Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German
theatre practitioner
A theatre practitioner is someone who creates theatrical performances and/or produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, dramatist, actor, designer or a combination of these t ...
, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...
, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''
The Threepenny Opera
''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a " play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, '' The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with mu ...
'' with
Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
. Immersed in
Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''
Lehrstücke
The (; singular ) are a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The ''Lehrstücke'' stem from Brecht's epic theatre techniques but as a core principl ...
'' and became a leading theoretician of
epic theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creat ...
(which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the .
During the
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
to the United States, where he was surveilled by the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
. After the war he was subpoenaed by the
House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to
East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company
Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langho ...
with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress
Helene Weigel
Helene Weigel (; 12 May 19006 May 1971) was a German actress and artistic director. She was the second wife of Bertolt Brecht and was married to him from 1930 until his death in 1956. Together they had two children.
Personal life
Weigel was bo ...
.
Life and career
Bavaria (1898–1924)
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (as a child known as Eugen) was born on 10 February 1898 in
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...
, Germany, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939) and his wife Sophie, née Brezing (1871–1920). Brecht's mother was a devout
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
and his father a
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
(who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum. His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.
At Augsburg, his maternal grandparents lived in the neighbor house. They were
Pietists
Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christianity, Christian life, including a social concern for ...
and his grandmother influenced Bertolt Brecht and his brother
Walter
Walter may refer to:
People
* Walter (name), both a surname and a given name
* Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968)
* Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...
considerably during their childhood.
Due to his grandmother's and his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a life-long effect on his writing. From , too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met
Caspar Neher Caspar Neher (born Rudolf Ludwig Caspar Neher; 11 April 1897 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht.
Neher was born in Augsburg. He a ...
, with whom he formed a life-long creative partnership. Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their
epic theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creat ...
.
When Brecht was 16,
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army".
Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay in response to the line ''
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
' is a line from the ''Odes'' (III.2.13) by the Roman lyric poet Horace. The line translates: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." The Latin word ''patria'' (homeland), literally meaning the country of one's fathers (in Latin, ...
'' from the Roman poet
Horace, calling it ''Zweckpropaganda'' ("cheap propaganda for a specific purpose") and arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country. His expulsion was only prevented by the intervention of Romuald Sauer, a priest who also served as a substitute teacher at Brecht's school.
On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought to avoid being conscripted into the army by exploiting a loophole which allowed for medical students to be deferred. He subsequently registered for a medical course at
Munich University
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
, where he enrolled in 1917. There he studied drama with
Arthur Kutscher
Arthur Kutscher (17 July 1878 in Hannover – 29 August 1960 in Munich) was a German historian of literature and researcher in drama. Together with Max Herrmann he can be seen as a founding father of theatre studies in Germany. He was a professor ...
, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and
cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining o ...
star
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (July 24, 1864 – March 9, 1918) was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the de ...
.
From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the new name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the ''
Augsburger Volkswille'' appeared in October 1919). Brecht was
drafted into military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military
VD clinic; the war ended a month later.
In July 1919, Brecht and
Paula Banholzer Paula Banholzer (born 6 August 1901 in Markt Wald; died 25 February 1989 in Augsburg) was an educator and first love of Bertolt Brecht.
Life
The daughter of the physician Carl Banholzer, she was born and grew up in the Middle-Swabian Markt Wald ...
(who had begun a relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died. Frank died in 1943, fighting for Nazi Germany on the
Eastern Front.
Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian
Karl Valentin
Karl Valentin (born Valentin Ludwig Fey, 4 June 1882 in Munich – 9 February 1948 in Planegg) was a Bavarian comedian. He had significant influence on German Weimar culture. Valentin starred in many silent films in the 1920s, and was sometimes ...
. Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.
Brecht compared Valentin to
Charlie Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology". Writing in his ''
Messingkauf Dialogues
''The Messingkauf Dialogues'' (german: Dialoge aus dem Messingkauf) is an incomplete theoretical work by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. Brecht, Bertolt (1965 963. ''The Messingkauf Dialogues''. Trans. John Will ...
'' years later, Brecht identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and
Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time:
Brecht's first full-length play, ''
Baal
Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...
'' (written 1918), arose in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity that was generated by a desire to counter another work (both others' and his own, as his many adaptations and re-writes attest). "Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge." Brecht completed his second major play, ''
Drums in the Night'', in February 1919.
Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many influential people in the Berlin cultural scene. Amongst them was the playwright
Arnolt Bronnen
Arnolt Bronnen (19 August 1895 – 12 October 1959) was an Austrian playwright and director.
Life and career
Bronnen was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of the Austrian-Jewish writer Ferdinand Bronner and his Christian wife Martha Bronner. B ...
with whom he established a joint venture, the Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Brecht Company. Brecht changed the spelling of his first name to Bertolt to rhyme with Arnolt.
In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of an influential Berlin critic,
Herbert Ihering
Herbert Ihering (also sometimes Herbert Jhering: 29 February 1888 – 15 January 1977) was a German dramaturge, director and theatre critic. He was seen by many contemporaries as one of the leading theatre critics during and after the Weimar yea ...
: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, ''Drums in the Night''—"
ehas given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision.
..It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column." In November it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the prestigious
Kleist Prize
The Kleist Prize is an annual German literature prize. The prize was first awarded in 1912, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Heinrich von Kleist. The Kleist Prize was the most important literary award of the Weimar Repu ...
(intended for unestablished writers and probably Germany's most significant literary award, until it was abolished in 1932) for his first three plays (''Baal'', ''Drums in the Night'', and ''
In the Jungle'', although at that point only ''Drums'' had been produced). The citation for the award insisted that: "
recht'slanguage is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language is felt physically and in the round." That year he married the Viennese opera singer
Marianne Zoff
Marianne Josephine Zoff (30 June 1893 – 22 November 1984) was an Austrian actress and opera singer ( mezzo-soprano).
Zoff was born in Hainfeld, Lower Austria. Starting in 1919 at the Staatstheater Augsburg, she sang at several German opera h ...
. Their daughter,
Hanne Hiob
Hanne Hiob (12 March 1923 – 23 June 2009) was a German actress.
Life and career
Hiob was born as Hanne Marianne Brecht in Munich, the daughter of the writer Bertolt Brecht by his wife, opera singer and actress Marianne Zoff (1893-1984). In F ...
, born in March 1923, was a successful German actress.
In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short
slapstick film, ''
Mysteries of a Barbershop'', directed by
Erich Engel
Erich Gustav Otto Engel (14 February 1891 – 10 May 1966) was a German film and theatre director.He is often confused with another German film director called Erich Engels, who specialised in comedy, and crime films.
Biography
Engel was b ...
and starring Karl Valentin. Despite a lack of success at the time, its experimental inventiveness and the subsequent success of many of its contributors have meant that it is now considered one of the most important films in
German film history. In May of that year, Brecht's ''In the Jungle'' premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening night proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize many of his later productions during the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...
—in which
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.
[
In 1924 Brecht worked with the novelist and playwright ]Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Feuchtwanger's J ...
(whom he had met in 1919) on an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's '' Edward II'' that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development. Brecht's '' Edward II'' constituted his first attempt at collaborative writing and was the first of many classic texts he was to adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he later credited it as the germ of his conception of "epic theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creat ...
". That September, a job as assistant dramaturg
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...
at Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he is regarded as one of the most pro ...
's Deutsches Theater—at the time one of the leading three or four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.
Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–1933)
In 1923 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1927). Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.
She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year ...
and Helene Weigel. Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October 1924.
In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own. Reinhardt staged Shaw's '' Saint Joan'', Goldoni's ''Servant of Two Masters
A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
'' (with the improvisational approach of the '' commedia dell'arte'' in which the actors chatted with the prompter about their roles), and Pirandello's ''Six Characters in Search of an Author
''Six Characters in Search of an Author'' ( it, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, link=no ) is an Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921. An absurdist fiction, absurdist metatheatrical, metatheatric play about th ...
'' in his group of Berlin theatres. A new version of Brecht's third play, now entitled '' Jungle: Decline of a Family'', opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.
At this time Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB". In 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as an assistant for the completion of his collection of poems, ''Devotions for the Home'' (''Hauspostille'', eventually published in January 1927). She continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.
In 1925 in Mannheim
Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...
the artistic exhibition ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' ("New Objectivity
The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...
