BERTOLT BRECHT (1898-1956)
One of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century theatre, Bertolt Brecht (Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht) was born in Augsburg, Bavaria on February 10, 1898. He drifted towards the literary arts at an early age, writing poetry as a boy and even had a few poems published in 1914. He was an indifferent student, however, and was very nearly expelled from Augsburg Grammar School for taking a dismissive, anti-patriotic tone when given an assignment to write an essay with the title "It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one's country."
In 1917 Brecht enrolled as a medical student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he would attend Arthur Kutscher's theatre seminar. Although Kutscher had a reputation as something of a theatrical guru, Brecht was unimpressed. He went so far as to harshly criticize one of the instructor's favorite plays. The impetuous young Brecht suggested that he himself could write a better play on the same subject. The result was Brecht's first play, Baal, an effort that Kutscher considered vile and nauseating.
In 1918, Brecht's studies were temporarily interrupted when he was conscripted and had to serve as a medical orderly in World War I. This experience reinforced his hatred of war and influenced his support for the failed Socialist revolution in 1919. During this period, he wrote his second play, Drums in the Night, which tells the story of a soldier who returns home from the war to find his fiancée engaged to a war profiteer. This was the first of Brecht's plays to be performed, and his theatrical theories had, apparently, already begun to take shape, for he filled the auditorium with banners instructing the audience not to become too emotionally involved in the proceedings. It premiered in 1922, drew rave reviews from Herbert Ihering, and even earned Brecht the Kleist Prize, Germany's highest award for dramatic writing. Thus Brecht, from the very beginning, found himself in the spotlight. That same year, the promising young dramatist married the opera singer and actress Marianne Zoff. Their daughter, Hanne Hiob, born in 1923, would become a famous German actress.
Germany from the 1920s to the 1950s, had a rich artistic and literary heritage. The Weimar Republic (1918-1933), however controversial in economic and political terms, was a fertile ground for modern arts and sciences. Berlin, in particular, became a thriving centre for many new art movements such as Dadaism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus.
Germany was home to some of the world's most influential philosophers, writers and composers, such as Goethe (1749-1832), who, like Brecht, was a poet, dramatist and novelist and wrote his classic text Faust.
In 1924 Brecht moved to Berlin, a move he deemed necessary to continue his dramatic career. During the next few years, Brecht produced a string of well-received plays, the most popular of which was probably The Threepenny Opera, which he adapted from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera along with composer Kurt Weill. In fact, The Threepenny Opera would go on to become the biggest theatrical hit in Berlin during the 1920s and helped lead the way in a worldwide resurgence of the popularities of musicals in general. (It would also do much to fatten the playwright's checkbook!) Brecht also published his first book of poems, Hauspostille (Domestic Breviary), which won a literary prize. However, even as his literary fame was soaring, Brecht found his interests shifting towards politics. In 1927, he had begun to study Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and by 1929 he had embraced Communism. His solidifying political beliefs would soon become evident in his plays as well. Another Brecht/Weill collaboration, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, caused an uproar when it premiered in Leipzig in 1930 with Nazis protesting in the audience.
In 1929, Brecht married Helene Weigel (he had divorced Marianne Zoff in 1927) who had already borne him a son, Stefan. The new couple also had a daughter, Barbara, who was born shortly after the wedding and who, like Brecht's other daughter, would go on to become an actress. During this period, he also formed an influential writing collective which aspired to create a new theatre for participants rather than for passive audiences. In 1932 he worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature-length film about the suffering caused by the then-rampant mass unemployment that was plaguing Germany.
In February 1933, however, Bertolt Brecht's career was suddenly and violently interrupted as the Nazis came to power in Germany. Most of the exponents of Weimar culture had to emigrate and live in exile. Hitler declared much of it as "degenerate" art. The public book burning organised by Goebbels in 1933 condemned modernist thought and writing by Jews and non-Jews. The unique activity of German Jews, in the arts and sciences came to an end. The night after the Reichstag (German parliament building) was burned down, Brecht wisely fled with his family to Prague. His books and plays were soon banned in Germany and those who dared stage his plays found their productions unpleasantly interrupted by the police. When the Nazis came to power,
The exiled dramatist bounced around from Prague to Vienna to Zurich to Sweden. When Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, and Brecht was forced to leave Sweden for Helsinki in Finland. During this period of exile, while Brecht awaited a pending visa to the United States, he also completed the plays Mother Courage and her Children (1939), The Good Person of Szechwan (1941), and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uri (1941).
