text:
Bertolt Brecht
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
"Brecht" redirects here. For other uses, see Brecht (disambiguation).
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
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
Occupation
Playwright, theatre director, poet
Nationality
German
Genre
Epic theatre, Non-Aristotelian drama
Notable works
The Threepenny Opera
Life of Galileo
Mother Courage and Her Children
The Good Person of Szechwan
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Spouses
Marianne Zoff (1922–27)
Helene Weigel (1930–56)
Children
Frank Banholzer (1919–43)
Hanne Hiob (1923–2009)
Stefan Brecht (1924–2009)
Barbara Brecht-Schall (1930–2015)
Signature
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (/brɛxt/;[1][2] German: [bʁɛçt]; 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet.
Living in Munich during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes with theatre plays, whose themes were often influenced by his Marxist thought. He was the main proponent of the genre named epic theatre (which he preferred to call "dialectical theatre"). During the Nazi period and World War II he lived in exile, first in Scandinavia and then in the United States. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 Life and career
1.1 Bavaria (1898–1924)
1.2 Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–33)
1.3 Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–45)
1.4 Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–56)
1.5 Death
2 Theory and practice of theatre
3 Impact
4 Brecht in fiction, drama and film
5 Collaborators and associates
5.1 List of collaborators and associates
6 Works
6.1 Fiction
6.2 Plays and screenplays
6.3 Theoretical works
6.4 Poetry
7 See also
8 References
9 Primary sources
9.1 Essays, diaries and journals
9.2 Drama, poetry and prose
10 Secondary sources
11 External links
Life and career[edit]
Bavaria (1898–1924)[edit]
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (as a child known as Eugen) was born in February 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939) and his wife Sophie, née Brezing (1871–1920). Brecht's mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Roman Catholic (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum.[4] His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.[5]
Due to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a lifelong effect on his writing. 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] At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership. Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
When Brecht was 16, the First World War broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army".[5] Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay in response to the line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" from the Roman poet Horace, calling it Zweckpropaganda ("cheap propaganda for a specific purpose") and arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country. His expulsion was only prevented through the intervention of his religion teacher.[8]
On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought a loophole by registering for a medical course at Munich University, where he enrolled in 1917.[9] There he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Frank Wedekind.[10]
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).[11] Brecht was 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 (de) (who had begun a relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died.[12]
Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin.[13] Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.[14] Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie 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 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 employers and made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice.[16]
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 other people that's a challenge."[17] Brecht completed his second major play, Drums in the Night, in February 1919.
Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many influential people in the Berlin cultural scene. Amongst them was the playwright Arnolt Bronnen with whom he established a joint venture, the Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Brecht Company. Brecht changed the spelling of his first name to Bertolt to rhyme with Arnolt.
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."[18] 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).[19] 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.[20]
That year he married the Viennese opera-singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter—Hanne Hiob (1923–2009)—was a successful German actress.[5]
In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short slapstick film, Mysteries of a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin.[21] Despite a lack of success at the time, its experimental inventiveness and the subsequent success of many of its contributors have meant that it is now considered one of the most important films in German film history.[22] In May of that year, Brecht's In the Jungle premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening night proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize many of his later productions during the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.[14]
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.[23] Brecht's Edward II constituted his 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".[24] 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.[25]
Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–33)[edit]
In 1923 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1927).[26] Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel.[27] Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October 1924.[28]
In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31]
In the asphalt city I'm at home. From the very start
Provided with every last sacrament:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy
To the end mistrustful, lazy and content.
Bertolt Brecht, "Of Poor BB".
At this time Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB".[32] 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.[33]
In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ("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."[34] 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.[35] 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.[36]
In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.[37] Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man.[38] Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements."[39] 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.[40]
In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them.[41] Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann.[42][citation needed] "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."[43] Inspired by the developments in USSR Brecht wrote a number of agitprop plays, praising the bolshevik collectivism (replaceability of each member of the collective in Man Equals Man) and red terror (The Decision).
For us, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a social function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to God, but his relationship to society which is central. Whenever he appears, his class or social stratum appears with him. His moral, spiritual or sexual conflicts are conflicts with society.
Erwin Piscator, 1929.[44]
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".[45] 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.[46] 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".[47] 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).[48] 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').[49]
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.[50] 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.[51]
1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill.[52] 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.[53] 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.[54] 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.[55]
Stamp from the former East Germany depicting Brecht and a scene from his Life of Galileo
In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon after the wedding.[56] She also became an actress and would later hold the copyrights to all of Brecht's work.
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 attempts to portray the drama in financial transactions.
This collective adapted John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's lyrics 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:
Erst kommt das Fressen
Dann kommt die Moral.
First the grub (lit. "eating like animals, gorging")
Then the morality.
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 the last years of the Weimar-era (1930–1933) in Berlin 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.
Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–45)[edit]
Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.
Galileo, in Brecht's Life of Galileo (1943)
Fearing persecution, Brecht left Nazi Germany in February 1933, just after Hitler took power. After brief spells in Prague, Zurich and Paris he and Weigel accepted an invitation from journalist and author Karin Michaëlis to move to Denmark. The family first stayed with Karin Michaëlis at her house on the small island of Thurø close to the island of Funen. They later bought their own house in Svendborg on Funen. This house located at Skovsbo Strand 8 in Svendborg became the residence of the Brecht family for the next six years, where they often received guests including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ruth Berlau. During this period Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, New York and London for various projects and collaborations.
When war seemed imminent in April 1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he remained for a year.[57] After Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, Brecht left Sweden for Helsinki, Finland, where he lived and waited for his visa for the United States until 3 May 1941.[58] During this time he wrote the play Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) with Hella Wuolijoki, with whom he lived in Marlebäck (de).
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur.[59][59] He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, and many others.
Brecht co-wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed film Hangmen Also Die! which was loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, number-two-man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust, who was known as "The Hangman of Prague." Hanns Eisler was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany – Lang, Brecht and Eisler – is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had on American culture.