") had given its name to the new post-Expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
movement in the German arts. With little to do at the Deutsches Theater, Brecht began to develop his '' Man Equals Man'' project, which was to become the first product of "the 'Brecht collective'—that shifting group of friends and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended." This collaborative approach to artistic production, together with aspects of Brecht's writing and style of theatrical production, mark Brecht's work from this period as part of the ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' movement. The collective's work "mirrored the artistic climate of the middle 1920s", Willett Willett may refer to:
People
*Willett (name)
Places Municipalities
*Willett (Columbus, Georgia), neighborhood in Columbus, Georgia
*Willett, South Dakota, a ghost town
*Willett, hamlet of Elworthy, England
Geographic features
*Willett Cove, cove ...
and Manheim argue:
with their attitude of ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and downplaying of the individual, and their new cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport. Together the "collective" would go to fights, not only absorbing their terminology and ethos (which permeates ''Man Equals Man'') but also drawing those conclusions for the theatre as a whole which Brecht set down in his theoretical essay "Emphasis on Sport" and tried to realise by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring stage and other anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his own productions.
In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's ''The Gold Rush
''The Gold Rush'' is a 1925 American silent comedy film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film also stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, and Malcolm Waite.
Chapl ...
'' and Eisenstein's ''Battleship Potemkin
'' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent
drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...
''. Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in ''Man Equals Man''. Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements." They met several times during Brecht's time in the United States, and discussed Chaplin's ''Monsieur Verdoux
''Monsieur Verdoux'' is a 1947 American black comedy film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, who plays a bigamist wife killer inspired by serial killer Henri Désiré Landru. The supporting cast includes Martha Raye, William Frawley, a ...
'' project, which it is possible Brecht influenced.
In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them. Following the production of ''Man Equals Man'' in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann. "When I read Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
's '' Capital''", a note by Brecht reveals, "I understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across." Inspired by the developments in USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, Brecht wrote a number of agitprop
Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', " propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred ...
plays, praising the bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
collectivism
Collectivism may refer to:
* Bureaucratic collectivism, a theory of class society whichto describe the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
* Collectivist anarchism, a socialist doctrine in which the workers own and manage the production
* Collectivis ...
(replaceability of each member of the collective in ''Man Equals Man'') and the Red Terror ( ''The Decision'').
In 1927 Brecht became part of the " dramaturgical collective" of Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content o ...
's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of finding new plays for its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary theatre". Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the period of the latter's landmark productions, ''Hoppla, We're Alive!
''Hoppla, We're Alive!'' (german: Hoppla, wir leben!) is a ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' (or "New Objectivity") play by the German playwright Ernst Toller. Its second production, directed by the seminal epic theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1927, was a m ...
'' by Toller
Toller is a ward within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council of West Yorkshire, England. The population of the ward as of the 2011 Census was 19,914.
Demographics
The area is ethnically diverse, with a significant Pakistani p ...
, ''Rasputin'', '' The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik'', and ''Konjunktur'' by Lania. Brecht's most significant contribution was to the adaptation of the unfinished episodic comic novel ''Schweik'', which he later described as a "montage from the novel". The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's ideas about staging and design, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to the " epic" playwright by the development of stage technology (particularly projections). What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly plain, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:
The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new subject matter demanded a new dramatic form, the use of songs to interrupt
In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, ...
and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays of the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Piscatorial examples as the step-by-step narrative technique of ''Schweik'' and the oil interests handled in ''Konjunktur'' ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').
Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of how to dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism in his unfinished project ''Joe P. Fleischhacker'' (which Piscator's theatre announced in its programme for the 1927–28 season). It wasn't until his ''Saint Joan of the Stockyards
''Saint Joan of the Stockyards'' (german: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe, links=no) is a play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht between 1929 and 1931, after the success of his musical ''The Threepenny Opera'' and d ...
'' (written between 1929–1931) that Brecht solved it. In 1928 he discussed with Piscator plans to stage Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's ''Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
'' and Brecht's own '' Drums in the Night'', but the productions did not materialize.
1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill. Together they began to develop Brecht's '' Mahagonny'' project, along thematic lines of the biblical Cities of the Plain but rendered in terms of the ''Neue Sachlichkeit
The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the '' Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, w ...
s ''Amerikanismus'', which had informed Brecht's previous work. They produced '' The Little Mahagonny'' for a music festival in July, as what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in preparation for the large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher Caspar Neher (born Rudolf Ludwig Caspar Neher; 11 April 1897 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht.
Neher was born in Augsburg. He a ...
became an integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music and visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start. The model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's newly formulated principle of the " separation of the elements", which he first outlined in " The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a variety of montage
Montage may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films
* Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing
* ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film
Music
* Montage (music), or sound collage
* ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 201 ...
, proposed by-passing the "great struggle for supremacy between words, music and production" as Brecht put it, by showing each as self-contained, independent works of art that adopt attitudes towards one another.
In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon after the wedding. She also became an actress and would later share the copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
s of Brecht's work with her siblings.
Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.
She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year ...
, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau
Ruth Berlau (24 August 1906, Charlottenlund – 15 January 1974, East Berlin) was a Danish actress, director, photographer and writer, known for her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and for founding the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv
in Berlin.
Born ...
and others worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. So did Brecht's first great play, ''Saint Joan of the Stockyards
''Saint Joan of the Stockyards'' (german: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe, links=no) is a play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht between 1929 and 1931, after the success of his musical ''The Threepenny Opera'' and d ...
'', which attempts to portray the drama in financial transactions.
This collective adapted John Gay's ''The Beggar's Opera
''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satiri ...
'', with Brecht's lyrics set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled ''The Threepenny Opera
''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a " play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, '' The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with mu ...
'' (''Die Dreigroschenoper'') it was the biggest hit in Berlin of the 1920s and a renewing influence on the musical worldwide. One of its most famous lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional morality imposed by the Church, working in conjunction with the established order, in the face of working-class hunger and deprivation:
The success of ''The Threepenny Opera'' was followed by the quickly thrown together ''Happy End''. It was a personal and a commercial failure. At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane (now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close collaborator). Brecht only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht would later use elements of ''Happy End'' as the germ for his ''Saint Joan of the Stockyards'', a play that would never see the stage in Brecht's lifetime. ''Happy Ends score by Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".
The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, ''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' (german: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, links=no) is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the i ...
'' (''Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny''), caused an uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in the audience protesting. The ''Mahagonny'' opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as a triumphant sensation.
Brecht spent the last years of the Weimar-era (1930–1933) in Berlin working with his "collective" on the ''Lehrstücke''. These were a group of plays driven by morals, music and Brecht's budding epic theatre. The ''Lehrstücke'' often aimed at educating workers on Socialist issues. '' The Measures Taken'' (''Die Massnahme'') was scored by Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
. In addition, Brecht worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the human impact of mass unemployment, ''Kuhle Wampe
''Kuhle Wampe'' (full title: ''Kuhle Wampe, oder: Wem gehört die Welt?'', translated in English as ''Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?'', and released in the USA as ''Whither Germany?'' by Kinematrade Inc.) is a 1932 German feature film abou ...
'' (1932), which was directed by Slatan Dudow
Slatan Theodor Dudow ( bg, Златан Дудов, Zlatan Dudov) (30 January 1903 - 12 July 1963) was a Bulgarian born film director and screenwriter who made a number of films during the Weimar Republic and in East Germany.
Biography
Dudow wa ...
. This striking film is notable for its subversive humour, outstanding cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to foc ...
by Günther Krampf
Günther Krampf (8 February 1899 – 4 August 1950) was an Austrian cinematographer who later settled and worked in the UK. Krampf has been described as a "phantom of film history" because of his largely forgotten role working on a number of impo ...
, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution. It still provides a vivid insight into Berlin during the last years of the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...
.
Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–1945)
Fearing persecution, Brecht left Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in February 1933, just after Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
took power. After brief spells in Prague, Zurich and Paris, he and Weigel accepted an invitation from journalist and author Karin Michaëlis to move to Denmark. The family first stayed with Karin Michaëlis at her house on the small island of Thurø
Thurø is a small Danish island in the south-east of Funen and belongs to the Svendborg municipality. Thurø is part of the South Funen Archipelago, comprising c. 55 islands altogether. The island had 3,555 inhabitants .
