Helmut Bez


Helmut Bez was a German writer primarily known as a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He was born in Sondershausen and spent the first 40 years of his career in East Germany. In 1981, Hans Fabian wrote that his plays at the Deutsches Theater "rival the best of those performed in the West and give promise of a vigorous decade to come."

Life and career

Bez graduated from secondary school and later drama school in Erfurt where he had been a boyhood friend of Jürgen Degenhardt. He and Degenhardt would later collaborate on numerous librettos for musical theatre and operetta. When collaborating, Bez and Degenhardt sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms Alfred Berg and Hans Hardt. Between 1952 and 1966, Bez worked as the resident dramatist at theatres in Heiligenstadt, Nordhausen, Erfurt, and Eisleben and at the Metropol-Theater in Berlin. Since 1966 he has worked as a freelance dramatist.
In 1980 Bez, Degenhardt, and H. P. Hofmann published, Musical: Geschichte und Werke, a book on the history and performance of musical theatre in Germany. To mark Bez's 75th birthday in August 2005, MDR re-broadcast his 1996 radio play Tod in der Provinz.

Works

Musical theatre

Bez's librettos for musical theatre and operetta include:
and others.

Radio plays

Numerous novels and stories.