Hangmen Also Die! was Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film. The money he earned from writing the film enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War and an adaptation of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
In 1942 Brecht's reluctance to help Carola Neher, who died in a gulag death camp in the USSR after being arrested during the 1936 purges, caused much controversy among Russian emigrants in the West.[60]
Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–56)[edit]
Brecht and Weigel on the roof of the Berliner Ensemble during the International Workers' Day demonstrations in 1954
In the years of the Cold War and "Red Scare", Brecht was blacklisted by movie studio bosses and interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.[61] Along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, he was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in September 1947. Although he was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to appear, Brecht eventually decided to testify. He later explained that he had followed the advice of attorneys and had not wanted to delay a planned trip to Europe. On 30 October 1947 Brecht testified that he had never been a member of the Communist Party.[61] 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. HUAC vice-chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for his co-operation. The remaining witnesses, the so-called Hollywood Ten, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. Brecht's decision to appear before the committee led to criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht returned to Europe.
He lived Zurich in Switzerland for a year. In February 1948 in Chur, Brecht staged an adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, based on a translation by Hölderlin. It was published under the title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied by an essay on the importance of creating a "non-Aristotelian" form of theatre.
In 1949 he moved to East Berlin and established his theatre company there, the Berliner Ensemble. He retained his Austrian nationality (granted in 1950) and overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.[62] At the time he drove a pre-war DKW car—a rare luxury in the austere divided capital.
Though he was never a member of the Communist Party, Brecht had been schooled in Marxism by the dissident communist Karl Korsch. Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic influenced Brecht greatly, both his aesthetic theory and theatrical practice. Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954.[63]
Brecht wrote very few plays in his final years in East Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works. He dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturgs, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Weber. At this time he wrote some of his most famous poems, including the "Buckow Elegies".
At first Brecht apparently supported the measures taken by the East German government against the uprising of 1953 in East Germany, which included the use of Soviet military force. In a letter from the day of the uprising to SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, Brecht wrote that: "History will pay its respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with the masses about the speed of socialist construction will lead to a viewing and safeguarding of the socialist achievements. At this moment I must assure you of my allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany."[64]
Graves of Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery
Brecht's subsequent commentary on those events, however, offered a very different assessment—in one of the poems in the Elegies, "Die Lösung" (The Solution), a disillusioned Brecht writes a few months later:
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 forfeited 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?[65]
Death[edit]
Brecht died on 14 August 1956[66] of a heart attack at the age of 58. He is buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery on Chausseestraße in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence he shared with Helene Weigel.
According to Stephen Parker, who reviewed Brecht's writings and unpublished medical records, Brecht contracted rheumatic fever as a child, which led to an enlarged heart, followed by lifelong chronic heart failure and Sydenham's chorea. A report of a radiograph taken of Brecht in 1951 describes a badly diseased heart, enlarged to the left with a protruding aortic knob and with seriously impaired pumping. Brecht's colleagues described him as being very nervous, and sometimes shaking his head or moving his hands erratically. This can be reasonably attributed to Sydenham's chorea, which is also associated with emotional lability, personality changes, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and hyperactivity, which matched Brecht's behavior. "What is remarkable," wrote Parker, "is his capacity to turn abject physical weakness into peerless artistic strength, arrhythmia into the rhythms of poetry, chorea into the choreography of drama."[67]
Theory and practice of theatre[edit]
From his late twenties Brecht remained a lifelong committed Marxist[citation needed] 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.
Statue of Brecht outside the Berliner Ensemble's theatre in Berlin
Epic Theatre proposed that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and exploitation and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside.[68] 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. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed and, as such, was changeable.
Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the "epic form" of the drama. This dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in other arts, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist "montage" in the cinema, and Picasso's introduction of cubist "collage" in the visual arts.[69]
One of Brecht's most important principles was what he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").[70] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them".[71] To this end, Brecht employed techniques such as the actor's direct address to the audience, harsh and bright stage lighting, the use of songs to interrupt the action, explanatory placards, the transposition of text to the third person or past tense in rehearsals, and speaking the stage directions out loud.[72]
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 theatre 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, Ernst 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 dubs him "the most important materialist writer of our time."[73]
Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre, and used its aesthetic as an argument for Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht believed, "Traditional Chinese acting also knows the alienation [sic] effect, and applies it most subtly.[74]... The [Chinese] performer portrays incidents of utmost passion, but without his delivery becoming heated."[75] Brecht attended a Chinese opera performance and was introduced to the famous Chinese opera performer Mei Lanfang in 1935.[76] However, Brecht was sure to distinguish between Epic and Chinese theatre. He recognized that the Chinese style was not a "transportable piece of technique,"[77] and that Epic theatre sought to historicize and address social and political issues.[78]
Brecht used his poetry to criticize European culture, including Nazis, and the German bourgeoisie. Brecht's poetry is marked by the effects of the First and Second World Wars. Many of the poems take a Marxist[citation needed] outlook.
Throughout his theatric production, poems are incorporated into this plays with music. In 1951, Brecht issued a recantation of his apparent suppression of poetry in his plays with a note titled On Poetry and Virtuosity. He writes:
We shall not need to speak of a play's poetry ... something that seemed relatively unimportant in the immediate past. It seemed not only unimportant, but misleading, and the reason was not that the poetic element had been sufficiently developed and observed, but that reality had been tampered with in its name ... we had to speak of a truth as distinct from poetry ... we have given up examining works of art from their poetic or artistic aspect, and got satisfaction from theatrical works that have no sort of poetic appeal ... Such works and performances may have some effect, but it can hardly be a profound one, not even politically. For it is a peculiarity of the theatrical medium that it communicates awarenesses and impulses in the form of pleasure: the depth of the pleasure and the impulse will correspond to the depth of the pleasure.
Brecht's most influential poetry is featured in his Manual of Piety (Devotions), establishing him as a noted poet.
Impact[edit]
Brecht's widow, the actress Helene Weigel, continued to manage the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971; it was primarily devoted to performing Brecht's plays.
Besides being an influential dramatist and poet, some scholars have stressed the significance of Brecht's original contributions in political and social philosophy.[79]
Brecht's collaborations with Kurt Weill have had some influence in rock music. The "Alabama Song" for example, originally published as a poem in Brecht's Hauspostille (1927) and set to music by Weill in Mahagonny, has been recorded by The Doors, on their self-titled debut album, as well as by David Bowie and various other bands and performers since the 1960s.
