Bertolt Brecht

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Bertolt Brecht
Brecht with his emblematic cigar, a means of taking a moment to think: "For the attitude that these people adopt in the opera is unworthy of them. Is there any possibility that they may change it? Can we persuade them to get out their cigars?" (1930)
Born	10 February 1898(1898-02-10) Augsburg, Germany
Died	14 August 1956 (aged 58) East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Occupation	Poet, Playwright and Theatre Director
Genres	Epic theater/Non-Aristotelian drama/Dialectical theatre
Notable work(s)	The Threepenny Opera
Spouse(s)	Marianne Zoff (1922-1926) Helene Weigel (1929-1956)
Children	Hanna Hiob, Stefan Brecht, Barbara Brecht
Influences Karl Valentin, The Bible, Erwin Piscator, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Karl Marx
Influenced Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy, Hal Hartley, Irvine Welsh

Bertolt Brecht (help·info) (born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); February 10, 1898–August 14, 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.

From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts).^[1]

In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time." ^[2]

As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, 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, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."^[3]

There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy ^[4] and Hal Hartley.

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Bavaria (1898–1924)

Bertolt Brecht, pretending to play the clarinet with the cabaret-clown Karl Valentin (playing the tuba) and Valentin's performing partner, Liesl Karlstadt (in drag as the conductor) in a comic spoof of the Munich Octoberfest, the "Schaubude" or sideshow booth, entitled Oktoberfestschaubude (ca 1920-1921). The photo shows the satirical banners for various circus-like attractions, all intended as a spoof of the popular annual Octoberfest in southern Germany.

Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria (about fifty miles North-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.^[5] Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew his Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.^[6] Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied.^[7] From 1904-1908, Brecht attended Volksschule for elementary school and from 1908-1917, Königlich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre. At sixteen, the first World War broke out; initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army".^[5] On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought a loophole by registering for an additional medical course at Munich University, where he enrolled in 1917.^[8] There he studied drama with Artur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Wedekind.^[9]

From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the new name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the Augsburger Volkswille appeared in October 1919).^[10] Brecht was finally drafted into military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic; the war ended a month later.^[5]

In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died.^[11]

Another early influence on Brecht was the cabaret-clown Karl Valentin, then performing in beerhalls and cabarets in Munich. In March of 1920, Brecht recorded in his diary that he saw a comic piece by Karl Valentin, and "rolled with laughter." Brecht's diaries for the next several years record numerous visits by Brecht to see Valentin perform his clown-theatre.^[12]

[edit] Brecht and Karl Valentin

Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin.^[13]. Brecht is shown participating in the Valentin sketch Oktoberfestschaubude (photo, above), pretending to play the clarinet (which Brecht did not play) with Valentin playing the tuba and Valentin's performing partner, Liesl Karlstadt (appearing as the conductor, in drag, as she often did), together with a Soubrette and a clown.^[14] Brecht compared Valentin to Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology" ^[15] Writing in his Messingkauf Dialogues years later, Brecht identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time:

But the man he [Brecht writes of himself in the third person] learnt most from was the clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employer and made him look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice.^[16]

[edit] Early work as a dramatist

Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written 1918), arose in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity that was generated by a desire to counter another work (both others' and his own, as his many adaptations and re-writes attest). "Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting [the work of] other people that's a challenge."^[17]

Brecht completed his second major play, Spartakus -later to be renamed, published and produced as Drums in the Night—in February 1919.^[18]

In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, Drums in the Night—"[he] has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision. [...] It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column."^[19] In November it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize (intended for unestablished writers and probably Germany's most significant literary award, until it was abolished in 1932) for his first three plays (Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle, although at that point only Drums had been produced).^[20] The citation for the award insisted that:

"[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language is felt physically and in the round."^[21]

That year he married the Viennese opera-singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter—Hanne Hiob (born in 1923)—is a successful German actress.^[5]

Lucie Hohorst and Erwin Faber in the premiere of Brecht's In the Jungle, directed by Erich Engel, at the Residenztheater (National Theatre of Bavaria), Munich, Germany, May 9, 1923.

