Marieluise Fleißer

Who was Marieluise Fleißer?

Marieluise Fleißer was a German author and playwright.

Her best-known works are two plays, Purgatory in Ingolstadt and Pioneers in Ingolstadt. Bertolt Brecht persuaded the director Moriz Seeler to stage the first play, which Seeler retitled; Fleißer's original title was The Washing of Feet. Brecht then encouraged her to write Pioneers. Premiered in Berlin, the plays caused a scandal, especially in her home town, and were attacked by the Nazis, who had not yet come to power.

Fleißer was rediscovered in the 1970s by a later generation, among them the theatre director Peter Stein and the playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz. Pioneers in Ingolstadt was adapted as a TV film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1971.

The plays were given their London premieres at the Gate Theatre, London, in 1990, directed by Annie Castledine and Stephen Daldry.