Brecht's son, Stefan Brecht, became a poet and theatre critic interested in New York's avant-garde theatre.
Brecht in fiction, drama and film[edit]
In the 1930 novel Success, Brecht's mentor Lion Feuchtwanger immortalized Brecht as the character Kaspar Pröckl.
In the Günter Grass play The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising (1966), Brecht appears as "The Boss", rehearsing his version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus against the background of worker unrest in Berlin in 1953.
Brecht appears as a character in Christopher Hampton's play Tales from Hollywood, first produced in 1982, dealing with German expatriates in Hollywood at the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on supposed Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry and the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist.
In Peter Weiss's monumental novel of 1981 Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance) Brecht is a teacher for the narrator who aspires to become a writer.
In the 1999 film Cradle Will Rock Brecht appears as an inspiration to Marc Blitzstein.
The 2000 German film Abschied – Brechts letzter Sommer (The Farewell), directed by Jan Schütte, depicts Brecht (Josef Bierbichler) shortly before his death, attended to by Helene Weigel (Monica Bleibtreu) and two former lovers.
In the 2006 film The Lives of Others, a Stasi agent played by Ulrich Mühe is partially inspired to save a playwright he has been spying on by reading a book of Brecht poetry that he had stolen from the artist's apartment. In particular, the poem "Reminiscence of Marie A." is read.
Brecht at Night by Mati Unt, transl. Eric Dickens (Dalkey Archive Press, 2009)
In Robert Cohen's historical novel Exil der frechen Frauen (2009) Brecht is a major character.
The 2013 film Witness 11 draws upon historical events exploring the justice-thirsty courtroom through the eyes of Brecht as he is called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
In the 2013 Italian film Viva la libertà the Brecht poem To a Waverer forms the text for an important and moving speech.
In the 2014 novel Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon, Brecht appears as a cynical returnee to Soviet Berlin, lauded by the authorities as a symbol of communist German culture and willing to ignore moral issues to pursue his art.[80]
Collaborators and associates[edit]
Collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to Brecht's approach, as Fredric Jameson (among others) stresses. Jameson describes the creator of the work not as Brecht the individual, but rather as 'Brecht': 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, Carola Neher and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."[81]
List of collaborators and associates[edit]
Karl von Appen
Walter Benjamin
Eric Bentley
Ruth Berghaus
Ruth Berlau
Berliner Ensemble
Benno Besson
Arnolt Bronnen
Emil Burri
Ernst Busch
Paul Dessau
Slatan Dudow
Hanns Eisler
Erich Engel
Erwin Faber
Lion Feuchtwanger
Therese Giehse
Alexander Granach
Elisabeth Hauptmann
Paul Hindemith
Oskar Homolka
Angelika Hurwicz
Herbert Ihering
Fritz Kortner
Fritz Lang
Wolfgang Langhoff
Charles Laughton
Lotte Lenya
Theo Lingen
Peter Lorre
Joseph Losey
Ralph Manheim
Carola Neher
Caspar Neher
Teo Otto
G. W. Pabst
Erwin Piscator
Margarete Steffin
Carl Weber
Helene Weigel
Kurt Weill
John Willett
Hella Wuolijoki
Works[edit]
Fiction[edit]
Stories of Mr. Keuner (Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner (de))
Threepenny Novel (Dreigroschenroman, 1934)
The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar (Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar (de), 1937–39, unfinished, published 1957)
Plays and screenplays[edit]
Entries show: English-language translation of title (German-language title) [year written] / [year first produced][82]
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 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
The Life of Edward II of England (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 also A Man's A Man (Mann ist Mann) 1924–26/1926
The Elephant Calf (Das Elefantenkalb) 1924–26/1926
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/The Measures Taken (Die Maßnahme) 1930/1930
Saint Joan of the Stockyards (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe) 1929–31/1959
The Exception and the Rule (Die Ausnahme und die Regel) 1930/1938
The Mother (Die Mutter) 1930–31/1932
Kuhle Wampe (screenplay, with Ernst Ottwalt) 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) 1937–39/1943
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
The Judith of Shimoda (Die Judith von Shimoda) 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! (credited as Bert Brecht) (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
The Trial of Joan of Arc of Proven, 1431 (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
Theoretical works[edit]
The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre (1930)
The Threepenny Lawsuit (Der Dreigroschenprozess) (written 1931; published 1932)
The Book of Changes (fragment also known as Me-Ti; written 1935–1939)
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)
Poetry[edit]
Brecht wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life.[83] He began writing poetry as a young boy, and his first poems were published in 1914. His poetry was influenced by folk-ballads, French chansons, and the poetry of Rimbaud and Villon.[citation needed]
Some of Brecht's poems
1940
A Bad Time for Poetry
Alabama Song
Children's Crusade
Children's Hymn
Contemplating Hell
From a German War Primer
Germany
Honored Murderer of the People
How Fortunate the Man with None
Hymn to Communism
I Never Loved You More
I want to Go with the One I Love
I'm Not Saying Anything Against Alexander
In Praise of Communism
In Praise of Doubt
In Praise of Illegal Work
In Praise of Learning
In Praise of Study
In Praise of the Work of the Party
Mack the Knife
My Young Son Asks Me
Not What Was Meant
O Germany, Pale Mother!
On Reading a Recent Greek Poet
On the Critical Attitude
Parting
Questions from a Worker Who Reads
Radio Poem
Reminiscence of Marie A.
Send Me a Leaf
Solidarity Song
The Book Burning (The Burning of the Books)
The Exile of the Poets
The Invincible Inscription
The Mask of Evil
The Sixteen-Year-Old Seamstress Emma Ries before the Magistrate
The Solution
To Be Read in the Morning and at Night
To Posterity
To the Students and Workers of the Peasants' Faculty
An die Nachgeborenen (de) (To Those Born After)
United Front Song
War Has Been Given a Bad Name
What Has Happened?
See also[edit]
Book: Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis
Brecht Forum
Weimar culture
Western Marxism
References[edit]
Jump up ^ "Brecht". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House.
Jump up ^ "Brecht, Bertolt". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
Jump up ^ The introduction of this article draws on the following sources: Banham (1998, 129); Bürger (1984, 87–92); Jameson (1998, 43–58); Kolocotroni, Goldman and Taxidou (1998, 465–466); Williams (1993, 277–290); Wright (1989, 68–89; 113–137).