In 1923, during a pause before rehearsals began for In the Jungle, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was turned into be a 16-minute (one-reeler) slapstick, "surreal comedy" by its director, Erich Engel, starring Karl Valentin and Valentin's cabaret partner, Liesl Karlstadt, with Erwin Faber, Max Schreck, Josef Eichheim, Carola Neher, and Blandine Ebinger, entitled Mysteries of a Barbershop (Mysterien eines Friseursalons).^[14] The short comedy was not a success, and was not released nationally; however the interesting experimental nature of the film, and the later success of many of its participants, have caused it to be considered one of the most important one hundred films in German film history.^[22]

In May of 1923, Brecht's In the Jungle premiered at the Residenztheater in Munich, directed by Erich Engel, starring Erwin Faber as Schlink, Otto Wernicke as Garga, and Lucie Hohorst (see photo, right). Opening night proved to be a "scandal" - a phenomenon which would characterize many of premieres of Brecht's work during the Weimar Republic - during which Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.^[23]

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 that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development.^[24] The production, which premiered at the Munich Kammerspiele on March 18, 1924, starring Erwin Faber in the title role, was directed by Brecht in his directorial debut.^[23]

Edward II marked Brecht's first attempt at collaborative writing, and was the first of many classic texts he was to adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he later credited it as the germ of his conception of 'epic theatre'.^[25] That September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater—at the time one of the leading three or four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.^[26]

[edit] Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–1933)

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In 1924 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1926). Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel.^[27] Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October of 1924.

In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own.^[28] Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters (with the improvisational approach of the commedia dell'arte in which the actors chatted with the prompter about their roles), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in his group of Berlin theatres.^[29] A new version of Brecht's third play, now entitled Jungle: Decline of a Family, opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.^[30]

At this time Brecht revised his important 'transitional poem' "Of Poor BB".^[31] In 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as an assistant for the completion of his collection of poems, Devotions for the Home (Hauspostille, eventually published in January 1927). She continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.^[32]

In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ('new sobriety' or 'new objectivity') had given its name to the new post-Expressionist movement in the German arts. With little to do at the Deutsches Theater, Brecht began to develop his Man Equals Man project, which was to become the first product of "the 'Brecht collective'—that shifting group of friends and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended."^[33] This collaborative approach to artistic production, together with aspects of Brecht's writing and style of theatrical production, mark Brecht's work from this period as part of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement.^[34] The collective's work "mirrored the artistic climate of the middle 1920s," Willett and Manheim argue:

with their attitude of 'Neue Sachlichkeit' (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and downplaying of the individual, and their new cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport. Together the 'collective' would go to fights, not only absorbing their terminology and ethos (which permeates Man Equals Man) but also drawing those conclusions for the theatre as a whole which Brecht set down in his theoretical essay 'Emphasis on Sport' and tried to realise by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring stage and other anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his own productions.^[35]

Chaplin's silent comedy The Gold Rush (1925).

In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.^[36] Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man.^[37] Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements."^[38] They met several times during Brecht's time in the United States, and discussed Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux project, which it is possible Brecht influenced.^[39]

In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them.^[40] Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann.^[41] "When I read Marx's Capital", a note by Brecht reveals, "I understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across."^[42]

In 1927 Brecht became part of the 'dramaturgical collective' of Erwin Piscator's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of finding new plays for its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary theatre".^[44] Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the period of the latter's landmark productions, Hoppla, We're Alive! by Toller, Rasputin, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, and Konjunktur by Lania.^[45] Brecht's most significant contribution was to the adaptation of the unfinished episodic comic novel Schweik, which he later described as a "montage from the novel".^[46] The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's ideas about staging and design, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to the 'epic' playwright by the development of stage technology (particularly projections).^[47] What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly plain, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:

The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new subject matter demanded a new dramatic form, the use of songs to interrupt and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays of the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Piscatorial examples as the step-by-step narrative technique of Schweik and the oil interests handled in Konjunktur ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').^[48]

Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of how to dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism in his unfinished project Joe P. Fleischhacker (which Piscator's theatre announced in its programme for the 1927-28 season). It wasn't until his Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written between 1929-1931) that Brecht solved it.^[49] In 1928 he discussed with Piscator plans to stage Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Brecht's own Drums in the Night, but the productions did not materialize.^[50]