Connected to Svendborg ...
close to the island of Funen
Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as of ...
. They later bought their own house in Svendborg
Svendborg () is a town on the island of Funen in south-central Denmark, and the seat of Svendborg Municipality. With a population of 27,300 (1 January 2022), Svendborg is Funen's second largest city.[Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...]
, Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
and Ruth Berlau
Ruth Berlau (24 August 1906, Charlottenlund – 15 January 1974, East Berlin) was a Danish actress, director, photographer and writer, known for her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and for founding the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv
in Berlin.
Born ...
. During this period Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, New York and London for various projects and collaborations.
When war seemed imminent in April 1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he remained for a year. After Hitler invaded Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
and Denmark, Brecht left Sweden for Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...
, Finland, where he lived and waited for his visa for the United States until 3 May 1941. During this time he wrote the play ''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti
''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti'' (german: Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) is an epic comedy by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It was written in 1940 and first performed in 1948.
The story describes the aristocratic land-owne ...
'' (''Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti'') with Hella Wuolijoki, with whom he lived in .
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur
German ''Exilliteratur'' (, ''exile literature'') is the name for works of German literature written in the German diaspora by refugee authors who fled from Nazi Germany, Nazi Austria, and the occupied territories between 1933 and 1945. These dis ...
.[Exilliteratur.] He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: ''Life of Galileo
''Life of Galileo'' (), also known as ''Galileo'', is a play by the 20th century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and collaborator Margarete Steffin with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. The play was written in 1938 and received its first theatri ...
'', ''Mother Courage and Her Children
''Mother Courage and Her Children'' (german: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, links=no) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrica ...
'', ''The Good Person of Szechwan
''The Good Person of Szechwan'' (german: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, first translated less literally as ''The Good Man of Setzuan'') is a play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau ...
'', ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' (german: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, links=no), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago ...
'', ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle
''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (german: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a ...
'', ''Fear and Misery of the Third Reich
''Fear and Misery of the Third Reich'' (german: Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches), also known as ''The Private Life of the Master Race'', is one of Bertolt Brecht's most famous plays and the first of his openly anti-Nazi works. It premiered ...
'', and many others.
Brecht co-wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
-directed film ''Hangmen Also Die!
''Hangmen Also Die!'' is a 1943 noir war film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley from a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited as Bert Brecht) and Lang. The film stars Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Brian Donlevy, W ...
'' which was loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
, the Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
Deputy Reich Protector of the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German oc ...
, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
's right-hand man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, who was known as "The Hangman of Prague." Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
was nominated for an Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany – Lang, Brecht and Eisler – is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had on American culture.
''Hangmen Also Die!'' was Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film. The money he earned from writing the film enabled him to write ''The Visions of Simone Machard
''The Visions of Simone Machard'' (german: Die Gesichte der Simone Machard, links=no) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written in 1942, the play is the second of three treatments of the Joan of Arc story that Brecht crea ...
'', ''Schweik in the Second World War
''Schweyk in the Second World War'' (''Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg'') is a play by German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht. It was written by Brecht in 1943 while in exile in California, and is a sequel to the 1923 novel ''The Good Soldier Šve ...
'' and an adaptation of Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi
''The Duchess of Malfi'' (originally published as ''The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy'') is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, ...
''.
Brecht's reluctance to speak publicly in support of Carola Neher
Carola Neher (born Karola Neher; 2 November 1900 – 26 June 1942) was a German actress and singer.
Biography
Neher was born in Munich in 1900. She started to work as a bank clerk in 1917. In the summer of 1920, she made her debut performance ...
, who died in a gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
prison in the USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
after being arrested during the 1936 purges
In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
, was much criticised by Russian emigrants in the West.
Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–1956)
In the years of the Cold War and " Red Scare", Brecht was blacklisted by movie studio bosses and interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.[ Brecht HUAC hearing] Along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, he was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in September 1947. Although he was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to appear, Brecht eventually decided to testify. He later explained that he had followed the advice of attorneys and had not wanted to delay a planned trip to Europe. On 30 October 1947 Brecht testified that he had never been a member of the Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
.[ He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the translators present, who transformed his German statements into English ones unintelligible to himself. HUAC vice-chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for his co-operation. The remaining witnesses, the so-called ]Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying empl ...
, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. Brecht's decision to appear before the committee led to criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht returned to Europe.
He lived in Zurich in Switzerland for a year. In February 1948 in Chur
, neighboring_municipalities= Arosa, Churwalden, Tschiertschen-Praden, Domat/Ems, Felsberg, Malix, Trimmis, Untervaz, Pfäfers
, twintowns = Bad Homburg (Germany), Cabourg (France), Mayrhofen (Austria), Mondorf-les-Bains (Luxe ...
, Brecht staged an adaptation of Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...
' ''Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & R ...
'', based on a translation by Hölderlin. It was published under the title ''Antigonemodell 1948'', accompanied by an essay on the importance of creating a " non-Aristotelian" form of theatre.
In 1949 he moved to East Berlin and established his theatre company there, the Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langho ...
. He retained his Austrian nationality (granted in 1950) and overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.
Though he was never a member of the Communist Party, Brecht had been schooled in Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
by the dissident communist Karl Korsch. Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic influenced Brecht greatly, both his aesthetic theory and theatrical practice. Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize
The International Lenin Peace Prize (russian: международная Ленинская премия мира, ''mezhdunarodnaya Leninskaya premiya mira)'' was a Soviet Union award named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a pane ...
in 1954.
Brecht wrote very few plays in his final years in East Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works. He dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturgs, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson
Benno Besson (born René-Benjamin Besson; 4 November 1922 in Yverdon-les-Bains – 16 February 2006 in Berlin, Germany) was a Swiss actor and director. He had great success as director at Volksbühne Berlin, Deutsches Theater and Berliner Ense ...
and Carl Weber. At this time he wrote some of his most famous poems, including the "Buckow Elegies".
At first Brecht apparently supported the measures taken by the East German government against the uprising of 1953 in East Germany
The East German uprising of 1953 (german: Volksaufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 ) was an uprising that occurred in East Germany from 16 to 17 June 1953. It began with a strike action by construction workers in East Berlin on 16 June against w ...
, which included the use of Soviet military force. In a letter from the day of the uprising to SED
sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs,
and is available today for most operating systems.
sed w ...
First Secretary Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (after spending the years of Nazi rule in ...
, Brecht wrote that: "History will pay its respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The great discussion xchange XChange or X-Change may refer to:
* XChange (film), ''XChange'' (film), a 2000 Canadian science fiction film
* Xchange (TV series), ''Xchange'' (TV series), was a BBC Children's television programme
* X-Change, a Chinese spin-off from Wife Swap (UK ...
with the masses about the speed of socialist construction will lead to a viewing and safeguarding of the socialist achievements. At this moment I must assure you of my allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany."
Brecht's subsequent commentary on those events, however, offered a very different assessment—in one of the poems in the ''Elegies'', "Die Lösung
"" (, "The Solution") is a famous satirical German poem by Bertolt Brecht about the East German uprising of 1953. Written in mid-1953, it is critical of the government and was not published at the time. It was first published in 1959 in the Wes ...
" (The Solution), a disillusioned Brecht writes a few months later:
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By increased work quotas.
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Brecht's involvement in agitprop
Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', " propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred ...
and lack of clear condemnation of purges resulted in criticism from many contemporaries who became disillusioned in communism earlier. Fritz Raddatz
Fritz Joachim Raddatz (3 September 1931 – 26 February 2015) was a German feuilletonist, essayist, biographer, journalist and romancier.
Life
Fritz Raddatz was born in Berlin. His mother, according to Raddatz a "Parisienne from a rich family ...
who knew Brecht for a long time described his attitude as "broken", "escaping the problem of Stalinism", ignoring his friends being murdered in the USSR, keeping silence during show trials
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so t ...
such as Slánský trial.
Death
Brecht died on 14 August 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58. He is buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery
The Dorotheenstadt Cemetery, officially the Cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder Parishes, is a landmarked Protestant burial ground located in the Berlin district of Mitte which dates to the late 18th century. The entrance to the ...
on Chausseestraße
Chausseestraße () is a major street in the centre of Berlin, located in the district of Mitte. It is 1.7 kilometres long. Many notable buildings and structures are located along the street, including the Headquarters of the Federal Intelligence ...
in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence he shared with Helene Weigel.