Jump up ^ "Brecht-Weigel-Gedenkstätte-Chausseestraße 125-10115 Berlin-Akademie der Künste – Akademie der Künste – Berlin".
^ Jump up to: a b c d Thomson (1994).
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 22–23). See also Smith (1991).
Jump up ^ See Brecht's poem "Of Poor B.B." (first version, 1922), in Brecht (2000b, 107–108).
Jump up ^ Hässler, Hans-Jürgen; von Heusinger, Christian, eds. (1989). Kultur gegen Krieg, Wissenschaft für den Frieden [Culture against War, Science for Peace] (in German). Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann. ISBN 978-3884794012.
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 24) and Sacks (xvii).
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 24). In his Messingkauf Dialogues, Brecht cites Wedekind, along with Büchner and Valentin, as his "chief influences" in his early years: "he," Brecht writes of himself in the third person, "also saw the writer Wedekind performing his own works in a style which he had developed in cabaret. Wedekind had worked as a ballad singer; he accompanied himself on the lute." (1965, 69). Kutscher was "bitterly critical" of Brecht's own early dramatic writings (Willet and Manheim 1970, vii).
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 24) and Willett (1967, 17).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1970, vii).
Jump up ^ Sacks (1994, xx) and McDowell (1977).
^ Jump up to: a b McDowell (2000).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim 1970, x.
Jump up ^ Brecht (1965, 69–70).
Jump up ^ Quoted in Thomson (1994, 25).
Jump up ^ Herbert Ihering's review for Drums in the Night in the Berliner Börsen-Courier on 5 October 1922. Quoted in Willett and Manheim (1970, viii–ix).
Jump up ^ See Thomson and Sacks (1994, 50) and Willett and Manheim (1970, viii–ix).
Jump up ^ Herbert Ihering, quoted in Willett and Manheim (1970, ix).
Jump up ^ McDowell (1977).
Jump up ^ Culbert (1995).[page needed]
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 26–27), Meech (1994, 54–55).
Jump up ^ Meech (1994, 54–55) and Benjamin (1983, 115). See the article on Edward II for details of Brecht's germinal 'epic' ideas and techniques in this production.
Jump up ^ Brecht was recommended for the job by Erich Engel; Carl Zuckmayer was to join Brecht in the position. See Sacks (1994, xviii), Willett (1967, 145), and Willett and Manheim (1970, vii).
Jump up ^ Ewen (1967, 159) and Völker (1976, 65).
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 28).
Jump up ^ Hayman (104) and Völker (1976, 108).
Jump up ^ According to Willett, Brecht was disgruntled with the Deutsches Theater at not being given a Shakespeare production to direct. At the end of the 1924–1925 season, both his and Carl Zuckmayer's (his fellow dramaturg) contracts were not renewed. (Willett 1967, 145). Zuckmayer relates how: "Brecht seldom turned up there; with his flapping leather jacket he looked like a cross between a lorry driver and a Jesuit seminarist. Roughly speaking, what he wanted was to take over complete control; the season's programme must be regulated entirely according to his theories, and the stage be rechristened 'epic smoke theatre', it being his view that people might actually be disposed to think if they were allowed to smoke at the same time. As this was refused him he confined himself to coming and drawing his pay." (Quoted by Willett 1967, 145).
Jump up ^ Willett (1967, 145).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim point to the significance of this poem as a marker of the shift in Brecht's work towards "a much more urban, industrialized flavour" (1979, viii).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii, x).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii); Joel Schechter writes: "The subjugation of an individual to that of a collective was endorsed by the affirmations of comedy, and by the decision of the coauthors of Man is Man (Emil Burri, Slatan Dudow, Caspar Neher, Bernhard Reich, Elisabeth Hauptmann) to call themselves 'The Brecht Collective'." (1994, 74).
Jump up ^ Willett (1978).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii–ix).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, xxxiii).
Jump up ^ Schechter (1994, 68).
Jump up ^ Brecht (1964, 56).
Jump up ^ Schechter (1994, 72).
Jump up ^ Sacks (1994, xviii).
Jump up ^ Thomson (1994, 28–29).
Jump up ^ Brecht (1964, 23–24).
Jump up ^ Erwin Piscator, "Basic Principles of a Sociological Drama" in Kolocotroni, Goldman and Taxidou (1998, 243).
Jump up ^ Willett (1998, 103) and (1978, 72). In his book The Political Theatre, Piscator wrote: "Perhaps my whole style of directing is a direct result of the total lack of suitable plays. It would certainly not have taken so dominant form if adequate plays had been on hand when I started" (1929, 185).
Jump up ^ Willett (1978, 74).
Jump up ^ See Brecht's Journal entry for 24 June 1943. Brecht claimed to have written the adaptation (in his Journal entry), but Piscator contested that; the manuscript bears the names "Brecht, [Felix] Gasbarra, Piscator, G. Grosz" in Brecht's handwriting (Willett 1978, 110). See also Willett (1978, 90–95). Brecht wrote a sequel to the novel in 1943, Schweik in the Second World War.
Jump up ^ Willett (1998, 104). In relation to his innovations in the use of theatre technology, Piscator wrote: "technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery. My technical devices had been developed to cover up the deficiencies of the dramatists' products" ("Basic Principles of a Sociological Drama" [1929]; in Kolocotroni, Goldman and Taxidou [1998, 243]).
Jump up ^ Willett (1978, 109–110). The similarities between Brecht's and Piscator's theoretical formulations from the time indicate that the two agreed on fundamentals; compare Piscator's summation of the achievements of his first company (1929), which follows, with Brecht's Mahagonny Notes (1930): "In lieu of private themes we had generalisation, in lieu of what was special the typical, in lieu of accident causality. Decorativeness gave way to constructedness, Reason was put on a par with Emotion, while sensuality was replaced by didacticism and fantasy by documentary reality." From a speech given by Piscator on 25 March 1929, and reproduced in Schriften 2 p. 50; Quoted by Willett (1978, 107). See also Willett (1998, 104–105).
Jump up ^ Willett (1998, 104–105).
