Wilhelm Pevny

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Wilhelm Pevny, 2009

Wilhelm Pevny (born June 15, 1944 in Wallersdorf , Lower Bavaria ) is an Austrian writer and screenwriter .

life and work

Wilhelm Pevny was born in his mother's hometown in Lower Bavaria; When the father returned from American captivity in 1947, he brought his wife and son to bombed-out post-war Vienna. Pevny grew up in Brigittenau , a Viennese working-class district.

In his pamphlet “The Forgotten Goals - Do the 68ers want to steal away?” He wrote in 1988: “I believe I can say that my parents lived a so-called model marriage, not by appearance, but - as far as I could tell - really, that is, you could feel that they liked each other and were nice to me. Nevertheless, at the age of twenty, when I leave the parental home, I am one of the bitterest opponents of the nuclear family ... When I read Wilhelm Reich's mass psychology of fascism , in which Reich describes the connection between the nuclear family and the aggressive adaptability that erupts in epochs. "

Pevny first studied theater studies and German studies in Vienna , then went to Paris in 1967 , where he worked as a teacher at the Berlitz language school until 1969 and became “from a liberal humanist to an angry leftist” through the bloody police violence in the streets of Paris.

During short stays in Vienna to finish his studies, his play Flipper was performed on the occasion of the establishment of the café theater ( brought to life by Götz Fritsch , Hilde Berger and Dieter Haspel ) in 1968, followed in 1969 by Oedip remembrance . Ellen Stewart , director of the La Mama Theater New York , saw the play in Vienna and engaged Pevny and Fritsch to New York, where Pevny's experimental play Sprintorgasmics premiered. The actors, trained in the tradition of the body-hugging Living Theater , acted naked on stage in New York; At the same time, "Sprintorgasmics" was reminiscent of ancient Greek theater thanks to its rhythmic chorus.

When the play was performed in 1971 at the Vienna Volkstheater under the direction of Gustav Manker in a double premiere with Peter Turrinis Rozznjogd , also under the direction of Götz Fritsch, public and press reactions were divided. With the exception of Arthur West in the Volksstimme and that of Fitz Walden in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, press votes were largely negative.

In 1972 Pevny made a guest appearance at the Mickery Theater in Amsterdam with the play Rais , the life story of Gilles de Rais , a colleague of Joan of Arc , who believed he could win gold from children's blood , on nine stages .

Between 1973 and 1980, in collaboration with Peter Turrini, he wrote the scripts for the six-part television series Alpensaga , directed by Dieter Berner, and the television film Der Bauer und der Millionär , directed by Axel Corti . In working on the Alpensaga scripts, Pevny explicitly intended to present history and historiography from the perspective of the population, in contrast to the previous historiography from the perspective of the rulers, for him a balancing act between political responsibility and artistic claim.

Pevny went to Bali for several months after finishing work . In 1979, after Johann Nestroy, The Two Night Walkers or the Necessary and the Superfluous, the piece The Dream of Happiness was created . The revolutionary spirit of 1848 is spun on here with the experiences of 1968.

Pevny's work is initially divided into an experimental phase and a political one, which culminates in the documentary film Safari - The Journey , which critically illuminates South Africa in the apartheid regime , filmed in Mozambique in 1985 , premiered in 1987 in the Votive Cinema in Vienna . The day after the film was presented in Mozambique in 1988 , an attack was carried out on the activist of the ANC ( African National Congress ) Albie Sachs , who is involved in Safari - The Journey . Albie Sachs survived seriously injured, lost an arm and an eye. Pevny's massive efforts to make this public in the Austrian press failed. In 1991 the film was broadcast by ORF . Pevny, who had previously taken a political stance in glosses and feature pages, withdrew from the public by means of a press release to the APA .

After years of silence, he decided to start a theater production again ( Bouvard & Pécuchet , stage version based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert ) in the suburban theater echoraum . Then came the radio play One Hour World - A Disruption .

Pevny subsequently wrote several radio plays for Austrian and Bavarian radio; the novel Trance was published in 1999 by edition echoraum . In 2008 Wieser Verlag added Roman Palmenland to its program and in 2009 the volume of stories Luft . With Palmenland , Pevny returned to experimentation and artistic expression while maintaining his political background.

In 2014 he received the City of Vienna Prize for Literature .

Work overview

Radio plays

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pevny, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Wallersdorf , Lower Bavaria