English

The Hartmann & Stauffacher Verlag was founded by Malte Hartmann in 1989 to represent national and international playwrights and scriptwriters as well as stage, radio and film rights in selected novels.

Among others Hartmann & Stauffacher represents such different authors as Alexander Adolph, Lukas Bärfuss, Matthias Dinter, Matias Faldbakken, Jean-Luc Godard, Lee Hall, Ronald Harwood, Lutz Hübner, Aki Kaurismäki, Jonathan Lethem, Christoph Marthaler, Martin McDonagh, Martin Ritzenhoff, Jérôme Savary or Uwe Timm in one or more of the following fields.

1. Theatre

With as much as one thousand titles in our theatre backlist the range of what we represent is wide and not at all focussed on any particular genre or language. Nevertheless, one might certainly discover a strong accent on German and British contemporary theatre, though we also represent leading playwrights from France or Russia.

We are proud to represent some of the finest German speaking writers, among these the well-established and widely known Lukas Bärfuss, Lutz Hübner or Christoph Marthaler as well as young and upcoming playwrights like Paul Brodowsky, Thomas Melle, Margareth Obexer and Polle Wilbert.

Lutz Hübner f. e. is one of the most successful German authors of our time. Since he established himself as a professional theatre author, more than 400 productions of his works were staged. Apart from his success in Germany, Hübner's plays have been licenced to almost every european country as well as to  Russia, India, Brazil, South-Africa and Australia.

One of the most thrilling and successful young authors is Lukas Bärfuss whose plays all have been commissioned by some of the most important German speaking theatres, like Schauspielhaus Bochum, Thalia Theater Hamburg, Münchner Kammerspiele, Theater Basel and Schauspielhaus Zürich. His play DIE SEXUELLEN NEUROSEN UNSERER ELTERN has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was staged all across Europe. In 2005 Bärfuss won the Mühlheim Drama Award for his most recent play DER BUS (The Bus). DER BUS was also voted play of the year 2005 by the German theatre monthly "Theater heute".

With more than 300 productions, the Shakespeare translations by Frank Günther are by far the number one in the German speaking territory. Günther's scrupulous, linguistically profound and stylistically unmatched works have earned him much reputation and the great enthusiasm of theatres and audiences. Among the very prominent recent production were: KÖNIG LEAR at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin directed by Thomas Langhoff, MACBETH at the Salzburg Festival directed by Calixto Bieito or EIN SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM at the Zurich Schauspielhaus and OTHELLO at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, both directed by Stefan Pucher.

The Chekhov-translations by Gudrun Düwel have impressively proved their qualitiy in the paramount productions directed by Peter Stein, who used Düwel in all his Chekhov-stagings. The translations have since then belonged to the most important ones in Germany.

A great deal of our new striving authors come from Ireland or England as do some of the most established. Therefore, in our list famous authors like Martin McDonagh, Lee Hall or Ronald Harwood, whose play TAKING SIDES is among the most successful ones in Germany, find themselves in the neighbourhood of forthcoming writers like Mark O'Rowe (HOWIE THE ROOKIE, MADE IN CHINA), Oren Lavie (BRIDGES AND HARMONIES), Chris Chibnall (KISS ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT, GAFFER), Paul Jenkins (NATURAL SELECTION), Rebecca Lenkiewicz (THE NIGHT SEASON), Lucy Prebble (THE SUGAR SYNDROME) and Laura Wade (COLDER THAN HERE).

The famous Russian writer Nikolaj Koljada, whose world-wide rights we represent, plays the leading role in our exquisite Russian theatre department. Koljada's plays are the most performed in his country and his reputation as an author very quickly crossed the borders and reached many foreign theatres (in France, Scandinavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, former Yugoslavia, Germany, in the USA etc.). Also working as a teacher, he encouraged many young Russian authors. Among them is Vassilij Sigarev whose play PLASTICINE had an enormous impact in the Western countries. It had its European premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London and its German first night at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

Our French programme, while featuring some contemporary authors, like the excellent Fernando Arrabal or Victor Lanoux, is dominated by the pearls of the recent past: many of our French authors could be called "modern classics", like Boris Vian, Jean Tardieu, Jacques Audiberti and others. Among the most recent French discoveries are UN PETIT JEU SANS CONSEQUENCE by Jean Dell and Gérald Sibleyras, which won 5 Molière-awards, and the extremely gifted Fabrice Melquiot.

This may for now be sufficient. Please also have a look at our theatre authors list.

As one effect of our cooperations with various publishing houses - mentioned below - we most recently promoted and licenced stage adaptations of the following novels: THE COCKA HOLA COMPANY by Matias Faldbakken (world premiere, Staatstheater Stuttgart), MACHT & REBEL by Matias Faldbakken (world premiere, Münchner Kammerspiele), BERLINER VERHÄLTNISSE by Raul Zelik (world premiere, Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin), BAGDAD BURNING by Riverbend (German speaking premiere, Landestheater Bruchsal).

Since Adreas Kriegenburg adapted Aki Kaurismäki's film classic I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER for the stage in 1996 at Staatstheater Hannover, adaptations of his movies THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, LIFE OF THE BOHEME, HAMLET GOES BUSINESS and DRIFTING CLOUDS have so far been produced on stage far more than 30 times.

2. Radio and Film

We represent more than 60 authors working for film, television or radio. Most of them can be found in the authors list.

The variety of genres is great, from comedy to fantasy-story there is virtually no gap in the continuum of subjects and forms.

In the film biz, HSV authors cover a wide range of formats they are writing for. Starting with daily soaps or sitcoms, followed by weeklies (like SOKO 5113 or DER FAHNDER) to the bigger formats (TATORT, POLIZEIRUF 110) and feature films.

Many award-winning productions are based on our authors' scripts - like DIE BUBI SCHOLZ STORY by Uwe Timm or UNTER VERDACHT by Alexander Adolph.

We are very happy to have many renowned authors in our list who write for radio. Like this, we take care of radio plays by Uwe Timm, Jens Sparschuh, Peter Stamm or Salman Rushdie (some of them being adaptations of short stories or novels, of course).

Apart from these "genuine" radio authors we represent some excellent writers who basically adapt novels or stories for radio, like Peter Rothin, who recently adapted Orhan Pamuks novel MY NAME IS RED, or Norbert Schaeffer, who also works as a director and has a more than impressive list of his works to offer - go and see his page!

3. Musical and Opera

A smaller but very high-quality part of our list belongs to the musical field.

We have some very interesting modern operas in our programme, some of them by the famous German-Australian composer George Dreyfuss.
And, of course, some of our theatre authors have written librettos, like Lutz Hübner who wrote DER MASCHINIST, which was performed on the EXPO 2000, WALLENBERG (Music by Errki-Sven Tüür) and several others.

As far as musical is concerned, we have one of the finest, the most successful ones:
BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY. Written by Alan Janes, it had (and has) long term runs not only in London but all over the world. In Hamburg, the production company Neue Metropol had a new theatre built in the harbour, exclusively for that production. And it has been on for more than 6 years, with huge success. The Hamburg run ended on the 7th April 2001 and was followed by other productions all across Germany.

4. Partnerships with publishing houses

The Hartmann & Stauffacher Agency also works as a partner for several publishing houses, representing their film, radio and theatre rights. We have partnerships with the following publishing houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland:

Blumenbar Verlag, München
Haffmanns bei zweitausendeins und zweitausendeins, Frankfurt a.M.
Residenz Verlag, Salzburg
Tropen Verlag, Berlin
Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen

Should you be interested in theatre, radio or film rights of authors associated with these publishing houses, we are the right people to talk to.