Bertolt Brecht
German poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898–1956) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht,[lower-alpha 1] was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the Verfremdungseffekt.
Bertolt Brecht | |
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![]() Brecht in 1954 | |
Born | Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1898-02-10)10 February 1898 Augsburg, Bavaria, German Empire |
Died | 14 August 1956(1956-08-14) (aged 58) East Berlin, East Germany |
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Nationality | German |
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Literary movement | Non-Aristotelian drama |
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Relatives | Walter Brecht (younger brother) |
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During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI.[3] After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.[4]