According to Stephen Parker, who reviewed Brecht's writings and unpublished medical records, Brecht contracted rheumatic fever as a child, which led to an enlarged heart, followed by life-long chronic heart failure and Sydenham's chorea. A report of a radiograph
Radiography is an imaging technique using X-rays, gamma rays, or similar ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation to view the internal form of an object. Applications of radiography include medical radiography ("diagnostic" and "therapeut ...
taken of Brecht in 1951 describes a badly diseased heart, enlarged to the left with a protruding aortic knob and with seriously impaired pumping. Brecht's colleagues described him as being very nervous, and sometimes shaking his head or moving his hands erratically. This can be reasonably attributed to Sydenham's chorea, which is also associated with emotional lability
In medicine and psychology, emotional lability is a sign or symptom typified by exaggerated changes in mood or affect in quick succession. Sometimes the emotions expressed outwardly are very different from how the person feels on the inside. Thes ...
, personality changes, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and hyperactivity
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inappr ...
, which matched Brecht's behavior. "What is remarkable," wrote Parker, "is his capacity to turn abject physical weakness into peerless artistic strength, arrhythmia into the rhythms of poetry, chorea into the choreography of drama."
Theory and practice of theatre
Brecht developed the combined theory and practice of his "Epic theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creat ...
" by synthesizing and extending the experiments of Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content o ...
and Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (russian: Всеволод Эмильевич Мейерхольд, translit=Vsévolod Èmíl'evič Mejerchól'd; born german: Karl Kasimir Theodor Meyerhold; 2 February 1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre ...
to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.
Epic Theatre proposed that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis
Catharsis (from Greek , , meaning "purification" or "cleansing" or "clarification") is the purification and purgation of emotions through dramatic art, or it may be any extreme emotional state that results in renewal and restoration. In its lite ...
of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognize social injustice and exploitation and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside. For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed, and as such, was changeable.
Brecht's modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
concern with drama-as-a-medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
*Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
led to his refinement of the " epic form" of the drama. This dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in other arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
's novel '' Ulysses'', Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
's evolution of a constructivist "montage
Montage may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films
* Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing
* ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film
Music
* Montage (music), or sound collage
* ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 201 ...
" in the cinema, and Picasso's introduction of cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
"collage" in the visual arts.
One of Brecht's most important principles was what he called the '' Verfremdungseffekt'' (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect"). This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them". To this end, Brecht employed techniques such as the actor's direct address to the audience, harsh and bright stage lighting, the use of songs to interrupt
In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, ...
the action, explanatory placards, the transposition of text to the third person
Third person, or third-person, may refer to:
* Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'')
** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person
* Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...
or past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some ha ...
in rehearsals, and speaking the stage directions out loud.
In contrast to many other avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to " re-function" the theatre to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the "high art
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society con ...
/popular culture" dichotomy—vying with the likes of Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
, György Lukács
György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesth ...
, Ernst Bloch
Ernst Simon Bloch (; July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977; pseudonyms: Karl Jahraus, Jakob Knerz) was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers ...
, and developing a close friendship with Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...
. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty p ...
," Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
argues, while dubs him "the most important materialist writer of our time."
Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre, and used its aesthetic as an argument for ''Verfremdungseffekt''. Brecht believed, "Traditional Chinese acting also knows the alienation iceffect, and applies it most subtly. The hineseperformer portrays incidents of utmost passion, but without his delivery becoming heated." Brecht attended a Chinese opera performance and was introduced to the famous Chinese opera performer Mei Lanfang
Mei Lan (22 October 1894 – 8 August 1961), better known by his stage name Mei Lanfang, was a notable Peking opera artist in modern Chinese theater. Mei was known as "Queen of Peking Opera". Mei was exclusively known for his female lead ...
in 1935. However, Brecht was sure to distinguish between Epic and Chinese theatre. He recognized that the Chinese style was not a "transportable piece of technique", and that epic theatre sought to historicize and address social and political issues.
Brecht used his poetry to criticize European culture, including Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
, and the German bourgeoisie. Brecht's poetry is marked by the effects of the First and Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
s.
Throughout his theatric production, poems are incorporated into this plays with music. In 1951, Brecht issued a recantation of his apparent suppression of poetry in his plays with a note titled ''On Poetry and Virtuosity''. He writes:
We shall not need to speak of a play's poetry ... something that seemed relatively unimportant in the immediate past. It seemed not only unimportant, but misleading, and the reason was not that the poetic element had been sufficiently developed and observed, but that reality had been tampered with in its name ... we had to speak of a truth as distinct from poetry ... we have given up examining works of art from their poetic or artistic aspect, and got satisfaction from theatrical works that have no sort of poetic appeal ... Such works and performances may have some effect, but it can hardly be a profound one, not even politically. For it is a peculiarity of the theatrical medium that it communicates awarenesses and impulses in the form of pleasure: the depth of the pleasure and the impulse will correspond to the depth of the pleasure.
Brecht's most influential poetry is featured in his ''Manual of Piety (Devotions)'', establishing him as a noted poet.
Legacy
Brecht's widow, the actress Helene Weigel
Helene Weigel (; 12 May 19006 May 1971) was a German actress and artistic director. She was the second wife of Bertolt Brecht and was married to him from 1930 until his death in 1956. Together they had two children.
Personal life
Weigel was bo ...
, continued to manage the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971; it was primarily devoted to performing Brecht's plays.
Besides being an influential dramatist and poet, some scholars have stressed the significance of Brecht's original contributions in political and social philosophy.
Brecht's collaborations with Kurt Weill have had some influence in rock music. The " Alabama Song" for example, originally published as a poem in Brecht's ''Hauspostille'' (1927) and set to music by Weill in ''Mahagonny'', has been recorded by The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential rock acts ...
, on their self-titled debut album, as well as by David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
and various other bands and performers since the 1960s.
Brecht's son, Stefan Brecht
Stefan Sebastian Brecht (November 3, 1924 – April 13, 2009) was a German-born American poet, critic and scholar of theatre.
Life and career
The son of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and actress Helene Weigel, Stefan Brecht was born in Ber ...
, became a poet and theatre critic interested in New York's avant-garde theatre.
Brecht's plays were a focus of the Schauspiel Frankfurt
The Schauspiel Frankfurt is the municipal theatre company for plays in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. It is part of Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt.
History
In the late 1770s the theatre principal Abel Seyler was based in Frankfurt, and established th ...
when Harry Buckwitz
Harry Buckwitz (13 March 1904 – 28 December 1987) was a German actor, theatre director and theatre manager. He was general manager of the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt from 1951 and 1967, where he was responsible for opera and plays, and initi ...
was general manager, including the world premiere of ''Die Gesichte der Simone Machard
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicond ...
'' in 1957.
In fiction, drama, film, and music
* In the 1930 novel ''Success'', Brecht's mentor Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Feuchtwanger's J ...
immortalized Brecht as the character Kaspar Pröckl.
* In the Günter Grass play ''The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising
''The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising'' (German: ''Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand'') is a 1966 play by German writer Günter Grass. It was premiered at the Berlin Schillertheater on 15 January 1966. In the play, Grass criticizes Bertolt Brech ...
'' (1966), Brecht appears as "The Boss", rehearsing his version of Shakespeare's ''Coriolanus
''Coriolanus'' ( or ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus. Shakespeare worked on it during the same yea ...
'' against the background of worker unrest in East Berlin in 1953.
* In 1969, Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
's '' Children's Crusade'' was premiered, setting Brecht's narrative poem '.
* Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez
Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born 29 November 1946) is a Cuban musician, and leader of the Nueva Trova movement.
He is widely considered Cuba's best folk singer and arguably one of Latin America's greatest singer-songwriters. Known for his in ...
started his song "Sueño con serpientes" from the album ''Días y flores'' (1975) with a phrase of Brecht.
* Brecht appears as a character in Christopher Hampton's play ''Tales from Hollywood'', first produced in 1982, dealing with German expatriates in Hollywood at the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on supposed Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry and the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist.
* In Peter Weiss's monumental novel of 1981 ''Die Ästhetik des Widerstands'' (The Aesthetics of Resistance
''The Aesthetics of Resistance'' (german: Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, 1975–1981) is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss which was written over a ten-year period between 1971 and 19 ...
