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Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of
My general is fallen
My soldier is fallen
My pupil has left
My teacher has left
My nurse is gone
My nursling is gone.
Brecht's 1955 ''Collected Works'' names Steffin as the collaborator on '' Roundheads and Peakheads'', ''
biography at fembio.orgbio and appreciation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steffin, Margarete 1908 births 1941 deaths Writers from Berlin Communist Party of Germany politicians German women dramatists and playwrights German literary critics German women critics Women literary critics Modernist theatre 20th-century German women writers Communist women writers 20th-century German dramatists and playwrights
Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold 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 pl ...
's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
.
Biography
Born to a proletarian family, at the age of fourteen she went to work for the phone company but her interest in Social Democratic politics got her fired. She worked in publishing andagitprop theatre
A political drama can describe a play, film or TV program that has a political component, whether reflecting the author's political opinion, or describing a politician or series of political events.
Dramatists who have written political dramas i ...
, and became secretary of the party's Lehreverband (1930) and worked at the ''Rote Revue''. In 1931, she took a diction class from Brecht's wife 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 b ...
and became his lover. She was introduced to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm
The ''Theater am Schiffbauerdamm'' () is a theatre building at the ''Schiffbauerdamm'' riverside in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, opened on 19 November 1892. Since 1954, it has been home to the Berliner Ensemble theatre company, founded ...
, playing a maid in ''Die Mutter
''Die Mutter'' is an East German film. It was released in 1958. It is an adaptation of the 1932 play by Bertolt Brecht, which in itself is based on the 1906 novel by Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́ ...
'' (1932).
In 1933, Brecht and Weigel went into exile in Denmark. Though soon replaced as Brecht's lover by 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 ...
, Steffin entered an arranged marriage to a Danish citizen to stay as Brecht's secretary and followed the Brechts to Finland and Moscow when war broke out. She died from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
(diagnosed already in 1931) while awaiting an American visa. Brecht wrote six short poems on hearing of her death, eventually published together as ''Nach dem Tod meiner Mitarbeiterin M. S.'' The second reads:
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 ...
'' and ''The Horatians and the Curiatians
''The Horatians and the Curiatians'' (Die Horatier und die Kuriatier) is a '' Lehrstück'' ("''Schulstück''" in the collected plays) by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht written in collaboration with Margarete Steffin in 1933–34. It is a ...
''. In addition Brecht acknowledged her role in '' Fear and Misery in the Third Reich'', ''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 ...
'' and ''Mother Courage
Mother Courage (German ''Mutter Courage'') is a character from a Grimmelshausen novel ''Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche'' (''The Runagate Courage'') dating from around 1670. The character had played a cameo r ...
''. She is also thought to have had a large hand in ''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-own ...
'', ''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 m ...
'', and ''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 b ...
''.
Steffin also corresponded 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 mys ...
and Arnold Zweig
Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer, pacifist and socialist.
He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I.
Life and work
Zweig was born in Glogau, Prussian Silesia (now Głogów, Poland), the son ...
.Steffin, Margarete: Briefe an berühmte Männer, Hamburg : Europ. Verl.-Anst., 1999
Works
*''Zwillinge'', 1932 *''Heute träumt ich, dass ich bei dir läge'', 1933 *''Von der Liebe und dem Krieg'', 1933, Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 2001, *''So wurde ich Laufmädchen'', 1933 *''Die große Sache'', 1933 *''Briefe an berühmte Männer'', Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1999, *'' Konfutse versteht nichts von Frauen'', Rowohlt, Berlin 1991References
Further reading
*John Fuegi: ''Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama'' *Sabine Kebir (Ed.): ''Ich wohne fast so hoch wie er: Margarete Steffin und Bertolt Brecht.'' Theater der Zeit, Berlin, 15 December 2008, 200 p.External links
biography at fembio.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steffin, Margarete 1908 births 1941 deaths Writers from Berlin Communist Party of Germany politicians German women dramatists and playwrights German literary critics German women critics Women literary critics Modernist theatre 20th-century German women writers Communist women writers 20th-century German dramatists and playwrights