1991.