Maria Sommer

Maria Sommer (recte Müller-Sommer) was born in 1922. She obtained a doctorate and has been a theatre publisher since 1946. Initially, she was engaged as a dramaturg by the publishing house Gustav Kiepenheuer Bühnenvertriebs-GmbH. In 1950, she became its sole shareholder and since 2000, she has been running the company together with Bernd Schmidt. The publishing house represents numerous playwrights, both from the German-language countries and worldwide. She was a member of several committees on the protection and development of copyrights; from 1974 to 1999, she was the director of the supervisory board of the collecting society WORT, vice president of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute as well as its delegate for the Paris executive committee, chairperson of the Association of German Stage and Media Publishers and chief negotiator with the German Stage Association and radio stations on the contractual terms for playwrights and publishers. She has translated numerous plays from English, French and Italian and was responsible for the eight volumes of dramatic texts in the German edition of the complete works of Luigi Pirandello. She is chief representative of George Tabori and editor of his dramatic works.

As of March 2016