In May of 1941, Brecht finally received his U.S. visa and relocated to Santa Monica, California, where he attempted to become a Hollywood screenwriter, but his unusual concepts were mostly dismissed by Hollywood producers who couldn't seem to comprehend his artistic visions (or, as a result, take him seriously).
Unfortunately, Brecht's stay in America would not be as successful or as lengthy as he might have hoped. In 1947, during the years of the "red scare," the House Un-American Activities Committee called the playwright to account for his communist activities. Originally, Brecht was one of several witnesses who had refused to testify about their political affiliations. But on October 30, 1947, he appeared before the committee, wearing overalls, smoking a cigar, cracking jokes, and making constant references to the translators who transformed his German statements into English ones he could not comprehend. Although he outwitted his investigators with half-truths and skillful innuendo, Brecht feared the irrational political climate, and shortly after his testimony took a plane to Switzerland, not even waiting to see the opening of his play Galileo in New York.
On October 22, 1948, after 15 years of exile, Bertolt Brecht returned to Germany, settling in East Berlin where he was welcomed by the Communist cultural establishment and immediately given facilities to direct Mother Courage at the Deutsches Theater. The following year he founded his own company, the Berliner Ensemble, and in 1954 he was rewarded with his own theatre--the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Brecht quickly discovered, however, that the German Democratic Republic was not quite his ideal brand of Communism, and he was often at odds with his East German hosts. He did not care to keep up appearances, and because of his scruffy, unshaven appearance, East German security guards once excluded him from a Berlin reception being held in his own honor.
Brecht wrote very few plays in his last years in Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works but he wrote some of his most famous poems during these last years. In 1955, Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize. The following year, he contracted a lung inflammation and died of a coronary thrombosis (heart attack) on August 14, 1956.
One of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century theatre, Bertolt Brecht (Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht) was born in Augsburg, Bavaria on February 10, 1898. He drifted towards the literary arts at an early age, writing poetry as a boy and even had a few poems published in 1914. He was an indifferent student, however, and was very nearly expelled from Augsburg Grammar School for taking a dismissive, anti-patriotic tone when given an assignment to write an essay with the title "It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one's country."
In 1917 Brecht enrolled as a medical student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he would attend Arthur Kutscher's theatre seminar. Although Kutscher had a reputation as something of a theatrical guru, Brecht was unimpressed. He went so far as to harshly criticize one of the instructor's favorite plays. The impetuous young Brecht suggested that he himself could write a better play on the same subject. The result was Brecht's first play, Baal, an effort that Kutscher considered vile and nauseating.
In 1918, Brecht's studies were temporarily interrupted when he was conscripted and had to serve as a medical orderly in World War I. This experience reinforced his hatred of war and influenced his support for the failed Socialist revolution in 1919. During this period, he wrote his second play, Drums in the Night, which tells the story of a soldier who returns home from the war to find his fiancée engaged to a war profiteer. This was the first of Brecht's plays to be performed, and his theatrical theories had, apparently, already begun to take shape, for he filled the auditorium with banners instructing the audience not to become too emotionally involved in the proceedings. It premiered in 1922, drew rave reviews from Herbert Ihering, and even earned Brecht the Kleist Prize, Germany's highest award for dramatic writing. Thus Brecht, from the very beginning, found himself in the spotlight. That same year, the promising young dramatist married the opera singer and actress Marianne Zoff. Their daughter, Hanne Hiob, born in 1923, would become a famous German actress.
Germany from the 1920s to the 1950s, had a rich artistic and literary heritage. The Weimar Republic (1918-1933), however controversial in economic and political terms, was a fertile ground for modern arts and sciences. Berlin, in particular, became a thriving centre for many new art movements such as Dadaism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus.
Germany was home to some of the world's most influential philosophers, writers and composers, such as Goethe (1749-1832), who, like Brecht, was a poet, dramatist and novelist and wrote his classic text Faust.
