Brecht, (Eugen) Bertolt Friedrich 1898-1956
German playwright and poet

Bertolt Brecht, who is considered by many to be Germany's greatest dramatist, was born in Augsburg. He studied medicine and philosophy at Munich and Berlin universities, and served briefly as a medical orderly in 1918.

He won the Kleist drama prize in 1922 for his first two Expressionist plays, Trommeln in der Nacht (1918, Eng trans Drums in the Night, 1966) and Baal (1918, Eng trans 1964); these were followed by Mann ist Mann (1926, Eng trans A Man's a Man, 1964) with its clownish, inhuman soldiery.

He was keenly interested in the effects produced by combining drama and music, and consequently collaborated with Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau in his major works. His reputation was established by the Dreigroschenoper (1928, Eng trans The Threepenny Opera, 1958), an adaptation of John Gay's Beggar's Opera in a sham Victorian London setting, with music by Weill.

A Marxist, Brecht regarded his plays as social experiments, requiring critical detachment, not emotional involvement, from the observing audience. He began to experiment with Verfremdungseffekt ('alienation effects') and introduced 'epic' theatre, requiring the audience to see the stage as a stage, actors as actors, and not to adhere to the traditional make-believe of the theatre. Thus, to prevent the audience from identifying themselves with a principal actor, the camp-following title character in Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941, Eng trans Mother Courage and her Children, 1961) is deliberately made to muff her lines, and Puntilla (1940) is given an increasingly ugly make-up.

With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Brecht sought asylum in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, journeyed across Russia and Persia (Iran), and in 1941 settled in Hollywood. His abiding hatred of Nazi Germany found expression in a series of short, episodic plays and poems collected under the title of Furcht und Elend des dritten Reiches (1945, 'Fear and Loathing under the Third Reich'), and in Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1957, Eng trans The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, 1976).

He denied membership of the Communist Party before a Senate sub-committee on un-American activities in 1946, and in 1948 accepted the East German government's offer of a theatre in East Berlin. The Berliner Ensemble was founded, producing under his direction his later plays, such as Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943, Eng trans The Good Person of Setzuan, 1948) and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (1947, Eng trans The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1948). The company toured in western Europe, and visited London shortly after Brecht's death, with Helene Weigel, his widow, as the leading actress.

Although he was apparently unsympathetic towards the East German anti-Communist uprising in 1953 and was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize (1954), Brecht proved as artist and thinker to be an embarrassment to the East German authorities. His opera Lukullus (1932-51), in which the Roman general has to account for his deeds before a tribunal-of-the-shadows, was withdrawn by order after the first night. Galileo (1938) underlined the moral that, however much the intellect may be oppressed, truth will out.

Bibliography: M Esslin, Bertolt Brecht (1969); K Volker, Bertolt Brecht: A Biography (1979).