Arthur Miller

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller (born October 17, 1915 in New York City , New York , † February 10, 2005 in Roxbury , Connecticut ) was an American writer , screenwriter and winner of the Pulitzer Prize . He is considered an important socio-critical playwright of recent times. His socially and time-critical dramas turn against the so-called American way of life , in which the focus is on professional success. Again and again Miller put the ethical obligation of the individual in the foreground. His marriage to Marilyn Monroe also attracted public interest .

Life

Miller was born in New York in 1915 to a Jewish family . After the bankruptcy of parental Tailoring in 1929 which settled immigrant family of Isadore and Augusta Miller with their other children, Kermit and Joan to Brooklyn over. The father, Isadore Mahler, anglicized the family name after acquiring US citizenship to make it easier for his children to get ahead in the New World. After graduating from high school, Miller worked in various jobs until he was admitted to the University of Michigan in 1934. There he studied economics and history and worked as a night-time editor of the Michigan Daily to earn a sideline . After a short time, however, in 1936 he changed his major to literature and drama in the field of English and completed his studies in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts . The trigger for the change was the award of the Avery Hopwood Award in Drama for his piece No Villain and the Bureau of New Plays Prize . Following this success, several of Miller’s plays were performed in Ann Arbor and Detroit until he graduated from college in 1938.

Miller was in 1949 when just 33-year-old author for his drama Death of a Salesman ( Death of a Salesman ) of the Pulitzer Prize awarded. The allusions to Joseph McCarthy and his communist hunt in the drama Witch Hunt brought Miller difficulties: he did not receive a passport for the premiere of the play in Belgium, his film project about juvenile offenders in New York was hampered. Miller also refused in June 1956 named him known Communists before a committee of inquiry to call, and was therefore on 31 May 1957 a prison sentence, fined and sentenced to pass withdrawal. However, the verdict against him was overturned in 1958.

Miller had the first of his three marriages in 1940 with Mary Grace Slattery, with whom he had a daughter Jane Ellen (* 1944) and a son Robert A. (* 1947). After about director Elia Kazan to Hollywood -Star Marilyn Monroe had met, the marriage went with Slattery to pieces. In 1956 Miller married Monroe; the marriage lasted five years until they were divorced by mutual agreement in January 1961 due to numerous marital disputes and Monroe's failure to have children. Through this marriage, the intellectual was targeted by the gossip press . For his wife he edited a short story for a screenplay that was filmed with her in one of the leading roles under the title Misfits by John Huston .

From 1962 until her death in 2002 Miller was married to the Austrian photographer Inge Morath . The children Rebecca (* 1962) and Daniel Miller (* 1966) came from this marriage . It was not until 2007 that it was revealed that Miller had kept the existence of his home-living son with Down syndrome a secret from the public.

Recently, Miller had repeatedly taken a stand against George W. Bush's US policies . He also professed atheism several times , most recently in the series The Atheist Tapes with Jonathan Miller (no relative). Miller's works are influenced by this worldview. In 2003 Miller was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the freedom of the individual in society .

Miller died of heart failure on the evening of February 10, 2005 at the age of 89 in Roxbury, Connecticut, United States, according to informal reports. According to media reports, he suffered from cancer and most recently from pneumonia, among other things.

His works and politics

Its importance is mostly based on its successful and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman ( Death of a Salesman occupied, 1949), in which he accurately analyzes the dream world of the protagonist Willy Loman and unmasked. That dream world can be understood as a reflection of contemporary American society, which no longer exists in terms of the ideal ( American Dream ) in terms of stage performance as well as in reality , but is merely maintained as a collapsing remnant of longed-for states.

His pieces are performed and celebrated again and again to this day. Even today, the death of a traveling salesman has lost none of its relevance. The work, which in addition to the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 received the Tony Award , one of the most coveted US stage awards, was again awarded this prize in 1999, this time as the best revival of a Broadway season.

Miller's drama about the decline of the ideals of the US company in 1985, directed by Volker Schlöndorff filmed . Dustin Hoffman appeared as the actor of Willy Loman , his eldest son Biff was played by John Malkovich .