In 1924 Brecht moved to Berlin, a move he deemed necessary to continue his dramatic career. During the next few years, Brecht produced a string of well-received plays, the most popular of which was probably The Threepenny Opera, which he adapted from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera along with composer Kurt Weill. In fact, The Threepenny Opera would go on to become the biggest theatrical hit in Berlin during the 1920s and helped lead the way in a worldwide resurgence of the popularities of musicals in general. (It would also do much to fatten the playwright's checkbook!) Brecht also published his first book of poems, Hauspostille (Domestic Breviary), which won a literary prize. However, even as his literary fame was soaring, Brecht found his interests shifting towards politics. In 1927, he had begun to study Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and by 1929 he had embraced Communism. His solidifying political beliefs would soon become evident in his plays as well. Another Brecht/Weill collaboration, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, caused an uproar when it premiered in Leipzig in 1930 with Nazis protesting in the audience.
In 1929, Brecht married Helene Weigel (he had divorced Marianne Zoff in 1927) who had already borne him a son, Stefan. The new couple also had a daughter, Barbara, who was born shortly after the wedding and who, like Brecht's other daughter, would go on to become an actress. During this period, he also formed an influential writing collective which aspired to create a new theatre for participants rather than for passive audiences. In 1932 he worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature-length film about the suffering caused by the then-rampant mass unemployment that was plaguing Germany.
In February 1933, however, Bertolt Brecht's career was suddenly and violently interrupted as the Nazis came to power in Germany. Most of the exponents of Weimar culture had to emigrate and live in exile. Hitler declared much of it as "degenerate" art. The public book burning organised by Goebbels in 1933 condemned modernist thought and writing by Jews and non-Jews. The unique activity of German Jews, in the arts and sciences came to an end. The night after the Reichstag (German parliament building) was burned down, Brecht wisely fled with his family to Prague. His books and plays were soon banned in Germany and those who dared stage his plays found their productions unpleasantly interrupted by the police. When the Nazis came to power,
The exiled dramatist bounced around from Prague to Vienna to Zurich to Sweden. When Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, and Brecht was forced to leave Sweden for Helsinki in Finland. During this period of exile, while Brecht awaited a pending visa to the United States, he also completed the plays Mother Courage and her Children (1939), The Good Person of Szechwan (1941), and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uri (1941).
In May of 1941, Brecht finally received his U.S. visa and relocated to Santa Monica, California, where he attempted to become a Hollywood screenwriter, but his unusual concepts were mostly dismissed by Hollywood producers who couldn't seem to comprehend his artistic visions (or, as a result, take him seriously).
Unfortunately, Brecht's stay in America would not be as successful or as lengthy as he might have hoped. In 1947, during the years of the "red scare," the House Un-American Activities Committee called the playwright to account for his communist activities. Originally, Brecht was one of several witnesses who had refused to testify about their political affiliations. But on October 30, 1947, he appeared before the committee, wearing overalls, smoking a cigar, cracking jokes, and making constant references to the translators who transformed his German statements into English ones he could not comprehend. Although he outwitted his investigators with half-truths and skillful innuendo, Brecht feared the irrational political climate, and shortly after his testimony took a plane to Switzerland, not even waiting to see the opening of his play Galileo in New York.
On October 22, 1948, after 15 years of exile, Bertolt Brecht returned to Germany, settling in East Berlin where he was welcomed by the Communist cultural establishment and immediately given facilities to direct Mother Courage at the Deutsches Theater. The following year he founded his own company, the Berliner Ensemble, and in 1954 he was rewarded with his own theatre--the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Brecht quickly discovered, however, that the German Democratic Republic was not quite his ideal brand of Communism, and he was often at odds with his East German hosts. He did not care to keep up appearances, and because of his scruffy, unshaven appearance, East German security guards once excluded him from a Berlin reception being held in his own honor.
Brecht wrote very few plays in his last years in Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works but he wrote some of his most famous poems during these last years. In 1955, Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize. The following year, he contracted a lung inflammation and died of a coronary thrombosis (heart attack) on August 14, 1956.