) Brecht is a teacher for the narrator who aspires to become a writer.
* In the 1999 film ''Cradle Will Rock
''Cradle Will Rock'' is a 1999 American historical drama film written, produced and directed by Tim Robbins. The story fictionalizes the true events that surrounded the development of the 1937 musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'' by Marc Blitzstein; ...
'' Brecht appears as an inspiration to Marc Blitzstein.
* The 2000 German film '' Abschied – Brechts letzter Sommer'' (''The Farewell''), directed by Jan Schütte, depicts Brecht (Josef Bierbichler
Josef Bierbichler (born 26 April 1948) is a German actor.
Filmography
* 1976: '' Heart of Glass'' – director: Werner Herzog
* 1976: ''Die Atlantikschwimmer''
* 1977: '' Bierkampf'' – director: Herbert Achternbusch
* 1977: ''Servus Bayern''
...
) shortly before his death, attended to by Helene Weigel ( Monica Bleibtreu) and two former lovers.
* In the 2006 film ''The Lives of Others
''The Lives of Others'' (german: link=no, Das Leben der Anderen, ) is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berl ...
'', a Stasi agent played by Ulrich Mühe
Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe (; 20 June 1953 – 22 July 2007) was a German film, television and theatre actor. He played the role of Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film '' Das Leben der Anderen'' (''The Lives of Others'', 2 ...
is partially inspired to save a playwright he has been spying on by reading a book of Brecht poetry that he had stolen from the artist's apartment. In particular, the poem "Reminiscence of Marie A.
"Reminiscence of Marie A." or "Memory of Marie A." (German: ''"Erinnerung an die Marie A."'') is a 1920 poem by German poet and playwright Bertold Brecht (1889-1956) that was first published in his collection ''Die Hauspostille'' (1927). Brecht wr ...
" is read.
* ''Brecht at Night'' by Mati Unt
Mati Unt (1 January 1944 Linnamäe, Voore Parish (now Voore, Mustvee Parish), Jõgeva County, Estonia – 22 August 2005, Tallinn) was an Estonian writer, essayist and theatre director.
Biography
His first novel, written at the age of 18 af ...
, transl. Eric Dickens (Dalkey Archive Press
Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...
, 2009)
* In Robert Cohen's historical novel ''Exil der frechen Frauen'' (2009) Brecht is a major character.
* The 2013 film '' Witness 11'' draws upon historical events exploring the justice-thirsty courtroom through the eyes of Brecht as he is called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
* In the 2013 Italian film ''Viva la libertà
''Long Live Freedom'' ( it, Viva la libertà) is a 2013 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Roberto Andò. It won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Screenplay and the David di Donatello for Best Script and the David di Donatello for Best Supporting ...
'' the Brecht poem ''To a Waverer'' forms the text for an important and moving speech.
* In the 2014 novel ''Leaving Berlin'' by Joseph Kanon
Joseph Kanon (born 1946) is an American author, best known for thriller and spy novels set in the period immediately after World War II.
Early life
In 1946, Kanon was born in Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education
Kanon studied at Harvard University, ...
, Brecht appears as a cynical returnee to Soviet Berlin, lauded by the authorities as a symbol of communist German culture and willing to ignore moral issues to pursue his art.
* The 2019 biopic ''Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
'' deals with the author's life.
Collaborators and associates
Collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to Brecht's approach, as Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jam ...
(among others) stresses. Jameson describes the creator of the work not as Brecht the individual, but rather as 'Brecht': a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relianc ...
sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturg
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults auth ...
s and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.
She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year ...
, Margarete Steffin
Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold Brecht's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages.
Biography
Born to a pr ...
, Ruth Berlau
Ruth Berlau (24 August 1906, Charlottenlund – 15 January 1974, East Berlin) was a Danish actress, director, photographer and writer, known for her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and for founding the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv
in Berlin.
Born ...
, Slatan Dudow
Slatan Theodor Dudow ( bg, Златан Дудов, Zlatan Dudov) (30 January 1903 - 12 July 1963) was a Bulgarian born film director and screenwriter who made a number of films during the Weimar Republic and in East Germany.
Biography
Dudow wa ...
, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
, Paul Dessau
Paul Dessau (19 December 189428 June 1979) was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them.
Biography
Dessau was born in Hamburg into a ...
, Caspar Neher Caspar Neher (born Rudolf Ludwig Caspar Neher; 11 April 1897 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht.
Neher was born in Augsburg. He a ...
, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen
Karl von Appen (12 May 1900, Düsseldorf - 22 August 1981, Berlin) was a German stage designer and member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists.
Theatre
* 1954: ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' by Bertolt Brecht; directed by Brecht at ...
, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best ...
, Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
, Therese Giehse
Therese Giehse (; 6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975), born Therese Gift, was a German actress. Born in Munich to German-Jewish parents, she first appeared on the stage in 1920. She became a major star on stage, in films, and in political cabaret. In t ...
, Angelika Hurwicz
Angelika Hurwicz (22 April 1922, Berlin – 26 November 1999, Bergen) was a German actress and theatre director. She worked with Bertolt Brecht at his Berliner Ensemble company until 1958, when she moved to West Germany
West Germany is the ...
, Carola Neher
Carola Neher (born Karola Neher; 2 November 1900 – 26 June 1942) was a German actress and singer.
Biography
Neher was born in Munich in 1900. She started to work as a bank clerk in 1917. In the summer of 1920, she made her debut performance ...
and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment ..as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
List of collaborators and associates
* Karl von Appen
Karl von Appen (12 May 1900, Düsseldorf - 22 August 1981, Berlin) was a German stage designer and member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists.
Theatre
* 1954: ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' by Bertolt Brecht; directed by Brecht at ...
* Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...
* Eric Bentley
Eric Russell Bentley (September 14, 1916 – August 5, 2020) was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator. In 1998, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the New ...
* Ruth Berghaus
Ruth Berghaus (2 July 1927 – 25 January 1996) was a German choreographer, opera and theatre director, and artistic director.
Life and career
Berghaus was born in Dresden and studied Expressionist dance and Dance direction with Gret Palucca the ...
* Ruth Berlau
Ruth Berlau (24 August 1906, Charlottenlund – 15 January 1974, East Berlin) was a Danish actress, director, photographer and writer, known for her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and for founding the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv
in Berlin.
Born ...
* Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langho ...
* Benno Besson
Benno Besson (born René-Benjamin Besson; 4 November 1922 in Yverdon-les-Bains – 16 February 2006 in Berlin, Germany) was a Swiss actor and director. He had great success as director at Volksbühne Berlin, Deutsches Theater and Berliner Ense ...
* Arnolt Bronnen
Arnolt Bronnen (19 August 1895 – 12 October 1959) was an Austrian playwright and director.
Life and career
Bronnen was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of the Austrian-Jewish writer Ferdinand Bronner and his Christian wife Martha Bronner. B ...
* Emil Burri
* Ernst Busch
* Paul Dessau
Paul Dessau (19 December 189428 June 1979) was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them.
Biography
Dessau was born in Hamburg into a ...
* Slatan Dudow
Slatan Theodor Dudow ( bg, Златан Дудов, Zlatan Dudov) (30 January 1903 - 12 July 1963) was a Bulgarian born film director and screenwriter who made a number of films during the Weimar Republic and in East Germany.
Biography
Dudow wa ...
* Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
* Erich Engel
Erich Gustav Otto Engel (14 February 1891 – 10 May 1966) was a German film and theatre director.He is often confused with another German film director called Erich Engels, who specialised in comedy, and crime films.
Biography
Engel was b ...
* Erwin Faber
Erwin Faber (21 July 1891 – 4 May 1989) was a leading actor in Munich and later throughout Germany, beginning after World War I, and through the late-1970s, when he was still performing at the Residenz Theatre (The National Theatre of Bava ...
* Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Feuchtwanger's J ...
* Therese Giehse
Therese Giehse (; 6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975), born Therese Gift, was a German actress. Born in Munich to German-Jewish parents, she first appeared on the stage in 1920. She became a major star on stage, in films, and in political cabaret. In t ...
* Alexander Granach
Alexander Granach (April 18, 1890 – March 14, 1945) was a German-Austrian actor in the 1920s and 1930s who emigrated to the United States in 1938.
Life and career
Granach was born Schaje Granoch in Werbowitz (Wierzbowce/Werbiwci) (Austri ...
* Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.
She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year ...
* John Heartfield
John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. ...
* Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
* Oskar Homolka
Oskar Homolka (August 12, 1898 – January 27, 1978) was an Austrian film and theatre actor, who went on to work in Germany, Britain and America. Both his voice and his appearance fitted him for roles as communist spies or Soviet officials, for w ...
* Angelika Hurwicz
Angelika Hurwicz (22 April 1922, Berlin – 26 November 1999, Bergen) was a German actress and theatre director. She worked with Bertolt Brecht at his Berliner Ensemble company until 1958, when she moved to West Germany
West Germany is the ...
* Herbert Ihering
Herbert Ihering (also sometimes Herbert Jhering: 29 February 1888 – 15 January 1977) was a German dramaturge, director and theatre critic. He was seen by many contemporaries as one of the leading theatre critics during and after the Weimar yea ...
* Fritz Kortner
Fritz Kortner (born Fritz Nathan Kohn; 12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director.
Life and career
Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jewish family. He studied at the Vienna A ...
* Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
* Wolfgang Langhoff
Wolfgang Langhoff (6 October 1901 in Berlin, German Empire – 26 August 1966 in Berlin, German Democratic Republic)The Internet Movie Database"Wolfgang Langhoff" Accessed 17 August 2007. was a German theatre, film and television actor and theat ...
* Charles Laughton
* Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best ...
* Theo Lingen
Theo Lingen (; 10 June 1903 – 10 November 1978), born Franz Theodor Schmitz, was a German actor, film director and screenwriter. He appeared in more than 230 films between 1929 and 1978, and directed 21 films between 1936 and 1960.
Life and c ...
* Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
* Joseph Losey
* Ralph Manheim
Ralph Frederick Manheim (April 4, 1907 – September 26, 1992) was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th cen ...
* Carola Neher
Carola Neher (born Karola Neher; 2 November 1900 – 26 June 1942) was a German actress and singer.
Biography
Neher was born in Munich in 1900. She started to work as a bank clerk in 1917. In the summer of 1920, she made her debut performance ...
* Caspar Neher Caspar Neher (born Rudolf Ludwig Caspar Neher; 11 April 1897 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht.
Neher was born in Augsburg. He a ...
* Teo Otto
* G. W. Pabst
Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
...
* Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content o ...
* Margarete Steffin
Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold Brecht's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages.
Biography
Born to a pr ...
* Carl Weber
* Helene Weigel
Helene Weigel (; 12 May 19006 May 1971) was a German actress and artistic director. She was the second wife of Bertolt Brecht and was married to him from 1930 until his death in 1956. Together they had two children.
Personal life
Weigel was bo ...
* Kurt Weill
* John Willett
John William Mills Willett, MBE (24 June 1917 – 20 August 2002) was a British translator and a scholar who is remembered for translating the work of Bertolt Brecht into English.
Early life
Willett was born in Hampstead and was educated ...
* Hella Wuolijoki
Works
Fiction
* ''Stories of Mr. Keuner'' (')
* '' Threepenny Novel'' (''Dreigroschenroman'', 1934)
* ''The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar'' (', 1937–39, unfinished, published 1957)
Plays and screenplays
Entries show: ''English-language translation of title'' (''German-language title'') ear written
An ear is the organ that enables hearing and, in mammals, body balance using the vestibular system. In mammals, the ear is usually described as having three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear consists of ...
/ ear first produced
An ear is the organ that enables hearing and, in mammals, body balance using the vestibular system. In mammals, the ear is usually described as having three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear consists of ...
* ''Baal
Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...
'' 1918/1923
* '' Drums in the Night'' (''Trommeln in der Nacht'') 1918–20/1922
* ''The Beggar'' (''Der Bettler oder Der tote Hund'') 1919/?
* ''A Respectable Wedding
''A Respectable Wedding'' is a short play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. The German title ''Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit'' literally means ''the petit bourgeois wedding.''
Like other of Brecht’s early works (Baal, Drums in the Night, and ...
'' (''Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit'') 1919/1926
* '' Driving Out a Devil'' (''Er treibt einen Teufel aus'') 1919/?
* '' Lux in Tenebris'' 1919/?
* ''The Catch'' (''Der Fischzug'') 1919?/?
* '' Mysteries of a Barbershop'' (''Mysterien eines Friseursalons'') (screenplay) 1923
* ''In the Jungle of Cities
''In the Jungle of Cities'' (''Im Dickicht der Städte'') is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written between 1921 and 1924, it received its first theatrical production under the title ''Im Dickicht'' ("In the jungle") a ...
'' (''Im Dickicht der Städte'') 1921–24/1923
* ''The Life of Edward II of England
''The Life of Edward II of England'' (German language, German: ), also known as ''Edward II'', is an Theatrical adaptation, adaptation by the Germany, German Modernism, modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht of the 16th-century historical tragedy by C ...
'' (''Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England'') 1924/1924
* '' Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer'' (''Der Untergang des Egoisten Johnann Fatzer'') (fragments) 1926–30/1974
* '' Man Equals Man'' also ''A Man's A Man'' (''Mann ist Mann'') 1924–26/1926
* '' The Elephant Calf'' (''Das Elefantenkalb'') 1924–26/1926
* '' Little Mahagonny'' (''Mahagonny-Songspiel'') 1927/1927
* ''The Threepenny Opera
''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a " play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, '' The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with mu ...
'' (''Die Dreigroschenoper'') 1928/1928
* '' The Flight across the Ocean'' (''Der Ozeanflug''); originally ''Lindbergh's Flight'' (''Lindberghflug'') 1928–29/1929
* ''The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent
''The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent'' (german: Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis) is a '' Lehrstück'' by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and Elisabeth Hauptmann. Under the title ''Lehrstück' ...
'' (''Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis'') 1929/1929
* '' Happy End'' (''Happy End'') 1929/1929
* ''The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' (german: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, links=no) is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the ...
'' (''Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny'') 1927–29/1930
* '' He Said Yes'' / '' He Said No'' (''Der Jasager''; ''Der Neinsager'') 1929–30/1930–?
* '' The Decision''/''The Measures Taken'' (''Die Maßnahme'') 1930/1930
* ''Saint Joan of the Stockyards
''Saint Joan of the Stockyards'' (german: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe, links=no) is a play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht between 1929 and 1931, after the success of his musical ''The Threepenny Opera'' and d ...
'' (''Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe'') 1929–31/1959
* ''The Exception and the Rule
''The Exception and the Rule'' (in German ''Die Ausnahme und die Regel'') is a short play by German playwright Bertolt Brecht and is one of several ''Lehrstücke'' (Teaching plays) he wrote around 1929/30. The objective of Brecht's Lehrstücke w ...
'' (''Die Ausnahme und die Regel'') 1930/1938
* '' The Mother'' (''Die Mutter'') 1930–31/1932
* ''Kuhle Wampe
''Kuhle Wampe'' (full title: ''Kuhle Wampe, oder: Wem gehört die Welt?'', translated in English as ''Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?'', and released in the USA as ''Whither Germany?'' by Kinematrade Inc.) is a 1932 German feature film abou ...
'' (screenplay, with Ernst Ottwalt) 1931/1932
* ''The Seven Deadly Sins The seven deadly sins is a classification of vices used in Christian teachings.
Seven deadly sins may also refer to:
Art
* ''The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things'', a 1485 painting by Hieronymus Bosch
* '' The Seven Deadly Sins of Moder ...
'' (''Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger'') 1933/1933
* ''Round Heads and Pointed Heads
''Round Heads and Pointed Heads'' (german: Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe) is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Han ...
'' (''Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe'') 1931–34/1936
* '' The Horatians and the Curiatians'' (''Die Horatier und die Kuriatier'') 1933–34/1958
* ''Fear and Misery of the Third Reich
''Fear and Misery of the Third Reich'' (german: Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches), also known as ''The Private Life of the Master Race'', is one of Bertolt Brecht's most famous plays and the first of his openly anti-Nazi works. It premiered ...
'' (''Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches'') 1935–38/1938
* ''Señora Carrar's Rifles
''Señora Carrar's Rifles'' (german: Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar) is a one-act play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in collaboration with Margarete Steffin. It is a modern version of the Irish dramatist John Mil ...