Jump up ^ Willett (1978, 76).
Jump up ^ The two first met in March 1927, after Weill had written a critical introduction to the broadcast on Berlin Radio of an adaptation of Brecht's Man Equals Man. When they met, Brecht was 29 years old and Weill was 27. Brecht had experience of writing songs and had performed his own with tunes he had composed; at the time he was also married to an opera singer (Zoff). Weill had collaborated with Georg Kaiser, one of the few Expressionist playwrights that Brecht admired; he was married to the actress Lotte Lenya. Willett and Manheim (1979, xv).
Jump up ^ Willet and Manheim (1979, xv–xviii). In Munich in 1924 Brecht had begun referring to some of the stranger aspects of life in post-putsch Bavaria under the codename "Mahagonny". The Amerikanismus imagery appears in his first three "Mahagonny Songs", with their Wild West references. With that, however, the project stalled for two and a half years. With Hauptmann, who wrote the two English-language "Mahagonny Songs", Brecht had begun work on an opera to be called Sodom and Gomorrah or The Man from Manhattan and a radio play called The Flood or 'The Collapse of Miami, the Paradise City', both of which came to underlie the new scheme with Weill. See Willett and Manheim (1979, xv–xvi). The influence of Amerikanismus is most clearly discernible in Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities.
Jump up ^ In this respect, the creative process for Mahagonny was quite different from The Threepenny Opera, with the former being durchkomponiert or set to music right through, whereas on the latter Weill was brought at a late stage to set the songs. See Willett and Manheim (1979, xv).
Jump up ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, xvii) and Brecht (1964, 37–38).
Jump up ^ "Barbara Brecht-Schall – About This Person". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
Jump up ^ german.wisc.edu
Jump up ^ Brecht Chronology, International Brecht Society[permanent dead link]
^ Jump up to: a b Exilliteratur.
Jump up ^ Walter Held (de): "Stalins deutsche Opfer und die Volksfront", in the underground magazine Unser Wort, Nr. 4/5, October 1938, pp. 7 ff.; Michael Rohrwasser (de), Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten. Die Literatur der Exkommunisten, Stuttgart 1991, p. 163
^ Jump up to: a b Brecht HUAC hearing
Jump up ^ GradeSaver. "Bertolt Brecht Biography – List of Works, Study Guides & Essays".
Jump up ^ "St. Petersburg Times". December 21, 1954.
Jump up ^ Letter published in the Neues Deutschland, 21 June 1953.
Jump up ^ Brecht (2000b, 440). The poem was first printed in the West-German newspaper Die Welt in 1959 and subsequently in the Buckow Elegies in the West 1964. It was first published in the GDR in 1969 after Helene Weigel had insisted on its inclusion in a collected edition of Brecht's works.
Jump up ^ Bertolt Brecht at Encyclopædia Britannica
Jump up ^ Parker S. (2 April 2011). "Diagnosing Bertolt Brecht". Lancet. 377 (9772): 1146–7. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60453-4. PMID 21465701.
Jump up ^ Squiers, Anthony (2015). "A Critical Response to Heidi M. Silcox's "What's Wrong with Alienation?"". Philosophy and Literature.
Jump up ^ On these relationships, see "autonomization" in Jameson (1998, 43–58) and "non-organic work of art" in Bürger (1984, 87–92). Willett observes: "With Brecht the same montage technique spread to the drama, where the old Procrustean plot yielded to a more "epic" form of narrative better able to cope with wide-ranging modern socio-economic themes. That, at least, was how Brecht theoretically justified his choice of form, and from about 1929 on he began to interpret its penchant for "contradictions", much as had Eisenstein, in terms of the dialectic. It is fairly clear that in Brecht's case the practice came before the theory, for his actual composition of a play, with its switching around of scenes and characters, even the physical cutting up and sticking together of the typescript, shows that montage was the structural technique most natural to him. Like Hašek and Joyce he had not learnt this scissors-and-paste method from the Soviet cinema but picked it out of the air" (1978, 110).
Jump up ^ Brooker (1994, 193). Brooker writes that "the term 'alienation' is an inadequate and even misleading translation of Brecht's Verfremdung. The terms 'de-familiarisation' or 'estrangement', when understood as more than purely formal devices, give a more accurate sense of Brecht's intentions. A better term still would be 'de-alienation'".
Jump up ^ Brecht, quoted by Brooker (1994, 191).
Jump up ^ Brecht (1964, 138).
Jump up ^ The quotation from Raymond Williams is on page 277 of his book (1993) and that from Peter Bürger on page 88 of his (1984).
Jump up ^ "Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic" Translated and Edited by John Willett, page 91
Jump up ^ "Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic" Translated and Edited by John Willett, page 92
Jump up ^ Hsia, Adrian (1983). "Bertolt Brecht in China and His Impact on Chinese Drama". Comparative Literature Studies. Penn State University Press. 20 (2): 231–245. JSTOR 40246399.
Jump up ^ "Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic" Translated and Edited by John Willett, page 95
Jump up ^ "Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic" Translated and Edited by John Willett, page 96
Jump up ^ Squiers, Anthony (2014). An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 9789042038998.
Jump up ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/joseph-kanons-leaving-berlin.html
Jump up ^ Jameson (1998, 10–11). See also the discussions of Brecht's collaborative relationships in the essays collected in Thomson and Sacks (1994). John Fuegi's take on Brecht's collaborations, detailed in Brecht & Co. (New York: Grove, 1994; also known as The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht) and summarized in his contribution to Thomson and Sacks (1994, 104–116), offers a particularly negative perspective; Jameson comments "his book will remain a fundamental document for future students of the ideological confusions of Western intellectuals during the immediate post-Cold War years" (1998, 31); Olga Taxidou offers a critical account of Fuegi's project from a feminist perspective in "Crude Thinking: John Fuegi and Recent Brecht Criticism" in New Theatre Quarterly XI.44 (Nov. 1995), pp. 381–384.
Jump up ^ The translations of the titles are based on the standard of the Brecht Collected Plays series (see bibliography, primary sources). Chronology provided through consultation with Sacks (1994) and Willett (1967), preferring the former with any conflicts.