1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill.^[51] Together they began to develop Brecht's Mahagonny project, along thematic lines of the biblical Cities of the Plain but rendered in terms of the Neue Sachlichkeit's Amerikanismus, which had informed Brecht's previous work.^[52] They produced The Little Mahagonny for a music festival in July, as what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in preparation for the large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher became an integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music and visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start.^[53] The model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's newly-formulated principle of the 'separation of the elements', which he first outlined in "The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a variety of montage, proposed by-passing the "great struggle for supremacy between words, music and production" as Brecht put it, by showing each as self-contained, independent works of art that adopt attitudes towards one another.^[54]

In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon after the wedding. She also became an actress and currently holds the copyrights to all of Brecht's work.

Die Dreigroschenoper, original German poster from Berlin, 1928.

Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and others worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. So did Brecht's first great play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, which attempted to portray the drama in financial transactions.

This collective adapted John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's songs set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) it was the biggest hit in Berlin of the 1920s and a renewing influence on the musical worldwide. One of its most famous lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional morality imposed by the Church, working in conjunction with the established order, in the face of working-class hunger and deprivation:

The success of The Threepenny Opera was followed by the quickly thrown together Happy End. It was a personal and a commercial failure. At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane (now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close collaborator). Brecht only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht would later use elements of Happy End as the germ for his Saint Joan of the Stockyards, a play that would never see the stage in Brecht's lifetime. Happy End's score by Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".

The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), caused an uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in the audience protesting. The Mahagonny opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as a triumphant sensation.

Brecht spent his last years in the Weimar-era Berlin (1930-1933) working with his ‘collective’ on the Lehrstücke. These were a group of plays driven by morals, music and Brecht's budding Epic Theatre. The Lehrstücke often aimed at educating workers on Socialist issues. The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) was scored by Hanns Eisler. In addition, Brecht worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the human impact of mass unemployment, Kuhle Wampe (1932), which was directed by Slatan Dudow. This striking film is notable for its subversive humour, outstanding cinematography by Günther Krampf, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution. It still provides a vivid insight into Berlin during the last years of the Weimar Republic.

By February 1933, Brecht’s work was eclipsed by the rise of Nazi rule in Germany. (Brecht would also have his work challenged again in later life by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which believed he was under the influence of communism.^[55][56])

[edit] Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–1945)

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Fearing persecution, Brecht left Germany in February 1933, when Hitler took power. He went to Denmark, but when war seemed imminent in 1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden. He stayed there for one year. Then Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, and Brecht felt the need to leave Sweden for Finland where he waited for his visa for the United States until May 3, 1941.

During the war years, Brecht expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Sezuan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, and many others.

During the war, Brecht's poetry continued to garner attention. Though he derived no real success or pleasure in this, he worked on a few screenplays for Hollywood, including Hangmen Also Die.

[edit] Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–1956)

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Statue of Brecht outside the Berliner Ensemble's theatre in Berlin

In the years of the Cold War and "red scare", the House Un-American Activities Committee called Brecht to account for his communist allegiances, and he was soon blacklisted by movie studio bosses. Brecht, along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in September 1947.

Initially, Brecht was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to testify about their political affiliations. Eleven members of this group were actually questioned on this point but, as Brecht later explained, he did not want to delay a planned trip to Europe, so he followed the advice of attorneys and broke with his earlier avowal. On October 30, 1947, he appeared before the committee and testified that he had never actually held party membership.^[56]

During his appearance before the committee, Brecht wore overalls and smoked an acrid cigar that made some of the committee members feel slightly ill. He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the translators present, who transformed his German statements into English ones unintelligible to himself.