'' (''Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar'') 1937/1937
* ''Life of Galileo
''Life of Galileo'' (), also known as ''Galileo'', is a play by the 20th century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and collaborator Margarete Steffin with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. The play was written in 1938 and received its first theatri ...
'' (''Leben des Galilei'') 1937–39/1943
* '' How Much Is Your Iron?'' (''Was kostet das Eisen?'') 1939/1939
* ''Dansen
''Dansen'' is a short play by German playwright and dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) written in 1939. Although not as widely recognized and produced due to its short length, the play is a good representation both of Brecht's writing style an ...
'' (''Dansen'') 1939/?
* ''Mother Courage and Her Children
''Mother Courage and Her Children'' (german: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, links=no) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrica ...
'' (''Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder'') 1938–39/1941
* '' The Trial of Lucullus'' (''Das Verhör des Lukullus'') 1938–39/1940
* '' The Judith of Shimoda'' (''Die Judith von Shimoda'') 1940
* ''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti
''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti'' (german: Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) is an epic comedy by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It was written in 1940 and first performed in 1948.
The story describes the aristocratic land-owne ...
'' (''Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti'') 1940/1948
* ''The Good Person of Szechwan
''The Good Person of Szechwan'' (german: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, first translated less literally as ''The Good Man of Setzuan'') is a play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau ...
'' (''Der gute Mensch von Sezuan'') 1939–42/1943
* ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' (german: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, links=no), subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago ...
'' (''Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui'') 1941/1958
* ''Hangmen Also Die!
''Hangmen Also Die!'' is a 1943 noir war film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley from a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited as Bert Brecht) and Lang. The film stars Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Brian Donlevy, W ...
'' (credited as Bert Brecht) (screenplay) 1942/1943
* ''The Visions of Simone Machard
''The Visions of Simone Machard'' (german: Die Gesichte der Simone Machard, links=no) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Written in 1942, the play is the second of three treatments of the Joan of Arc story that Brecht crea ...
'' (''Die Gesichte der Simone Machard'') 1942–43/1957
* ''The Duchess of Malfi
''The Duchess of Malfi'' (originally published as ''The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy'') is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, ...
'' 1943/1943
* ''Schweik in the Second World War
''Schweyk in the Second World War'' (''Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg'') is a play by German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht. It was written by Brecht in 1943 while in exile in California, and is a sequel to the 1923 novel ''The Good Soldier Šve ...
'' (''Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg'') 1941–43/1957
* ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle
''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (german: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a ...
'' (''Der kaukasische Kreidekreis'') 1943–45/1948
* ''Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & R ...
'' (''Die Antigone des Sophokles'') 1947/1948
* '' The Days of the Commune'' (''Die Tage der Commune'') 1948–49/1956
* '' The Tutor'' (''Der Hofmeister'') 1950/1950
* '' The Condemnation of Lucullus'' (''Die Verurteilung des Lukullus'') 1938–39/1951
* ''Report from Herrnburg
''Report from Herrnburg'' is a production performed by a youth chorus that consisted of ten songs, each with a brief introductory commentary, written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, and two fragments of film, given on a concert platform in ...
'' (''Herrnburger Bericht'') 1951/1951
* ''Coriolanus
''Coriolanus'' ( or ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus. Shakespeare worked on it during the same yea ...
'' (''Coriolan'') 1951–53/1962
* '' The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431'' (''Der Prozess der Jeanne D'Arc zu Rouen, 1431'') 1952/1952
* ''Turandot
''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is " Nessun dorma", ...
'' (''Turandot oder Der Kongreß der Weißwäscher'') 1953–54/1969
* ''Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, ''El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
'' (''Don Juan'') 1952/1954
* ''Trumpets and Drums
''Trumpets and Drums'' (german: Pauken und Trompeten) is an adaptation of an 18th-century English Restoration comedy by Farquhar, ''The Recruiting Officer''. It was written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Benno Bess ...
'' (''Pauken und Trompeten'') 1955/1955
Theoretical works
* '' The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre'' (1930)
* ''The Threepenny Lawsuit'' (''Der Dreigroschenprozess'') (written 1931; published 1932)
* ''The Book of Changes'' (fragment also known as ''Me-Ti''; written 1935–1939)
* '' The Street Scene'' (written 1938; published 1950)
* ''The Popular and the Realistic'' (written 1938; published 1958)
* ''Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces an Alienation Effect'' (written 1940; published 1951)
* '' A Short Organum for the Theatre'' ("Kleines Organon für das Theater", written 1948; published 1949)
* '' The Messingkauf Dialogues'' (''Dialoge aus dem Messingkauf'', published 1963)
Poetry
Brecht wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life. He began writing poetry as a young boy, and his first poems were published in 1914. His poetry was influenced by folk-ballads, French ''chansons'', and the poetry of Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...
and Villon. The last collection of new poetry by Brecht published in his lifetime was the 1939 ''Svendborger Gedichte
''Svendborger Gedichte'' ('Svendborg Poems') is a poetry collection by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, and the last collection of new poems to be published while he lived. The collection is named after the town of Svendborg on the ...
''.[Bertolt Brecht, ''Poems 1913–1956'', ed. by ]John Willett
John William Mills Willett, MBE (24 June 1917 – 20 August 2002) was a British translator and a scholar who is remembered for translating the work of Bertolt Brecht into English.
Early life
Willett was born in Hampstead and was educated ...
, Ralph Manheim
Ralph Frederick Manheim (April 4, 1907 – September 26, 1992) was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th cen ...
, and Erich Fried
Erich Fried (6 May 1921 – 22 November 1988) was an Austrian-born poet, writer, and translator. He initially became known to a broader public in both Germany and Austria for his political poetry, and later for his love poems. As a writer, he mo ...
(London: Eyre Methuen, 1976), p. 507.
Some of Brecht's poems
* 1940
* A Bad Time for Poetry
* Alabama Song
* Children's Crusade
* Children's Hymn
* Contemplating Hell
* From a German War Primer
* Germany
* Honored Murderer of the People
* How Fortunate the Man with None
* Hymn to Communism
* I Never Loved You More
* I want to Go with the One I Love
* I'm Not Saying Anything Against Alexander
* In Praise of Communism
* In Praise of Doubt
* In Praise of Illegal Work
* In Praise of Learning
* In Praise of Study
* In Praise of the Work of the Party
* Mack the Knife
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (german: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", italic=no, link=no) is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama ''The Threepenny Opera'' (german: Die Dreig ...
* My Young Son Asks Me
* Not What Was Meant
* O Germany, Pale Mother!
* On Reading a Recent Greek Poet
* On the Critical Attitude
* Parting
* (Questions from a Worker Who Reads)
* Radio Poem
* Reminiscence of Marie A.
"Reminiscence of Marie A." or "Memory of Marie A." (German: ''"Erinnerung an die Marie A."'') is a 1920 poem by German poet and playwright Bertold Brecht (1889-1956) that was first published in his collection ''Die Hauspostille'' (1927). Brecht wr ...
* Send Me a Leaf
* Solidarity Song
''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictio ...
* The Book Burning (The Burning of the Books
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union (, ''DSt'') to ceremonially Book burning, burn books in Nazi Germany and First Austrian Republic, Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed ...
)
* The Exile of the Poets
* The Invincible Inscription
* The Mask of Evil
* The Sixteen-Year-Old Seamstress Emma Ries before the Magistrate
* The Solution
* To Be Read in the Morning and at Night
* To Posterity
* To the Students and Workers of the Peasants' Faculty
* ' (To Those Born After)
* United Front Song
* War Has Been Given a Bad Name
* What Has Happened?
See also
* Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis
Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis ( en, "Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize") is a literary award in Augsburg, Germany, birthplace of Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Berto ...
* Brecht Forum
* List of refugees
* Weimar culture
Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 193 ...
* Western Marxism
Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an i ...
Notes
References
Primary sources
Essays, diaries, and journals
*
*
*
Drama, poetry, and prose
* Brecht, Bertolt. 1994a. ''Collected Plays: One''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen. .
* 1994b. ''Collected Plays: Two''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. .
* 1997. ''Collected Plays: Three''. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen. .
* 2003b. ''Collected Plays: Four''. Ed. Tom Kuhn and John Willett. London: Methuen. .
* 1995. ''Collected Plays: Five''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. .
* 1994c. ''Collected Plays: Six''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. .
