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Marat / Sade Author Biography

Peter Ulrich Weiss was born on November 8, 1916, in Nowawes, a German province near Berlin. A textile merchant, his father was a Hungarian of Jewish descent. His mother, a German Christian, was a former actress. At three, he and his family moved to Bremen, which is the city Weiss associates with childhood and his first rebellion against the wealth and the social pressures of an upper rniddle class upbringing. In his adolescence the family moved to Berlin, where Weiss began training for a career as a visual artist. His life changed drastically, however, when Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party (the Nazis) rose to political power in Germany. The Nazis were racial purists who believed that non-Germans were a detriment to society and should be rooted out Being half Jewish and a Czech citizen Weiss was a particular target for such oppression.

As the Nazi's persecution of Jews became...
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