Weiss, Peter

Peter Weiss was a German author and visual artist born in Nowawes near Berlin to a family of Hungarian-German origin. His Jewish father owned a textile manufacture, and his mother, Frieda (neé Hummel), was Christian. Peter Weiss grew up in Bremen and Berlin. When the Nazis came to power in 1934 the family emigrated first to London, and two years later to Czechoslovakia. Peter Weiss attended the Academy of Arts in Prague between 1936 and 1938 after having exhibited his work in London in 1936. His family fled to Sweden when the Germans invaded the Sudetenland in 1938. Peter Weiss followed in 1939.