Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theater professional, playwright, and poet. He grew up during the Weimar Republic and had his first successes as a playwright in Munich. In 1924, he moved to Berlin, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and worked with composer Hanns Eisler. During this time, Brecht was influenced by Marxist ideas and created didactic Lehrstücke. He became a leading expert on epic theater, which he later called "dialectical theater," and developed the Verfremdungseffekt.
When the Nazis gained power in Germany in 1933, Brecht left his home country and first went to Scandinavia. During World War II, he moved to Southern California, where he worked as a screenwriter while being watched by the FBI. In 1947, he was part of the first group of Hollywood artists to be called by the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer questions about possible Communist Party ties. After testifying, he returned to Europe and eventually settled in East Berlin. There, he co-founded the theater company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and longtime collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.
Life and career
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Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (known as Eugen as a child) was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany. He was the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939) and Sophie, née Brezing (1871–1920). Brecht's mother was a devout Protestant, and his father was a Roman Catholic who had a Protestant wedding. The small house where he was born is now kept as a Brecht Museum. His father worked at a paper mill and became its managing director in 1914. His maternal grandparents lived in a house next to his family's home in Augsburg. They were Pietists, and his grandmother greatly influenced Brecht and his brother Walter during their childhood.
Because of his grandmother and mother, Brecht became familiar with the Bible, which had a lasting effect on his writing. From his mother, he learned the image of a self-sacrificing woman, which appeared often in his plays. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, even though he sometimes claimed to have peasant origins. In school in Augsburg, he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership. Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's plays and helped create the unique visual style of their epic theatre.
At age 16, World War I began. At first, Brecht was excited, but he soon changed his mind after seeing his classmates join the army. In 1915, Brecht was nearly expelled from school for writing an essay criticizing the Latin phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," which means "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country." He called it "cheap propaganda for a specific purpose" and argued that only someone without thinking would be persuaded to die for their country. His expulsion was stopped by Romuald Sauer, a priest who also taught at his school.
On his father's advice, Brecht avoided being drafted into the army by using a rule that allowed medical students to be deferred. He then enrolled in a medical program at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1917. There, he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired Brecht to admire Frank Wedekind, an iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret performer.
Starting in July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the name "Bert Brecht." His first theatre criticism was published in October 1919. Brecht was drafted into the military in the autumn of 1918, but he was sent back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military clinic. The war ended a month later.
In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer, with whom he had started a relationship in 1917, had a son named Frank. Frank died in 1943 as a Wehrmacht conscript on the Eastern Front. In 1920, Brecht's mother passed away.
At some point between 1920 and 1921, Brecht took a small role in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin. Brecht's diaries from the following years mention many visits to see Valentin perform. Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin for his "complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology." In his later writings, Brecht said that Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, was one of his main influences at that time.
The man who influenced Brecht the most was the clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did short sketches where he played characters like stubborn employees, musicians, or photographers who hated their employers and made them look silly. His partner, Liesl Karlstadt, played the employer and was a popular comedian who wore padded clothes and spoke in a deep voice.
Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written in 1918), came from an argument in one of Kutscher's drama classes. This started a trend in Brecht's work of creating art in response to other works. "Anyone can be creative," he said, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge." Brecht finished his second major play, Drums in the Night, in February 1919.
Between November 1921 and April 1922, Brecht met many important people in the Berlin cultural scene. One of them was the playwright Arnolt Bronnen, with whom he formed a joint venture, the Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Brecht Company. Brecht changed the spelling of his first name to Bertolt so it would rhyme with Arnolt.
In 1922, while still living in Munich, Brecht caught the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering, who said, "At 24, the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary scene overnight." He praised Brecht's first play, Drums in the Night, saying it gave the time "a new tone, a new melody, a new vision." In November, it was announced that Brecht had won the prestigious Kleist Prize for his first three plays: Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle (only Drums had been produced at that time). The award citation said, "[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being overly literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language is felt physically and in the round." That year, Brecht married the Viennese opera singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter, Hanne Hiob, born in March 1923, became a successful German actress.
In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for a short slapstick film, Mysteries of a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin. Though it was not successful at the time, it is now considered one of the most important films in German film history. In May of that year, In the Jungle premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. The opening night was a "scandal," a situation that would mark many of Brecht's later productions during the Weimar Republic, as Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on stage.
In 1924, Brecht worked with the novelist and playwright Lion Feuchtwanger (whom he had met in 1919) on an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. This was a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical development. Brecht's Edward II was his first attempt at collaborative writing and the first of many classic texts he would adapt. He later credited it as the beginning of his concept of "epic theatre." That September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater brought him to Berlin, one of the leading theatres in the world.
In 1923, Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1927). He had become involved with Elisabeth Hauptmann 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 of his own work. Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters (with the improvisational style of commedia dell'arte), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in his group of Berlin theatres. A new version of Brecht's third play, now called Jungle: Decline of a Family, opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.
