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All Pictures (3)Biography
Peter Zadek was born on May 19, 1926, in Berlin. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, his family emigrated to London and later moved to Oxford. It was there, while studying at Oxford, that he first encountered the world of theater. Zadek eventually began training as a director at the Old Vic Theatre School in London. His first production was Oscar Wilde's "Salome" in 1957. In 1958, Zadek returned to Germany and met theater director Kurt Hübner in Cologne, who brought him to the Ulm Theater.
The 1960s were a formative period for Zadek: in 1962, Hübner became artistic director in Bremen and took Zadek with him. Together they developed the so-called Bremen style, which was characterized by its avant-garde and sometimes radical interpretation of classical plays. Actors such as Hannelore Hoger, Vadim Glowna, and Bruno Ganz were part of the ensemble, while Peter Stein and Wilfried Minks worked behind the scenes. At that time, the small theater was considered one of the most important in Germany.
In 1972, Peter Zadek moved to the Schauspielhaus Bochum, where he was artistic director until 1979. From 1985 to 1989, he was director of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. Between 1993 and 1995, he worked as a director and artistic director at the Berliner Ensemble. After that—and also repeatedly in between—Zadek, who had been in a relationship with the writer and translator Elisabeth Plessen since 1980, worked as a freelance director and staged productions at all major theaters in Germany.
Zadek's film work was mainly limited to directing smaller TV productions in the 1960s and 1970s. Two feature films stand out: in 1968/69, Zadek shot "Ich bin ein Elefant, Madame" ("I'm an Elephant, Madame") about an anti-authoritarian pupil who rebels against the rigid structures at his high school in Bremen. The film was awarded the Silver Bear at the 1969 Berlinale. His second feature film, "Die wilden Fünfziger" ("The Roaring Fifties", 1983), is based on the novel "Hurra, wir leben noch" ("Hurray, We're Still Alive") by Johannes Mario Simmel and tells the story of the rise and fall of a post-war profiteer during the German "Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle).
In his last years, Peter Zadek, a great admirer of William Shakespeare, attempted to realize his dream of his own "Shakespeare Company," a project that could no longer be brought to fruition for health reasons. After a long illness, Peter Zadek died on July 30, 2009, in Hamburg.