Schleef, Einar

(1944-2001)

   Designer, director. Schleef established his career as a designer/director with the Berliner Ensemble in the early 1970s. He escaped East Germany in 1976 and took up the study of film directing in 1978. In the early 1980s Schleef directed several radio plays in West Germany and concomitantly began a career writing novels that ultimately earned him several awards, most notably the Alfred Döblin Prize in 1989. From 1985 to 1990 he was a principal director at the Frankfurt am Main City Theaters, and his staging of Gerhart Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Sunrise) was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen in 1988. In 1993 Schleef returned to the Berliner Ensemble, where his world premiere of Rolf Hochhuth's Wessis in Weimar (West Germans in Weimar) created a sensation and was likewise invited to the Theatertreffen. He presented several other world premieres, of his own plays and one by Elfriede Jelinek (Sportstück Sporting Play, at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1998), and was widely recognized with prizes and citations.