Brecht's decision to testify led to criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The remaining witnesses, the so called Hollywood Ten, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. HUAC Vice Chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for cooperating. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht flew to Europe.^[57]

In Switzerland, Brecht composed an adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, which was performed at Chur. It was based on the translation by Hölderlin, but was considerably modified. It was published under the title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied by an essay on the importance of creating a 'non-Aristotelian' form of theatre. He was subsequently invited to return to Berlin by the Communist regime in East Germany. Horrified at the reinstatement of former Nazis into West Germany's government, Brecht accepted the offer and made East Berlin his home in 1949. He was enticed by the offer of his own theatre (completed in 1954) and theatre company (the Berliner Ensemble). He retained his Austrian nationality (granted in 1950), however, and overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.^[58] He used to drive around East Berlin in a pre-war DKW car—a rare luxury in the austere divided capital.

While Brecht's communist sympathies were a bane in the United States, East German officials sought to make him their hero. Though he had not been a member of the Communist Party, he had been deeply schooled in Marxism by the dissident communist Karl Korsch, and his communist allegiances were sincere. He claimed communism appeared to be the only reliable antidote to militarist fascism and spoke out against the remilitarization of the West and the division of Germany. Brecht used Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic in both his aesthetic theory and practice in a central way when presenting his plays.

Grave of Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel.

Brecht wrote very few plays in his last years in East Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works. Instead, he dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturges, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Weber. Some of his most famous poems, however, including the "Buckower Elegies", came from this era. One of the poems in the "Buckower Elegies," Die Lösung (The Solution) was Brecht's later commentary on the uprising of 17 June 1953 in East Germany:

After the uprising of the 17th of June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had thrown away the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

Brecht had previously supported the measures taken by the East German government to crush the uprising, including the use of Soviet military force; he even wrote a letter on the day of the uprising (17 June) to SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht stating that every whim of freedom must be crushed and communist dictaorship must reign supreme, no matter what cost in lives, although in that letter he also urged the SED leadership to have a "grand dialogue with the masses" concerning the political and economic conditions in the country.

[edit] Death

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Brecht died on 14 August 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58.

In his will he provided instructions that a stiletto be placed in his heart and that he be buried in a steel coffin so that his corpse could not be eaten by worms^{[citation needed]}. He is buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof on Chausseestraße in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin.

In Augsburg, a simple plaque, written by an unknown worker is displayed on the house where Brecht lived and worked. It reads:

"Where is Augsburg? The city which is silent about its great son."

[edit] Impact

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Brecht left the Berliner Ensemble to his wife, the actress Helene Weigel, which she ran until her death in 1971. Perhaps the most famous German touring theater of the postwar era, it was primarily devoted to performing Brecht plays.

His son, Stefan Brecht, became a poet and theatre critic interested in New York's avant-garde theatre.

Brecht has been a controversial figure in Germany, and in his native city of Augsburg there were objections to creating a birthplace museum. However, by the 1970's, Brecht's plays had surpassed Shakespeare in the number of annual performances in Germany.

Brecht's influence can be seen in the cinema. Such filmmakers as Lars Von Trier, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak and Jean-Luc Godard were influenced by Brecht and his theory of the Verfremdungseffekt. Often mis-translated as the 'Alienation effect', it is a process of emotionally distancing the audience from the on-stage action.^{[citation needed]} Ghatak first translated Brecht into Bengali, before then making use of some of his key theories in the later films Cloud-Capped Star and Subarna-Rekha.

[edit] Dramatic works (and screenplays)

v • d • e The Plays of Bertolt Brecht Baal • Drums in the Night • The Beggar • A Wedding • Driving Out a Devil • Lux in Tenebris • The Catch • In The Jungle of Cities • Edward II • Man Equals Man • Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer • The Elephant Calf • Little Mahagonny • The Threepenny Opera • The Flight across the Ocean • The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent • Happy End • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny • Der Jasager / Der Neinsager • The Decision • Saint Joan of the Stockyards • The Exception and the Rule • The Mother • Kuhle Wampe • The Seven Deadly Sins • Round Heads and Pointed Heads • The Horatians and the Curiatians • Fear and Misery of the Third Reich • Señora Carrar's Rifles • Life of Galileo • How Much Is Your Iron? • Dansen • Mother Courage and Her Children • The Trial of Lucullus • Mr Puntila and his Man Matti • The Good Person of Szechwan • The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui • Hangmen Also Die! • The Visions of Simone Machard • The Duchess of Malfi • Schweyk in the Second World War • The Caucasian Chalk Circle • Antigone • The Days of the Commune • The Tutor • Die Verurteilung des Lukullus • Report from Herrnburg • Coriolanus • Joan of Arc • Turandot • Don Juan • Trumpets and Drums

Entries show: English-language translation of title (German-language title) [year written] / [year first produced]^[59]

• Baal (Baal) 1918/1923
• Drums in the Night (Trommeln in der Nacht) 1918-20/1922
• The Beggar (Der Bettler oder Der tote Hund) 1919/?
• A Respectable Wedding (Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit) 1919/1926
• Driving Out a Devil (Er treibt einen Teufel aus) 1919/?
• Lux in Tenebris (Lux in Tenebris) 1919/?
• The Catch (Der Fischzug) 1919?/?
• Mysteries of a Barbershop (Mysterien eines Friseursalons) (screenplay) 1923
• In The Jungle of Cities (Im Dickicht der Städte) 1921-24/1923
• Edward II (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England) 1924/1924
• Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer (Der Untergang des Egoisten Johnann Fatzer) (fragments) 1926-30/1974
• Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann) 1924-26/1926
• The Elephant Calf (Das Elefantenkalb) 1924-6/1926
• Little Mahagonny (Mahagonny-Songspiel) 1927/1927
• The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) 1928/1928
• The Flight across the Ocean (Der Ozeanflug; originally Lindbergh's Flight [(Lindberghflug]) 1928-29/1929
• The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent (Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis) 1929/1929
• Happy End (Happy End) 1929/1929
• The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) 1927-29/1930
• He Said Yes / He Said No (Der Jasager; Der Neinsager) 1929-30/1930-?
• The Decision (Die Maßnahme) 1930/1930
• Saint Joan of the Stockyards (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe) 1929-31/1959
  

  

  Stamp from the former East Germany depicting Brecht and a scene from his Life of Galileo.
• The Exception and the Rule (Die Ausnahme und die Regel) 1930/1938
• The Mother (Die Mutter) 1930-31/1932
• Kuhle Wampe (screenplay) 1931/1932
• The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger) 1933/1933
• Round Heads and Pointed Heads (Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe) 1931-34/1936
• The Horatians and the Curiatians (Die Horatier und die Kuriatier) 1933-34/1958
• Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches) 1935-38/1938
• Señora Carrar's Rifles (Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar) 1937/1937
• Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei) 1937-9/1943
• How Much Is Your Iron? (Was kostet das Eisen?) 1939/1939
• Dansen (Dansen) 1939/?
• Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) 1938-39/1941
• The Trial of Lucullus (Das Verhör des Lukullus) 1938-39/1940
• Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) 1940/1948
• The Good Person of Szechwan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) 1939-42/1943
• The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) 1941/1958
• Hangmen Also Die (screenplay) 1942/1943
• The Visions of Simone Machard (Die Gesichte der Simone Machard ) 1942-43/1957
• The Duchess of Malfi 1943/1943
• Schweik in the Second World War (Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg) 1941-43/1957
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) 1943-45/1948
• Antigone (Die Antigone des Sophokles) 1947/1948
• The Days of the Commune (Die Tage der Commune) 1948-49/1956
• The Tutor (Der Hofmeister) 1950/1950
• The Condemnation of Lucullus (Die Verurteilung des Lukullus) 1938-39/1951
• Report from Herrnburg (Herrnburger Bericht) 1951/1951
• Coriolanus (Coriolan) 1951-53/1962
• Joan of Arc (Der Prozess der Jeanne D'Arc zu Rouen, 1431) 1952/1952
• Turandot (Turandot oder Der Kongreß der Weißwäscher) 1953-54/1969
• Don Juan (Don Juan) 1952/1954
• Trumpets and Drums (Pauken und Trompeten) 1955/1955

[edit] Theory of theatre

	Theories and techniques of Bertolt Brecht v • d • e
	Epic theatre • Non-Aristotelian drama • Lehrstücke • Dialectical theatre
	Fabel • Gestus • Defamiliarization • Demonstration • Not / But • Historicization
	Refunctioning • Separation of the elements • Interruptions • Nodal point • Complex seeing
	The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre • The Street Scene • A Short Organum for the Theatre • Messingkauf Dialogues

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Above all things that theatre was and what he wanted theatre to be, Brecht believed that the theatre's broadest function was to educate. "It is the noblest function that we have found for 'theatre'".^[60]

Brecht wanted the answer to Lenin’s question ‘Wie und was soll man lernen?’ ('How and what should one learn?'). He created an influential theory of theatre, the epic theatre, wherein a play should not cause the spectator to emotionally identify with the action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the actions on the stage. He believed that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to use this critical perspective to identify social ills at work in the world and be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change.

Hans Eisler has noted that these plays resemble political seminars^{[citation needed]}. Brecht described them as "a collective political meeting" in which the audience is to participate actively. One sees in this model a rejection of the concept of the bureaucratic elite party where the politicians are to issue directives and control the behaviour of the masses.

For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself, which he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as distancing effect, estrangement effect, or alienation effect). Such techniques included the direct address by actors to the audience, transposition of text to third person or past tense, speaking the stage direction out loud, exaggerated, unnatural stage lighting, the use of song, and explanatory placards.^[61] By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was, in fact a construction and, as such, was changeable.

Another technique that Brecht employed to achieve his Verfremdungseffekt was the principle of historicisation. The content of many of his plays dealt with fictional tellings of historical figures or events. His idea was that if one were to tell a story from a time that is contemporary to an audience, they may not be able to maintain the critical perspective he hoped to achieve. Instead, he focused on historical stories that had parallel themes to the social ills he was hoping to illuminate in his own time. He hoped that, in viewing these historical stories from a critical perspective, the contemporary issues Brecht was addressing would be illuminated to the audience.

In one of his first productions, Brecht famously put up signs that said "Glotzt nicht so romantisch!" ("Don't stare so romantically!"). His manner of stagecraft has proven both fruitful and confusing to those who try to produce his works or works in his style. His theory of theatre has heavily influenced modern theatre. Some of his innovations have become so common that they've entered the theatrical canon.

Although Brecht's work and ideas about theatre are generally thought of as belonging to modernism, there is recent thought that he is the forerunner of contemporary postmodern theatre practice.^{[citation needed]} This is particularly so because he questioned and dissolved many of the accepted practices of the theatre of his time and created a political theatre that involved the audience in understanding its meaning. Moreover, he was one of the first theatre practitioners to incorporate multimedia into the semiotics of theatre.^{[citation needed]}

The birth of Brecht's theories, centering around his writing of Baal and In the Jungle of Cities, was the core of the plot of the play The Concrete Girl by Bertolt Brecht written by Josh Morrall and Simon Farid. Set in 1921, when Brecht was 23, the short play featured an actor portraying Brecht on stage as a tortured, young, famine stricken writer, recently arrived in Berlin. In order to inspire himself to finish a play he is writing (the fictitious, supposedly 'lost' play The Concrete Girl) Brecht summons Frank Wedekind from his grave. Brecht hopes Wedekind will aid him in the writing of the play, but is ultimately left feeling discouraged, and burns the work, setting the tone for his early theory and later works.

[edit] Theoretical works

• "The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre" (1930)
• "The Threepenny Lawsuit" (written 1931; published 1932)
• "The Street Scene" (written 1938; published 1950)
• "The Popular and the Realistic" (written 1938; published 1958)
• "Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces an Alienation Effect" (written 1940; published 1951)
• "A Short Organum for the Theatre" ("Kleines Organon für das Theater", written 1948; published 1949)
• The Messingkauf Dialogues (Dialogue aus dem Messingkauf, published 1963)

[edit] Collaborators and associates

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Bertolt Brecht

• Brecht's works in English: A bibliography: The bibliography of Bertolt Brecht's works in English translation aims to present a comprehensive listing of Brecht's works published in English translation.
• The International Brecht Society
• Bertolt Brecht's Photo & Gravesite
• Poem of Brecht on the street in Portland
• Essay on Brecht, Okigbo, Derrida and Foucault
• Brechts Werke, Bibliography

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