Youth and wartime experience Erwin Friedrich Max Piscator was born on 17 December 1893 in the small
Prussian village of
Greifenstein-Ulm, the son of Carl Piscator, a merchant, and his wife Antonia Laparose. His family was descended from
Johannes Piscator, a
Protestant theologian who produced an important translation of the
Bible in 1600. The family moved to the university town
Marburg in 1899 where Piscator attended the
Gymnasium Philippinum. In the autumn of 1913, he attended a private Munich drama school and enrolled at the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) to study
German,
philosophy and
art history. Piscator also took
Arthur Kutscher's famous seminar in
theatre history, which
Bertolt Brecht later also attended. Piscator began his acting career in the autumn of 1914, in small unpaid roles at the
Munich Court Theatre, under the directorship of
Ernst von Possart. In 1896, Karl Lautenschläger had installed one of the world's first
revolving stages in that theatre. During the
First World War, Piscator was
drafted into the
German army, serving in a
frontline infantry unit as a
Landsturm soldier from the spring of 1915 (and later as a
signaller). The experience inspired a hatred of
militarism and
war that lasted for the rest of his life. He wrote a few bitter
poems that were published in 1915 and 1916 in the
left-wing Expressionist literary magazine
Die Aktion. In summer 1917, having participated in the battles at
Ypres Salient and been in hospital once, he was assigned to a newly established army theatre unit. In November 1918, when the
armistice was declared, Piscator participated in the
November Revolution, giving a speech in
Hasselt at the first meeting of a revolutionary Soldiers' Council (
Soviet). In collaboration with writer
Hans José Rehfisch, Piscator formed a theatre company in Berlin at the Comedy-Theater on Alte Jacobsstrasse, following the
Volksbühne ("people's stage") concept. In 1922–1923 they staged works by
Maxim Gorky,
Romain Rolland, and
Leo Tolstoy. As stage director at the
Volksbühne (1924–1927), and later as managing director at his own theatre (the
Piscator-Bühne on
Nollendorfplatz), Piscator produced social and political plays especially suited to his theories. His dramatic aims were utilitarian — to influence voters or clarify left-wing policies. He used mechanized sets, lectures, movies, and mechanical devices that appealed to his audiences. In 1926, his updated production of
Friedrich Schiller's
The Robbers at the distinguished
Preußisches Staatstheater in Berlin provoked widespread controversy. Piscator made extensive cuts to the text and reinterpreted the play as a vehicle for his political beliefs. He presented the protagonist Karl Moor as a substantially self-absorbed insurgent. As Moor's foil, Piscator made the character of Spiegelberg, often presented as a sinister figure, the voice of the working-class revolution. Spiegelberg appeared as a
Trotskyist intellectual, slightly reminiscent of
Charlie Chaplin with his cane and bowler hat. As he died, the audience heard
The Internationale sung. Piscator founded the influential (though short-lived) Piscator-Bühne in Berlin in 1927. In 1928 he produced a notable adaptation of the unfinished, episodic
Czech comic
novel The Good Soldier Schweik. The dramaturgical collective that produced this adaptation included Bertolt Brecht. Brecht later described it as a "
montage from the novel".
Leo Lania's play
Konjunktur (Oil Boom) premiered in Berlin in 1928, directed by Erwin Piscator, with incidental music by
Kurt Weill. Three oil companies fight over the rights to oil production in a primitive Balkan country, and in the process exploit the people and destroy the environment. Weill's songs from this play, such as
Die Muschel von Margate, are still part of the modern repertoire of art music. In 1929 Piscator published his
The Political Theatre, discussions of the theory of theatre . In the preface to its 1963 edition, Piscator wrote that the book was "assembled in hectic sessions during rehearsals for
The Merchant of Berlin" by
Walter Mehring, which had opened on 6 September 1929 at the second Piscator-Bühne. It was intended to provide "a definitive explanation and elucidation of the basic facts of epic, i.e. political theatre", which at that time "was still meeting with widespread rejection and misapprehension." As
John Willett wrote, throughout the pre-Hitler years Piscator's "commitment to the Russian Revolution was a decisive factor in all his work." With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Piscator's stay in the
Soviet Union became exile. In July 1936, Piscator left the Soviet Union for
France. In 1937, he married dancer
Maria Ley in Paris.
Bertolt Brecht was one of the groomsmen. During his years in Berlin, Piscator had collaborated with
Lena Goldschmidt on a stage adaptation of
Theodore Dreiser's bestselling novel
An American Tragedy; under the title
The Case of Clyde Griffiths. With American
Lee Strasberg as director, it had run for 19 performances on
Broadway in 1936. When Piscator and Ley subsequently immigrated to the
United States in 1939, Piscator was invited by
Alvin Johnson, the founding president of
The New School, to establish a theatre workshop. Among Piscator's students at this
Dramatic Workshop in New York were
Bea Arthur,
Harry Belafonte,
Marlon Brando,
Tony Curtis,
Ben Gazzara,
Judith Malina,
Walter Matthau,
Rod Steiger,
Elaine Stritch,
Eli Wallach,
Jack Creley, and
Tennessee Williams. Established in New York, Erwin and Maria Ley-Piscator lived at 17 East 76th Street, an Upper East Side townhome, sometimes remembered as the Piscator House. After World War II and the break-up of Germany, Piscator returned to
West Germany in 1951 due to
McCarthy era political pressure in the United States against former communists in the arts. Despite his decision to settle in West Berlin, Piscator often visited the theaters of the capital of
East Germany, maintaining warm relations with its cultural figures. He was elected a corresponding member of the
East German Academy of Arts in 1956, one of the few West Germans to have this position. , Berlin In 1962 Piscator was appointed manager and director of the Freie Volksbühne in
West Berlin. To much international critical acclaim, in February 1963 Piscator premièred
Rolf Hochhuth's
The Deputy, a play "about
Pope Pius XII and the allegedly neglected rescue of Italian Jews from Nazi gas chambers." Until his death in 1966, Piscator was a major exponent of contemporary and
documentary theatre. Piscator's wife, Maria Ley, died in New York City in 1999. ==Effects on theatre==