Jump up ^ Note: Several of Brecht's poems were set by his collaborator Hanns Eisler in his Deutsche Sinfonie, begun in 1935, but not premiered until 1959 (three years after Brecht's death).
Primary sources[edit]
Essays, diaries and journals[edit]
Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-38800-X. USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-3100-0.
2000a. Brecht on Film and Radio. Ed. and trans. Marc Silberman. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-72500-6.
2003a. Brecht on Art and Politics. Ed. and trans. Thomas Kuhn and Steve Giles. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-75890-7.
1965. The Messingkauf Dialogues. Trans. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0-413-38890-5.
1990. Letters 1913–1956. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-51050-6.
1993. Journals 1934–1955. Trans. Hugh Rorrison. Ed. John Willett. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-91282-2.
2015. Bertolt Brecht et Fritz Lang : le nazisme n'a jamais été éradiqué : sociologie du cinéma, Danielle Bleitrach, Richard Gehrke, Nicole Amphoux, Julien Riebel. La Madeleine : LettMotif, DL 2015. ISBN 978-2-3671-6122-8
Drama, poetry and prose[edit]
Brecht, Bertolt. 1994a. Collected Plays: One. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68570-5.
1994b. Collected Plays: Two. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68560-8.
1997. Collected Plays: Three. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-70460-2.
2003b. Collected Plays: Four. Ed. Tom Kuhn and John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-70470-X.
1995. Collected Plays: Five. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-69970-6.
1994c. Collected Plays: Six. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68580-2.
1994d. Collected Plays: Seven. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68590-X.
2004. Collected Plays: Eight. Ed. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77352-3.
1972. Collected Plays: Nine. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71819-4.
2000b. Poems: 1913–1956. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-15210-3.
1983. Short Stories: 1921–1946. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Trans. Yvonne Kapp, Hugh Rorrison and Antony Tatlow. London and New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52890-1.
2001. Stories of Mr. Keuner. Trans. Martin Chalmers. San Francisco: City Lights. ISBN 0-87286-383-2.
Secondary sources[edit]
[Anon.] 1952. "Brecht Directs". In Directors on Directing: A Source Book to the Modern Theater. Ed. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. Rev. ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1963. ISBN 0-02-323300-1. 291- [Account of Brecht in rehearsal from anonymous colleague published in Theaterarbeit]
Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. "Brecht, Bertolt" In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43437-8. 129.
Benjamin, Walter. 1983. Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna Bostock. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 0-902308-99-8.
Brooker, Peter. 1994. "Key Words in Brecht's Theory and Practice of Theatre". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 185–200).
Bürger, Peter. 1984. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. of Theorie der Avantgarde (2nd ed., 1980). Theory and History of Literature Ser. 4. Trans. Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1068-1.
Culbert, David. 1995. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (March).
Davies, Steffan; Ernest Schonfield (2009). Davies, Steffan; Schonfield, Ernest, eds. Alfred Döblin: Paradigms of Modernism. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-021769-8.
Demčišák, Ján. 2012. "Queer Reading von Brechts Frühwerk". Marburg: Tectum Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8288-2995-4.
Demetz, Peter, ed. 1962. "From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht: Hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 30 October 1947". Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views Ser. Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-081760-0. 30–42.
Diamond, Elin. 1997. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01229-5.
Eagleton, Terry. 1985. "Brecht and Rhetoric". New Literary History 16.3 (Spring). 633–638.
Eaton, Katherine B. "Brecht's Contacts with the Theater of Meyerhold". in Comparative Drama 11.1 (Spring 1977)3–21. Reprinted in 1984. Drama in the Twentieth Century ed. C. Davidson. New York: AMS Press, 1984. ISBN 0-404-61581-3. 203–221. 1979. "Die Pionierin und Feld-Herren vorm Kreidekreis. Bemerkungen zu Brecht und Tretjakow". in Brecht-Jahrbuch 1979. Ed. J. Fuegi, R. Grimm, J. Hermand. Suhrkamp, 1979. 1985 19–29. The Theater of Meyerhold and Brecht. Connecticut and New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-24590-8.
Eddershaw, Margaret. 1982. "Acting Methods: Brecht and Stanislavski". In Brecht in Perspective. Ed. Graham Bartram and Anthony Waine. London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-49205-X. 128–144.
Ewen, Frederic. 1967. Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art and His Times. Citadel Press Book edition. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1992.
Fuegi, John. 1994. "The Zelda Syndrome: Brecht and Elizabeth Hauptmann". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 104–116).
Fuegi, John. 2002. Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama. New York: Grove. ISBN 0-8021-3910-8.
Giles, Steve. 1998. "Marxist Aesthetics and Cultural Modernity in Der Dreigroschenprozeß". Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays. Ed. Steve Giles and Rodney Livingstone. German Monitor 41. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. ISBN 90-420-0309-X. 49–61.
Giles, Steve. 1997. Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the Threepenny Lawsuit. Bern: Lang. ISBN 3-906757-20-X.
Hayman, Ronald. 1983. Brecht: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78206-1.
Jameson, Fredric. 1998. Brecht and Method. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 1-85984-809-5.
Jacobs, Nicholas and Prudence Ohlsen, eds. 1977. Bertolt Brecht in Britain. London: IRAT Services Ltd and TQ Publications. ISBN 0-904844-11-0.
Kolocotroni, Vassiliki, Jane Goldman and Olga Taxidou, eds. 1998. Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0973-3.
Krause, Duane. 1995. "An Epic System". In Acting (Re)considered: Theories and Practices. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. 1st ed. Worlds of Performance Ser. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09859-9. 262–274.
Leach, Robert. 1994. "Mother Courage and Her Children". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 128–138).
Giuseppe Leone, "Bertolt Brecht, ripropose l'eterno conflitto dell'intellettuale fra libertà di ricerca e condizionamenti del potere", su "Ricorditi...di me" in "Lecco 2000", Lecco, giugno 1998.
McBride, Patrizia. "De-Moralizing Politics: Brecht's Early Aesthetics." Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 82.1 (2008): 85–111.
McDowell, W. Stuart. 1977. "A Brecht-Valentin Production: Mysteries of a Barbershop." Performing Arts Journal 1.3 (Winter): 2–14.
