Bertolt Brecht

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Lore & Background

Brecht was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht and his wife Sophie, née Brezing. His mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Roman Catholic. His maternal grandparents, Pietists, lived next door and influenced him and his brother Walter considerably. From his mother came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. At school he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long creative partnership; Neher designed many sets for Brecht's dramas and helped forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre. When Brecht was 16, World War I broke out. Initially enthusiastic, he soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army". He was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay calling the line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori "cheap propaganda for a specific purpose"; his expulsion was prevented by the intervention of a priest. To avoid conscription, he registered for a medical course at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1917, where he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher. He was drafted in autumn 1918 but served as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic; the war ended a month later. In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer had a son, Frank, who died in 1943 as a Wehrmacht conscript on the Eastern Front. Brecht's mother died in 1920. He took a small part in Karl Valentin's political cabaret and later identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences". His first full-length play, Baal, was written in 1918. In 1922, critic Herbert Ihering wrote: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight" and Brecht won the Kleist Prize for his first three plays. He married Marianne Zoff in 1922; their daughter Hanne Hiob was born in March 1923. In 1924, he moved to Berlin as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater.

Reader's Guide

Bertolt Brecht's significance lies in his development of epic theatre, which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre", and the Verfremdungseffekt. His collaborative works reshaped modern drama: he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill, and began a lifelong collaboration with composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Brecht fled Germany, initially to Scandinavia. During World War II he moved to Southern California, where he worked as a screenwriter while being surveilled by the FBI. In 1947, he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee for alleged Communist Party affiliations; the day after testifying, he returned to Europe. He eventually settled in East Berlin, where he co-founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel. His legacy endures through his plays, his theoretical contributions, and the continued influence of his theatrical innovations.

Did You Know?

• Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay that called the line 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' 'cheap propaganda for a specific purpose'.
• He avoided conscription in World War I by registering as a medical student at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1917.
• Brecht's first full-length play, Baal, was written in 1918 in response to an argument in a drama seminar.
• In 1922, critic Herbert Ihering declared that Brecht 'has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight'.
• Brecht was part of the first group of Hollywood film artists subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.