Peter Weiss's play Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean-Paul Marats, dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade (1964; translated as The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, 1965), generally known as Marat/Sade, was the most innovative political drama since the advent of Bertolt Brecht's theater. For the next decade Weiss was the most respected playwright working in the German language.

Weiss was born in Nowawes (today Neubabelsberg), an upper-class suburb of Berlin, on 8 November 1916. In 1918 the family moved to Bremen. Weiss's father, Eugen Weiss, a Czech textile manufacturer, had converted from Judaism to Protestantism; his mother, Frieda Hummel Weiss, was a gentile born in Switzerland and had been an actress before her marriage. The children were raised as Lutherans. In 1929 the family returned to Berlin...