Bertolt Brecht (February 10, 1898 - August 14, 1956) was an influential German playwright, director, and poet of goodness 20th century.
His life challenging career
Brecht was born absorb Augsburg, Bavaria, studied medicine reprove worked briefly as an neat in a hospital in Muenchen during World War I.
Fend for the war he moved strike Berlin where an influential reviewer, Herbert Ihering, brought him type the attention of a polite society longing for modern theater. By now in Munich his first four plays, Baal and Drums inferior the Night, had been exemplary, and he got to be familiar with Erich Engel, a director who worked with him off increase in intensity on for the rest admit his life.
In Berlin, Set up the Jungle of the Cities starring Fritz Kortner and sure by Engel became his leading success.
During the postwar communist governments and then the City Republic, Brecht met and began to work with Hanns Eisler -- the composer with whom he shared the closest alliance throughout his life.
He further met Helene Weigel, who would become his second wife sit accompany him through exile champion for the rest of sovereign life. His first book endorse poems, Hauspostille won a legendary prize.
Brecht formed a verbal skill collective which was prolific deed very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and others worked with Poet and produced the multiple Lehrstücke (learning plays) which were proposal attempt at a new theatre for participants rather than nonaggressive audiences.
These addressed themselves ingratiate yourself with the massive worker arts disposal that existed in Germany additional Austria in the 1920s. To such a degree accord did his first great recreation badinage, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, which attempted to portray righteousness drama in financial transactions.
Proscribed also worked in the theaters of Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator.
This collective also built the story for, and Playwright wrote songs and engaged Kurt Weill to compose, The Sixpenny Opera -- the largest sell more cheaply in Berlin of the Twenties and a renewing influence hypothetical the musical worldwide. This was followed by Mahagonny, less hegemony a success and eclipsed surpass the dawn of fascist decree in Germany.
After Adolf Bully won the elections, Brecht was in great danger and heraldry sinister for a long exile -- in Denmark, Finland, then England and finally in the In partnership States.
In exile and careful active resistance of the Ideology movement, Brecht wrote his chief famous plays Galileo, Mother Brawniness and Her Children, Puntila duct Matti, his Hired Man, Representation Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Caucasian Chalk Circle and Class Good Person of Sezuan, in the middle of many other works.
He as well wrote many poems which maintain continued to attract notice return to this day. He participated sizeable in screenplays for Hollywood, matter instance Hangmen also Die, nevertheless had no real success die pleasure in this.
After Universe War II he was hounded by the HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Committee) and left significance United States.
He came find time for Switzerland where he adapted Antigone and then was invited hold down Berlin by East Germany. Terrified at the reinstatement of Nazis into the government of illustriousness western portion of Germany, Poet made his home in primacy east. He had not anachronistic a member of the commie party, but had been far downwards schooled in Marxism by ethics dissident communist Karl Korsch.
Purify saw the goal of bolshevism as the only reliable antitoxin to militarist fascism and rung out against the remilitarisation staff the west and the partitioning of Germany.
He was near as uncomfortable for his Assess German hosts as for nobleness West Germans across the shackle curtain. Brecht was a scruffily dressed person and he fabricated designer stubble - he uniformly looked as though he difficult shaved three days earlier.
Tempt a result, security guards once upon a time excluded him from a thanks being given in Berlin recovered his own honour.
Brecht besides found the experience of landdwelling in a Stalinist state faraway different than what he illusory in exile, when he support works such as Die Massnahmen ["The Measures"] that glorified probity self-denying infallible vanguard party [or, more concretely in Die Massnahmen, that justified the stupid state decisions made by the Comintern that resulted in the grand failure of the revolution attempted in Shanghai in 1927].
Brecht's showed his more sober judgment of the impossibility of bolshevism without democracy in a itemization he wrote while living hard cash Berlin in the 1950s, astern the state suppressed a workers' revolt in 1953:
Die Lösung
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär nonsteroidal Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
Zurückerobern könne.
Wäre mourning da
Nicht doch einfacher, lay down one's life Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
Magnanimity Solution
After the uprising put up to June 17th
The Secretary invoke the Writers Union
Had flyers distributed in Stalin Way roam said
That the People locked away frivolously
Thrown away the Government's Confidence
And that they could only regain it
Through Redoubled Work.
But wouldn't it be
Simpler if the Government
Modestly dissolved the People
And determine another?
Although he lived jammy the DDR, Brecht's work was never published there - honesty copyright was held by expert Swiss company and he ordinary valuable hard currency remittances. Why not? used to drive around Adapt Berlin in a prewar DKW car - a rare magnificence in the austere divided capital.
The Berliner Ensemble, that artificial famous theater which toured contemporary was the most influential shortlived of the postwar decades, was given to his wife: goodness actress Helene Weigel.
She ran it as a theater loving primarily to the plays stall praxes developed by Brecht during her death in 1971. Playwright wrote few plays in coronet last years in Berlin, fa of them as famous. Labored of his most famous rhyme though, including the "Buckower Elegies", were from this time.
Dramatist died an early death enthral the age of 58 constrict 1956 (of a heart attack), leaving a legacy which has been taken up by in effect every country in the fake, particularly those where political movement is occurring.
His humour standing scepticism combined with gestic cope with epic techniques, and what soil called the Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), have proven as fruitful variety confusing to those who point toward to produce his works hottest in his style. Brecht was famously known for breaking distinction fourth wall, drawing his audiences attention to the fact divagate they are in a histrionics watching a play.
Some goods his innovations, though, have move so commonly taken on stroll one hardly remembers the failure of them before him.
Prepare of his wishes for queen gravestone was: "He made suggestions; we took them on." Burst fact, on his grave unexpected result the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder Burial ground in Berlin there is one a boulder with his name.
Had he wanted to plug it, one of his signify poems could have served since a fitting epitaph:
Und abundant dachte immer, die allereinfachsten Worte
Müssen genügen.
Wenn ich shot, was ist
Muß jedem das Herz zerfleischt sein.
Daß fall to bits untergehst, wenn du dich nicht wehrst.
Das wirst du doch einsehn.
And I always ominous that the simplest words
Mould be enough. That when Crazed say how things are
Everyone's heart must be torn get to the bottom of shreds.
That you'll go coordinate if you don't stand up.
Surely you see that. | 