Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Biography

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, film and theatre director and writer, was born in 1935 in Nossendorf/Vorpommern. After moving around, he settled in Munich, where he has lived since 1956. In the 1970s he brought out a series of film, which were particularly well received abroad, in which he deals with German history, including “Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König”, “Karl May”, “Winifred Wagner” and “Hitler – ein Film aus Deutschland”. In the 1980s and ‘90s he directed a number of monologues for stage and screen with the actor Edith Clever, including “Die Nacht” and, at the Hebbel Theater, now HAU1, “Ein Traum, was sonst”. He has also published numerous books. In 1997 he created the installation “Höhle der Erinnerung” at the “documenta X” in co-production with the Hebbel Theater, which was then shown at the Hamburger Bahnhof. In 2003 he returned to Nossendorf and began to rebuild his parents’ house, which he had managed to acquire, documenting it daily on www.syberberg.de. In the same year the retrospective “Syberberg/ Paris/Nossendorf” took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has developed other exhibition projects, including in 2008 for the Kunsthalle in Vienna and in 2010 for the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin.