Eberhard Streul was born in Radebeul near Dresden on 29 October 1941.  After having studied musicology at the Theaterhochschule Leipzig and theatre studies at the Karl-Marx-University of Leipzig from 1962-66 he started as a director and dramaturg at the Landesbühnen Sachsen and Dresden (1966/67 and 1969-71), continuing in the same position at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin from 1971-77, where he also had worked as assistant director from 1967-69.  In 1977 he left for West Germany .

From 1977 until 1981 he worked as a director and dramaturg at the theatre in Essen, and after that from 1981 until 1985 at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.

The Nationaltheater Mannheim commissioned several music theatre works: the children’s plays Papageno spielt auf der Zauberflöte (1980) and Das Geheimnis der Wolfsschlucht (1983, with musical arrangements of Richard Vardigans) as well as 1983, in collaboration with Franz Wittenbrink, the musical Die Leiche im Sack and 1984-85 in collaboration with Erich Syri the one man show Die Sternstunde des Josef Bieder.

For Die Leiche im Sack Streul and Wittenbrink were awarded the Günter Neumann Price of the city of Mannheim in 1983.

Since 1985 Streul has been working as  editor with the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, TV. In 1982 he was appointed lecturer in Opera at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim; in 1986 he became professor.