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Hans Jürgen Syberberg was born on December 8, 1935 in Nossendorf (Western Pomerania), as the son of a landowner. He lived in the countryside until 1947 and then moved to Rostock. With the help from Benno Besson, he obtained Bertolt Brecht's permission to attend the Berliner Ensemble as a schoolboy, where he shot his first films with an 8mm camera in 1952/53: the rehearsals for "Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti" and "Die Mutter" as well as a complete performance of "Urfaust". The films were released in West Germany in 1970 (blown up to 35mm) under the title "Nach meinem letzten Umzug".
Syberberg always emphasized the importance of those early years, firstly because life in the country and his father's aversion to the Nazis spared him the burdens that beset many of his peers: "I lived outside of Nazi society and today I can move about undamaged by its consequences, immunized, without having to set myself apart from my parents through protesting and without a "revenge education" against the former persecutors". On the other hand, life in the GDR during its development phase provided him with experiences that differed radically from the Americanized youth of other directors of the New German Cinema: "Prussian-conservative, in classical school, without chewing gum and pinball machines, not for nothing brought up in the Stalinist era" (Syberberg's "Filmbuch", p. 306).
In 1953, he moved to West Germany, where he graduated from high school. 1956-62 he studied literature and art history; 1963 he completed a doctorate in Munich on Friedrich Dürenmatts dramtic works. From 1963-66 he worked as a freelancer for Bayerischer Rundfunk, producing 185 topical reports and short documentaries. The second phase of his career was a direct result of this television work: the documentary "character portraits" about Fritz Kortner (two films), Romy Schneider, the Counts Pocci - a run-down, eccentric family of the Bavarian nobility - and the Bavarian "porn king" Alois Brummer ("Sex-Business: Made in Pasing", 1970).
The third aspect of Syberberg's early work is formed by his first two feature films: "Scarabea - Wieviel Erde braucht der Mensch?" ("Scarabea: How Much Land Does a Man Need?", 1968) and "San Domingo" (1970). The former was based on a Tolstoy story, which also provides its subtitle, and is a colorful, often bizarre and surrealistic film with shocking scenes of violence. "San Domingo" was loosely based on Kleist's novella of the same name and is set among drug addicts, rockers and revolutionary students; the film depicts a fascinating, almost documentary-like image of some of the sources of terrorism in West Germany.
The prophetic quality of "San Domingo" lead Syberberg to his best-known films: the so-called "German Trilogy" – "Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König" ("Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King", 1972), "Karl May" (1974) and "Hitler. Ein Film aus Deutschland" ("Hitler - A Film from Germany", 1977) – with its 'spin-offs' "Theodor Hierneis oder: Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird" (1972), und "Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried 1914-1975" ("The Confessions of Winifred Wagner", 1975).
The "trilogy" was the most coherent attempt in West German film to deal with the German national psyche and the winding paths of German history. "I chose the path into the past of our last hundred years, to search for the origins of perhaps many current developments, beginning with "Ludwig", "Karl May" as a continuation and "Hitler" the theme of the century as the last stage of this past, including us, always, today and Europe, in general, with occidental tradition" (Syberberg's "Filmbuch", p. 108).
In the West German film scene, Syberberg played the role of an absolute outsider: always fiercely feuding with what he sees as a conspiratorial, hostile film establishment; a director whose films - subtitled - received more praise and recognition abroad (especially in France and the USA) than in West Germany: "There are people who are on the blacklist of our time in this country, I count myself among them" ("Die freudlose Gesellschaft", p. 335).
Syberberg's films deal almost exclusively with Germany: this is - as he believes - precisely the reason why they were only adequately received abroad. His attempts to "come to terms with the past" contradict the generally accepted analytical approach to dealing with the problem of Hitler and the Nazi past. He claims that the usual image of National Socialism as "irrational" and "right-wing radical" has led to the domination of West German cultural and intellectual life by an "enlightened" left-wing establishment. Syberberg questioned the preconditions of the new "Gleichschaltung" to which West German culture is subject today. In his opinion, Nazism cannot simply be dismissed as "right-wing radicalism"; nor was it merely "irrational"; moreover, "irrationalism" is a fundamental principle of German culture that should not simply be brushed aside because of its abuse in the Third Reich: "In the voluntary self-abandonment of its creative irrationality above all, and perhaps only here, did Germany really lose the war" (Hitler, p. 9).
From 1980 Syberberg was the first columnist for the newly founded newspaper taz, with the column "Syberbergs Notizen". In 1982 he realised "Parsifal", a fully staged, completely studio-made film of Wagner's last opera, produced for the centenary of the opera's first performance. While strictly adhering to the original content, Syberberg expanded the opera with superimpositions, puppets and inserted images of historical events, giving the adaptation a surreal, cinematic depth. In the same year he was awarded the German Critics' Prize.
Syberberg's "Die Nacht" (DE/AT 1985), a "farewell to a Western epoch," consisted of a six-hour monologue by the actress Edith Clever in front of a black curtain in an abstract studio set; she recited passages from poetry and philosophy (including Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Hölderlin, Heidegger), accompanied by musical excerpts from Bach and Wagner.
He directed a TV documentary about André Heller ("André Heller sieht sein Feuerwerk", 1985) and the video version of a theater production of Kleist's "Penthesilea" (DE/AT/FR 1988). The adaptation of Kleist's "Die Marquise von O." (1989) as a four-hour one-person play, fusing theater and film, he followed a similar approach with "Ein Traum, was sonst?" (1994), which depicts the final hours of Bismarck's daughter-in-law on her estate in Pomerania just before the arrival of the Red Army at the end of World War II.
His book "Vom Unglück und Glück der Kunst in Deutschland nach dem letzten Kriege" ("On the Misfortune and Fortune of Art in Germany after the Last War"), published in 1990, garnered accusations of trivializing National Socialism, similar to his film "Hitler. Ein Film aus Deutschland" ("Hitler - A Film From Germany" or "Our Hitler"). Syberberg countered by suggesting the necessity to confront the allure of the Third Reich and explore the "Hitler within us."
In 1997, at documenta X in Kassel, he presented "Höhle der Erinnerungen - Von den letzten Dingen," a video installation consisting of 31 videos, including scenes from theatrical performances. Syberberg has also published several books, including "Film nach dem Film" (2008) and "Romy in Kitzbühel 1966". (2018).
In 2000, Syberberg bought back his family's dilapidated estate in his birthplace of Nossendorf near Demmin to prevent its demolition. His meticulous and hands-on restoration of his childhood home earned him the Friedrich Lisch Memorial Prize of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2010. In 2011, the French Ministry of Culture named him "Commandeur" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honor bestowed on individuals who have distinguished themselves in artistic or literary endeavors or who have contributed to the promotion of the arts and literature in France and throughout the world. The "Commandeur" is the highest award within this order.
Over the decades, Hans Jürgen Syberberg has worked on various projects in his home towns of Nossendorf and Demmin. In 2017, he revived the Café Zilms building, which burned down in the final days of the war in 1945, as a facade printed on fabric and displayed in its original size for two weeks on Demmin's marketplace. His various efforts to revive Demmin's cityscape and community culminated in a film: "Demminer Gesänge" premiered in December 2023.