Stoppard addressed his Jewish roots with the 2020 play Leopoldstadt, which follows four generations of a Viennese Jewish family from 1899 to 1955.
By Shula Rosen
British playwright Tom Stoppard, one of the defining voices of modern theater and a longtime fixture of the British stage, has died at his home in Dorset at the age of 88. Stoppard, who authored legendary works such as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Thing, discovered in his 40s that his parents were Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe.
Stoppard’s agency, United Agents, said Saturday that he passed away “peacefully” while surrounded by family. The statement praised “his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” calling it a privilege to work alongside him.
Stoppard was born Tomás Sträussler in 1937 in what is now the Czech Republic. His early childhood was shaped by war and displacement. When Nazi Germany advanced in 1939, his family fled to Singapore, where his father worked as a doctor for the Bata shoe company.
The Japanese attack in 1941 forced another escape, this time to India, while his father stayed behind and was killed when his evacuation ship was attacked.
In 1946, his mother remarried a British officer, and the family resettled in postwar England. Stoppard later said that as a child he “put on Englishness like a coat,” embracing the culture that would shape his writing life.
He began working as a journalist at 17 and eventually moved into criticism and scriptwriting.
His career onstage accelerated in the 1960s, beginning with radio and television scripts and turning into a breakthrough with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, which reimagined Hamlet from the viewpoint of two marginal characters.
The play premiered in Edinburgh before moving to the National Theatre and Broadway, launching him as a major dramatist.
Although his writing covered many periods of history and geographic locations, Stoppard addressed his Jewish roots with the 2020 play Leopoldstadt, which follows four generations of a Viennese Jewish family from 1899 to 1955, chronicling their assimilation into Austrian society and the devastating impact of rising antisemitism and the Holocaust.
Stoppard also wrote widely for film and television, sharing an Academy Award for the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love and contributing to works ranging from Brazil to Anna Karenina.