* 1994d. ''Collected Plays: Seven''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. .
* 2004. ''Collected Plays: Eight.'' Ed. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine. London: Methuen. .
* 1972. ''Collected Plays: Nine.'' Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. New York: Vintage. .
* 2000b. ''Poems: 1913–1956''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. .
* 1983. ''Short Stories: 1921–1946''. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Trans. Yvonne Kapp, Hugh Rorrison and Antony Tatlow. London and New York: Methuen. .
* 2001. ''Stories of Mr. Keuner''. Trans. Martin Chalmers. San Francisco: City Lights. .
Secondary sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Translation of : ''Bertolt Brecht, Eine Biographie.'' Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag. .
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
* non.1952. "Brecht Directs". In ''Directors on Directing: A Source Book to the Modern Theater''. Ed. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy
Helen Krich Chinoy (September 25, 1922 – May 24, 2010) was an American theater historian who documented the role of women in United States theater.
Biography
Helen Krich was born on September 25, 1922, in Newark, New Jersey. She was awarded ...
. Rev. ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1963. . 291- ccount of Brecht in rehearsal from anonymous colleague published in ''Theaterarbeit''*
*
* Demčišák, Ján. 2012. "Queer Reading von Brechts Frühwerk". Marburg: Tectum Verlag. .
* Demetz, Peter, ed. 1962. "From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht: Hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 30 October 1947". ''Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays''. Twentieth Century Views Ser. Eaglewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. . 30–42.
* Diamond, Elin. 1997. ''Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater''. London and New York: Routledge. .
* Eagleton, Terry
Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
Eagleton has published over forty books ...
. 1985. "Brecht and Rhetoric". ''New Literary History'' 16.3 (Spring). 633–638.
* Eaton, Katherine B. "Brecht's Contacts with the Theater of Meyerhold". in ''Comparative Drama'' 11.1 (Spring 1977)3–21. Reprinted in 1984. ''Drama in the Twentieth Century'' ed. C. Davidson. New York: AMS Press, 1984. . 203–221. 1979. "''Die Pionierin'' und ''Feld-Herren'' vorm ''Kreidekreis''. Bemerkungen zu Brecht und Tretjakow". in ''Brecht-Jahrbuch 1979''. Ed. J. Fuegi, R. Grimm, J. Hermand. Suhrkamp, 1979. 1985 19–29. ''The Theater of Meyerhold and Brecht''. Connecticut and New York: Greenwood Press. .
* Eddershaw, Margaret. 1982. "Acting Methods: Brecht and Stanislavski". In ''Brecht in Perspective''. Ed. Graham Bartram and Anthony Waine. London: Longman. . 128–144.
* Esslin, Martin. 1960. ''Brecht: The Man and His Work''. New York: Doubleday. , first published in 1959 as ''Brecht: A Choice of Evils''. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
* Fuegi, John. 1994. "The Zelda Syndrome: Brecht and Elizabeth Hauptmann". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 104–116).
* Fuegi, John. 2002. ''Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama.'' New York: Grove. .
* Giles, Steve. 1998. "Marxist Aesthetics and Cultural Modernity in ''Der Dreigroschenprozeß''". ''Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays.'' Ed. Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone. German Monitor 41. Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi. . 49–61.
* Giles, Steve. 1997. ''Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the Threepenny Lawsuit''. Bern: Lang. .
* Glahn, Philip, 2014. ''Bertolt Brecht''. London: Reaktion Books. .
* Jacobs, Nicholas and Prudence Ohlsen, eds. 1977. ''Bertolt Brecht in Britain.'' London: IRAT Services Ltd and TQ Publications. .
* Katz, Pamela. 2015. ''The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink''. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. .
* Krause, Duane. 1995. "An Epic System". In ''Acting (Re)considered: Theories and Practices''. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. 1st ed. Worlds of Performance Ser. London: Routledge. . 262–274.
* Leach, Robert. 1994. "''Mother Courage and Her Children''". In .
* Giuseppe Leone, "Bertolt Brecht, ripropose l'eterno conflitto dell'intellettuale fra libertà di ricerca e condizionamenti del potere", su "Ricorditi...di me" in "Lecco 2000", Lecco, June 1998.
* McBride, Patrizia. "De-Moralizing Politics: Brecht's Early Aesthetics." ''Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte'' 82.1 (2008): 85–111.
* Milfull, John. 1974. ''From Baal to Keuner. The "Second Optimism" of Bertolt Brecht'', Bern and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
* Mitter, Schomit. 1992. "To Be And Not To Be: Bertolt Brecht and Peter Brook". ''Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook''. London: Routledge. . 42–77.
* Müller, Heiner. 1990. ''Germania''. Trans. Bernard Schütze and Caroline Schütze. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). .
* Needle, Jan and Peter Thomson. 1981. ''Brecht''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Oxford: Basil Blackwell. .
* Pabst, G. W. 1984. ''The Threepenny Opera''. Classic Film Scripts Series. London: Lorrimer. .
* Parker, Stephen. 2014. ''Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life''. London: Methuen Drama. .
* Reinelt, Janelle. 1990. "Rethinking Brecht: Deconstruction, Feminism, and the Politics of Form". ''The Brecht Yearbook'' 15. Ed. Marc Silberman et al. Madison, Wisconsin: The International Brecht Society, University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic community; works of fiction, memoir and p ...
. 99–107.
* Reinelt, Janelle. 1994. "A Feminist Reconsideration of the Brecht/Lukács Debate". ''Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory'' 7.1 (issue 13). 122–139.
* Rouse, John. 1995. "Brecht and the Contradictory Actor". In ''Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide''. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. 2nd ed. Worlds of Performance Series. London: Routledge. . 248–259.
*
*
* Sternberg, Fritz
Friedrich "Fritz" Sternberg (11 June 1895 – 18 October 1963) was a German economist, sociologist, Marxist theorist, and socialist politician. Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known profe ...
. 1963. ''Der Dichter und die Ratio: Erinnerungen an Bertolt Brecht''. Göttingen: Sachse & Pohl.
* Szondi, Péter. 1965. ''Theory of the Modern Drama.'' Ed. and trans. Michael Hays. Theory and History of Literature Series. 29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. .
* Taxidou, Olga. 2007. ''Modernism and Performance: Jarry to Brecht''. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. .
* Thomson, Peter. 2000. "Brecht and Actor Training: On Whose Behalf Do We Act?" In ''Twentieth Century Actor Training''. Ed. Alison Hodge. London and New York: Routledge. . 98–112.
* Weber, Carl. 1984. "The Actor and Brecht, or: The Truth Is Concrete: Some Notes on Directing Brecht with American Actors". ''The Brecht Yearbook'' 13: 63–74.
* Weber, Carl. 1994. "Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble – the Making of a Model". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 167–184).
*
* Witt, Hubert, ed. 1975. ''Brecht As They Knew Him''. Trans. John Peet. London: Lawrence and Wishart; New York: International Publishers. .
* Wizisla, Erdmut. 2009. ''Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: The Story of a Friendship''. Translated by Christine Shuttleworth. London / New Haven: Libris / Yale University Press. ontains a complete translation of the newly discovered minutes of the meetings around the putative journal ''Krise und Kritik'' (1931)
* Womack, Peter (1979), "Brecht: The Search for an Audience", in Bold, Christine (ed.), ''Cencrastus
''Cencrastus'' was a magazine devoted to Scottish and international literature, arts and affairs, founded after the Referendum of 1979 by students, mainly of Scottish literature at Edinburgh University, and with support from Cairns Craig, then a ...
'', no. 1, Autumn 1979, pp. 24–28,
* Youngkin, Stephen D. 2005. ''The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre''. University Press of Kentucky. . [Contains a detailed discussion of the personal and professional friendship between Brecht and film actor Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
.]
External links
*
*
*
*
"Brecht's Works in English: A Bibliography"
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
Libraries
"''The Brecht Yearbook''"
University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries
"''Communications from the International Brecht Society'' (1971–2014)"
University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries
* International Brecht Society records, University of Maryland Libraries
FBI files on Bertolt Brecht
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brecht, Bertolt
1898 births
1956 deaths
Writers from Augsburg
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Acting theorists
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Protestants in the German Resistance
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Hollywood blacklist
Kleist Prize winners
Marxist theorists
German Marxist writers
Modernist theatre
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German male dramatists and playwrights
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