McDowell, W. Stuart. 2000. "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years". In The Brecht Sourcebook. Ed. Carol Martin and Henry Bial. Worlds of Performance ser. London and New York: Routledge. 71–83. ISBN 0-415-20043-1.
Meech, Tony. 1994. "Brecht's Early Plays". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 43–55).
Milfull, John. 1974. From Baal to Keuner. The "Second Optimism" of Bertolt Brecht, Bern and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Mitter, Schomit. 1992. "To Be And Not To Be: Bertolt Brecht and Peter Brook". Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06784-7. 42–77.
Müller, Heiner. 1990. Germania. Trans. Bernard Schütze and Caroline Schütze. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 0-936756-63-2.
Needle, Jan and Peter Thomson. 1981. Brecht. Chicago: U of Chicago P; Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-226-57022-3.
Pabst, G. W. 1984. The Threepenny Opera. Classic Film Scripts Ser. London: Lorrimer. ISBN 0-85647-006-6.
Reinelt, Janelle. 1990. "Rethinking Brecht: Deconstruction, Feminism, and the Politics of Form". The Brecht Yearbook 15. Ed. Marc Silberman et al. Madison, Wisconsin: The International Brecht Society-University of Wisconsin Press. 99–107.
Reinelt, Janelle. 1994. "A Feminist Reconsideration of the Brecht/Lukács Debate". Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 7.1 (Issue 13). 122–139.
Rouse, John. 1995. "Brecht and the Contradictory Actor". In Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. 2nd ed. Worlds of Performance Ser. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26300-X. 248–259.
Sacks, Glendyr. 1994. "A Brecht Calendar". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, xvii–xxvii).
Schechter, Joel. 1994. "Brecht's Clowns: Man is Man and After". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 68–78).
Smith, Iris. 1991. "Brecht and the Mothers of Epic Theater". Theatre Journal 43: 491–505.
Sternberg, Fritz. 1963. Der Dichter und die Ratio: Erinnerungen an Bertolt Brecht. Göttingen: Sachse & Pohl.
Squiers, Anthony. An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht: Revolution and Aesthetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2014. ISBN 9789042038998.
Szondi, Peter. 1965. Theory of the Modern Drama. Ed. and trans. Michael Hays. Theory and History of Literature Ser. 29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8166-1285-4.
Taxidou, Olga. 1995. "Crude Thinking: John Fuegi and Recent Brecht Criticism". New Theatre Quarterly XI.44 (Nov. 1995): 381–384.
Taxidou, Olga. 2007. Modernism and Performance: Jarry to Brecht. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-4101-7.
Thomson, Peter. 1994. "Brecht's Lives". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 22–39).
Thomson, Peter. 2000. "Brecht and Actor Training: On Whose Behalf Do We Act?" In Twentieth Century Actor Training. Ed. Alison Hodge. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19452-0. 98–112.
Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41446-6.
Völker, Klaus. 1976. Brecht: A Biography. Trans. John Nowell. New York: Seabury P, 1978. Trans. of Bertolt Brecht, Eine Biographie. Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag. ISBN 0-8164-9344-8.
Weber, Carl. 1984. "The Actor and Brecht, or: The Truth Is Concrete: Some Notes on Directing Brecht with American Actors". The Brecht Yearbook 13: 63–74.
Weber, Carl. 1994. "Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble – the Making of a Model". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 167–184).
Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 0-413-34360-X.
Willett, John. 1978. Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety 1917–1933. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. ISBN 0-306-80724-6.
Willett, John. 1998. Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches. Rev. ed. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-72310-0.
Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. Introduction. In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-03280-X. vii–xvii.
Williams, Raymond. 1993. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. London: Hogarth. ISBN 0-7012-0793-0. 277–290.
Witt, Hubert, ed. 1975. Brecht As They Knew Him. Trans. John Peet. London: Lawrence and Wishart; New York: International Publishers. ISBN 0-85315-285-3.
Wright, Elizabeth. 1989. Postmodern Brecht. Critics of the Twentieth Century Ser. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02330-0.
Youngkin, Stephen D. 2005. The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2360-7. [Contains a detailed discussion of the personal and professional friendship between Brecht and classic film actor Peter Lorre.]
Wizisla, Erdmut. 2009. Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht – The Story of a Friendship. Translated by Christine Shuttleworth. London / New Haven: Libris / Yale University Press. ISBN 1-870352-78-5. ISBN 978-1-870352-78-9 [Contains a complete translation of the newly discovered Minutes of the meetings around the putative journal Krise und Kritik (1931)].
External links[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Bertolt Brecht
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bertolt Brecht.
Bertolt Brecht at Encyclopædia Britannica
Bertolt Brecht on IMDb
Bertolt Brecht at the Internet Broadway Database
Bertolt Brecht at Internet Off-Broadway Database
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.
