A famous German abroad [1]
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) [2]
Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg (Bayern) on February 10, 1898. After finishing his university entrance exam, Brecht enrolled in the medical school of University of Munich, although he would rather write. His first play was performed in Munich in 1922. In 1924 he moved to Berlin to work as a playwright for Max Reinhardt at the German theater. In 1928 his Threepenny Opera [3] was performed with great success, and was made into a film in 1931. Threepenny opera is regarded as the beginning of the so-called epic theater [4], with which Brecht did not want to achieve identification with the audience, but rather critical distance. He wanted the audience to think about the themes of his plays. Brecht’s subsequent plays led to scandals or were even banned for “communist agitation". In 1933 Brecht left Germany and fled with his family via Prague to Vienna, Switzerland and finally Danmark. During his exile, he wrote many of his poems. In 1939 he moved on to Sweden, then Finland, and in 1941 to the USA. In 1943 Brecht met other intellectuals in New York. After his play Galileo Galilei [5] which was performed in Beverly Hills in 1947, commented on the atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Brecht had to justify himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee. After that he traveled to Switzerland; in 1949 he moved to Berlin and soon founded the famous Belin Ensemble. In 1951 he received the National Prize of GDR [6]. He died after a heart attack in 1956.
[1]. Translated by me from: p. 356. Ein berühmter Deutscher im Ausland Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). Stationen. Ein Kursbuch für die Mittelstufe. 3rd Edition. Prisca Augustyn & Nikolaus Euba. Cengage Learning. USA. 2015
[2]. Bertolt Brecht (2/10/1898 - 8/14/1956). Theater practitioner, playwright and poet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht
[3]. Threepenny Opera. A German play and music with music, adopted by Bertolt Brecht from an 18th-century English ballad opera, ballads by François Villon, and music by Kurt Weill.
Opera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera
Film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera_(film)
[4]. Epic theater: form of didactic drama presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation (https://www.britannica.com/art/epic-theatre).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_theatre
[5]. Galileo Galilei. Life of Galileo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Galileo
American film version of a play by Bertolt Brecht:
[6]. GDR. German Democratic Republic. (10/7/1949 – 10/3/1990). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany
