Müller, Heiner

Müller, Heiner (1929– ), playwright of the German Democratic Republic, whose first plays, Der Lohndrücker (The Scab, 1950) and Die Korrektur (The Correction, 1958), were propaganda works in the style of Brecht designed to instil socialist attitudes in his worker-audiences. Cement (1972) is an adaptation of Gladkov's novel on the Russian Revolution. He also uses classical subjects, taken mainly from Sophocles, such as Philoktet (1968), to depict with less overt socialism the conflicting claims the community makes on the individual. Medeamaterial (1982; London, 1989) uses Euripides' Medea to reflect present disasters. He also translated and adapted Shwartz's The Dragon and Shakespeare's Macbeth (1972) and Hamlet (Hamletmachine, 1979; NY, 1984; London, 1987). Quartet (1982; London, 1983; NY, 1985) places the characters of Laclos's novel Les Liaisons dangereuses in a bunker after World War III as well as in the pre-French Revolution salon of their original setting. The Task (London, 1989), set in Jamaica in 1794, again uses the past as a metaphor for the present. His works, with their terse, dense, finely chiselled language, are highly esteemed throughout Germany.