A Potted Biography of Bertolt Brecht
Life of Leading German Theatre Writer, Director and Theorist
Sep 9, 2009
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (he later preferred Bertolt or Bert) was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria to a middle-class business family.
By the time he was twenty-four years old, he had already written a number of plays, including Baal, In the Jungle of Cities and Drums in the Night. He began directing Arnolt Bronnen’s Vatermord in Berlin, but withdrew during rehearsals due to arguments over the production. In 1928, The Threepenny Opera, written with Elisabeth Hauptmann and with music by Kurt Weill, premiered in Berlin and was a popular success.
Rise of the Nazis
By the 1930s, Brecht was a committed Communist and had started to study Karl Marx. Hitler’s Fascists were becoming more powerful, and many left-wing intellectuals in Germany – and elsewhere in Europe – believed that the only real alternative to Fascism at that time was Communism.
Brecht wrote a series of Lehrstücke, or ‘teaching plays’ from The Flight over the Ocean in 1929 to The Mother in 1932. These were designed to make those who took part question society and politics of the day and to prepare them for living under the Communist utopia that many people believed would sweep Europe.
On 27 February 1933, the burning down of the German Reichstag signaled the beginning of Hitler’s domination of Germany, and Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel fled from Germany the next morning. Two years later the Nazis stripped him of his German citizenship.
Brecht in the US
Over the next few years, Brecht's plays were produced around Europe and in the United States, but he had little or no involvement with any of them as director. In 1939 he was on the move again as the Nazis’ gradual occupation of Europe edged closer, and in 1941 he settled in California. He struggled to work within the American system, but his biggest theatrical success was a collaboration with actor Charles Laughton on an English translation of Life of Galileo.
Brecht had, by this time, attracted the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He gave a masterful performance to the committee; despite not really answering any of their questions, the chairman thanked him and said he was an example to other witnesses. He left for Paris the next day, then settled in Zurich. A year later he set off for East Berlin after being refused a visa for the American zone.
Back in Germany
Brecht completed his Short Organum for the Theatre, a collection of notes detailing his ideas about theatre, in 1948. In January 1949, Brecht’s production of Mother Courage and her Children opened at the Deutches Theater, Berlin and Brecht formed the Berliner Ensemble with his wife Helene Weigel as artistic director. The Berliner Ensemble settled at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in March 1954.
Brecht attended his last rehearsal on 10 August 1956. He died four days later from a heart infarct on the eve of the Berliner Ensemble’s departure for its first, and very influential, appearance in London.
 |