Arthur Miller's works also provided parallels to contemporary political developments. His drama The Crucible (German witch hunt ), which is based on true events, reproduces the events in Salem in 1692. The development towards crime is characterized by a kind of smear campaign that is driven by personal interests and intrigues through mass hysterical processes up to catastrophe.

Before the renowned US film witch hunt by Nicholas Hytner with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder in 1996 was the drama in 1957 as a cooperation of French and East German ( DDR ) filmmaker, directed by Raymond Rouleau with Simone Signoret and Yves Montand filmed and published under the name Die Hexen von Salem , in the Federal Republic of 1958 under the title Witches Hunt .

Awards (selection)

Works (selection)

Plays

  • The Grass Still Grows . Comedy. 1938.
  • The Man Who Had All the Luck . 1944 (received the Theater Guild Award in 1944).
  • All My Sons (dt. All my sons ). 1947.
  • Death of a Salesman (German. The death of the traveling salesman : Two acts and a requiem . Translated by Katrin Janecke. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1950). Drama. 1949 (Pulitzer Prize for Drama).
  • The Crucible (German witch hunt ). 1953.
  • A View from the Bridge (dt. View from the Bridge ). 1955.
  • A Memory of Two Mondays (dt. Memory of two assembly ). 1955.
  • After the Fall (dt. After the Fall ). 1964.
  • Incident at Vichy (German incident in Vichy . Translated by Hans Sahl . Frankfurt am Main). 1964.
  • The Price (dt. The price ). 1968.
  • The Archbishop's Ceiling . 1977.
  • The American Clock (Eng. The Great Depression ). 1980.
  • Clara . 1986.
  • Broken Glass (dt. Cullet ). 1994.

Scripts

  • The Misfits (German. Not socially acceptable. Translated by Hugo Seinfeld. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg). 1961.
  • Playing for Time (dt. Game time ). 1980.

prose

  • Focus (German focal point , Zurich 1950). Roman, 1945; Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-596-90593-5 .
  • The Misfits . Novella, 1957.
  • In Russia (dt. In Russia ) with Inge Morath (photos) 1969.
  • Chinese Encounters (German China ) with Inge Morath (photos), 1979.
  • Timebends (German time curves. One life ). Autobiography, 1987. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987.
  • Homely Girl (Eng. Inconspicuous girl. One life ). Short story, 1992. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-14832-4 .
  • Echoes Down the Corridor (dt. Reverberation time ). Essays, 2000. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-049011-8 .
  • Presence . Complete stories, 2007. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-596-95019-5 .

Film adaptations

documentary

Miller also appears in the documentaries The Atheism Tapes (2004) directed by Jonathan Miller . The Atheism Tapes contains interviews with six important personalities from the fields of philosophy and science. Miller speaks about religion and atheism in a half-hour interview.

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Arthur Miller  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . (= Friedrich's playwright of the world theater. Volume 19). 2nd Edition. Friedrich Verlag, Velber bei Hannover 1969, p. 7.
  2. ↑ Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . 1969, p. 7 f.
  3. ^ The New York Times : Miller Convicted in Contempt Case , June 1, 1957
  4. ↑ Cf. Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . 1969, pp. 8-10.
  5. ↑ Cf. Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . 1969, pp. 8-10.
  6. ↑ Suzanna Andrews: Arthur Miller's Missing Act. Vanity Fair, September 2007, accessed October 17, 2015 (via Miller's son Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome).
  7. ↑ A fallible hero. Guardian, archived from the original on September 4, 2007 ; Retrieved June 10, 2008 .
  8. ^ Writer Arthur Miller is dead. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 11, 2005. Retrieved May 6, 2014.
  9. ↑ Cf. Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . 1969, pp. 45-59.
  10. ↑ Cf. Rainer Lübbren: Arthur Miller . 1969, pp. 60-76.
  11. ^ Members: Arthur Miller. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 10, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Miller, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller, Arthur Asher (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 2005
Place of death Roxbury , Connecticut, United States