In the asphalt city I'm at home. From the very start Provided with every last sacrament: With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy To the end mistrus /think
Theory and practice of theatre
Brecht combined the ideas and methods of his epic theatre movement by building on the work of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold. He used these ideas to explore theatre as a place to share political messages and develop a way of looking at art that focuses on the relationship between people and society.
Epic Theatre suggested that plays should not make the audience feel strong emotions toward the characters or events on stage. Instead, it aimed to encourage the audience to think carefully and critically about what they saw. Brecht believed that when a play made the audience feel a strong emotional ending, like in traditional theatre, it could make them feel satisfied and not want to change anything. He wanted the audience to see unfairness and inequality in society and to be inspired to take action outside the theatre. To do this, Brecht used methods that reminded the audience that they were watching a play, not real life. He hoped this would show them that the world they lived in was also created by people and could be changed.
Brecht was interested in how drama could be used as a tool for communication. This led him to develop the "epic form" of drama. This style is similar to other modernist changes in art, such as the way James Joyce wrote stories in parts, Sergei Eisenstein used quick cuts in movies, and Picasso combined different shapes in paintings.
One of Brecht’s most important ideas was the Verfremdungseffekt, which means making the audience see things in a new and unfamiliar way. He believed this would help people notice details they might usually ignore. To achieve this, Brecht used methods like actors speaking directly to the audience, bright lights, songs during the play, signs that explained events, and writing parts of the play in the past tense or from a third-person perspective.
Unlike some other artists who wanted to change how art was made, Brecht wanted to keep theatre as a place for people to gather and share ideas. He took part in debates about the role of art, especially the differences between high art and popular culture. He worked with other thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin. His plays mixed common themes and styles with new artistic methods, creating a type of realism that was different from other kinds of theatre. Some people, like Raymond Williams and Peter Bürger, said Brecht’s work was very important and original.
Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre. He admired how Chinese actors could show strong emotions without seeming overly dramatic. He saw this as an example of the Verfremdungseffekt. In 1935, he met a famous Chinese opera performer named Mei Lanfang. However, Brecht made it clear that Chinese theatre and his epic theatre were different. He believed Chinese methods could not be easily copied and that his theatre focused on history and social issues.
Brecht used poetry to criticize European culture, including the Nazi government and the German middle class. His poetry shows the effects of the First and Second World Wars. He often included poems with music in his plays. In 1951, Brecht wrote a statement called On Poetry and Virtuosity, in which he said he had previously ignored the poetic parts of his plays. He explained that he had focused on truth instead of beauty and that he no longer judged art based on its poetic qualities. He believed that plays without poetic elements might have some effect, but not a deep one, even politically. He argued that theatre works best when it brings pleasure and inspiration together.
Legacy
After Bertolt Brecht passed away, his wife, Helene Weigel, who was also an actress, continued to lead the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The theater group focused mainly on performing Brecht’s plays. During Harry Buckwitz’s time as general manager at Schauspiel Frankfurt, Brecht’s works were a central part of the theater’s productions. This included the world premiere of Die Geschichte der Simone Machard in 1957.
Brecht’s son, Stefan Brecht, became a poet and theater critic who studied the avant-garde theater scene in New York.
In addition to being a well-known playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht is also recognized by scholars for developing original ideas about social and political issues.
Brecht’s artistic ideas greatly influenced radical films made in the 1960s and 1970s. Directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Alexandre Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Ōshima, and Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet are often noted as the main people who used Brecht’s methods in their films.
Brecht’s work with composer Kurt Weill helped shape the development of rock music. For example, the song “Alabama Song,” which was first written as a poem by Brecht in Hauspostille (1927) and later set to music by Weill in Mahagonny, was recorded by The Doors on their first album, as well as by David Bowie and other musicians since the 1960s. In his autobiography, Bob Dylan described how the song “Pirate Jenny” from The Threepenny Opera had a strong influence on him. Dylan first heard the song in a New York theater production that included music by Brecht and Weill. At that time, Dylan was performing traditional folk songs and had not yet started writing his own music. However, the powerful impact of “Pirate Jenny” inspired him to explore new ways of telling stories through song.
Collaborators and associates
Brecht's way of working often involved teamwork, as Fredric Jameson explains. Jameson says that Brecht's creative process was not about one person alone, but about a group effort. He calls this group "Brecht," which had a unique style known as "Brechtian," but this style was not tied to one person in the traditional way. Over his career, Brecht worked with many writers, composers, set designers, directors, dramaturgs, and actors. Some of these people include Elisabeth Hauptmann, Helene Weigel, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, Carola Neher, and Charles Laughton. This shows that Brecht's theatre was a group experiment, very different from theatre that focuses only on personal expression or individual experience.
Works
Entries include: English translation of the title (original German title) [year written] / [year first produced].
Bertolt Brecht wrote many poems during his lifetime. He started writing poetry when he was a young boy, and his first poems were published in 1914. His poetry was influenced by folk ballads, French chansons, and the works of poets Rimbaud and Villon. The last collection of new poems that Brecht published during his lifetime was the 1939 Svendborger Gedichte.
Some of Brecht's poems