Works by or about Bertolt Brecht at Internet Archive
The Brecht Yearbook
The International Brecht Society
FBI files on Bertolt Brecht
A history of Mack the Knife by Joseph Mach at Brechthall
Bertolt Brecht at Find a Grave
show
v
t
e
Bertolt Brecht
Plays
Baal
Drums in the Night
A Wedding
Driving Out a Devil
Lux in Tenebris
Mysteries of a Barbershop
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
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
The Trial of Joan of Arc of Proven, 1431
Turandot
Don Juan
Trumpets and Drums
Theories and
techniques
Epic theatre
Non-Aristotelian drama
Lehrstücke
Fabel
Gestus
Defamiliarization
Demonstration
Not / But
Historicization
Refunctioning
Separation of the elements
Interruptions
Complex seeing
The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre
The Street Scene
A Short Organum for the Theatre
Messingkauf Dialogues
show
v
t
e
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics
Fred Ebb (1969)
Stephen Sondheim/Bertolt Brecht (1970)
Stephen Sondheim (1971)
John Guare (1972)
Stephen Sondheim (1973)
Al Carmines (1974)
Charlie Smalls (1975)
Edward Kleban (1976)
Martin Charnin (1977)
Carol Hall (1978)
Stephen Sondheim (1979)
Tim Rice (1980)
Stephen Sondheim/Maury Yeston (1982)
Howard Ashman (1983)
Stephen Sondheim (1984)
Roger Miller (1985)
Stephen Sondheim (1988)
David Zippel (1990)
William Finn (1991)
Susan Birkenhead (1992)
Denis Markell and Douglas Bernstein (1993)
Stephen Sondheim (1994)
Jonathan Larson (1996)
Gerard Alessandrini (1997)
Lynn Ahrens (1998)
Gerard Alessandrini (1999)
Stephen Sondheim (2000)
Mel Brooks (2001)
Jason Robert Brown (2002)
Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman (2003)
Stephen Schwartz (2004)
Eric Idle (2005)
Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison (2006)
Steven Sater (2007)
Stew (2008)
Stephen Sondheim (2009)
John Kander and Fred Ebb (2010)
Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone (2011)
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (2012)
Tim Minchin (2013)
Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak (2014)
Lin-Manuel Miranda (2015)
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (2016)
David Yazbek (2017)
Peter Kellogg (2018)
show
v
t
e
German-language literature
Related articles
German language
History of Germany
History of Austria
History of Switzerland
History of Liechtenstein
Medieval German literature
Sturm und Drang
Weimar Classicism
Romanticism
Literary realism
Weimar culture
Exilliteratur
Austrian literature
Swiss literature
German studies
Related categories
Austrian writers
German writers
Liechtenstein writers
Swiss writers in German
Medieval literature
Dietmar von Aist
Reinmar von Hagenau
Hartmann von Aue
Walther von der Vogelweide
Wolfram von Eschenbach
Albrecht von Johansdorf
Heinrich von Morungen
Nibelungenlied
Gottfried von Strassburg
Legends about Theoderic the Great
Early modern
literature
Simon Dach
Paul Fleming
Hans Folz
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
Andreas Gryphius
Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau
Johann Michael Moscherosch
Martin Opitz
Hans Sachs
Angelus Silesius
Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Georg Wickram
18th century
Barthold Heinrich Brockes
Christian Gellert
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Christoph Gottsched
Johann Christian Günther
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)
Jean Paul
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Gottfried Schnabel
Christoph Martin Wieland
19th century
Bettina von Arnim
Ludwig Achim von Arnim
Clemens Brentano
Georg Büchner
Adelbert von Chamisso
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Joseph von Eichendorff
Theodor Fontane
Gustav Freytag
Jeremias Gotthelf
Franz Grillparzer
Jacob Grimm
Wilhelm Grimm
Gerhart Hauptmann
Christian Friedrich Hebbel
Johann Peter Hebel
Heinrich Heine
Georg Herwegh
Paul Heyse
E. T. A. Hoffmann
Friedrich Hölderlin
Gottfried Keller
Heinrich von Kleist
Nikolaus Lenau
Karl May
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
Eduard Mörike
Johann Nestroy
Wilhelm Raabe
Adalbert Stifter
Theodor Storm
Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Uhland
20th century
Ingeborg Bachmann
Hermann Bahr
Johannes R. Becher
Gottfried Benn
Thomas Bernhard
Heinrich Böll
Volker Braun
Bertolt Brecht
Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Hermann Broch
Arnolt Bronnen
Hermann Burger
Elias Canetti
Paul Celan
Alfred Döblin
Heimito von Doderer
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Lion Feuchtwanger
Marieluise Fleißer
Erich Fried
Max Frisch
Stefan George
Günter Grass
Peter Handke
Marlen Haushofer
Hermann Hesse
Georg Heym
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Ödön von Horváth
Ricarda Huch
Peter Huchel
Ernst Jandl
Uwe Johnson
Ernst Jünger
Franz Kafka
Erich Kästner
Hermann Kesten
Irmgard Keun
Sarah Kirsch
Egon Erwin Kisch
Karl Kraus
Else Lasker-Schüler
Gert Ledig
Siegfried Lenz
Heinrich Mann
Klaus Mann
Thomas Mann
Christian Morgenstern
Erich Mühsam
Heiner Müller
Adolf Muschg
Robert Musil
Erich Maria Remarque
Rainer Maria Rilke
Joseph Roth
Nelly Sachs
Ernst von Salomon
Paul Scheerbart
Arthur Schnitzler
Kurt Schwitters
W. G. Sebald
Anna Seghers
Ernst Toller
Georg Trakl
Kurt Tucholsky
Robert Walser
Josef Weinheber
Peter Weiss
Franz Werfel
Christa Wolf
Fritz Zorn (Fritz Angst)
Stefan Zweig
Contemporary
writers
Zsuzsa Bánk
Thomas Brussig
Jenny Erpenbeck
Rainald Goetz
Durs Grünbein
Peter Handke
Elfriede Jelinek
Reinhard Jirgl
Wladimir Kaminer
Daniel Kehlmann
Alexander Kluge
Christian Kracht
Monika Maron
Terézia Mora
Herta Müller
Emine Sevgi Özdamar
Julya Rabinowich
Rafik Schami
Ingo Schulze
Botho Strauß
Yoko Tawada
Uwe Timm
Martin Walser
Peter Wawerzinek
Wolf Wondratschek
Feridun Zaimoğlu
Juli Zeh
German-language
Nobel laureates
Theodor Mommsen
Rudolf Christoph Eucken
Paul Heyse
Gerhart Hauptmann
Carl Spitteler
Thomas Mann
Hermann Hesse
Nelly Sachs
Heinrich Böll
Elias Canetti
Günter Grass
Elfriede Jelinek
Herta Müller
German-language
literary awards
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
Georg Büchner Prize
Sigmund Freud Prize
Adelbert von Chamisso Prize
Hans Fallada Prize
Goethe Prize
Heinrich Heine Prize
Kleist Prize
Leipzig Book Fair Prize
Nelly Sachs Prize
show
v
t
e
Bertolt Brecht's and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera (1928)
Source
John Gay's The Beggar's Opera
Films
The Threepenny Opera (1931)
Mack the Knife (1989)
Songs
"Mack the Knife"
"Pirate Jenny"
"What Keeps Mankind Alive?"
Related
Threepenny Novel
Authority control
WorldCat Identities
BIBSYS: 90051140
BNE: XX1150786
BNF: cb11893857f (data)
GND: 118514768
HDS: 11636
ISNI: 0000 0003 6863 6577
LCCN: n79018801
LNB: 000002615
MusicBrainz: 95fb3a0c-fc74-4f51-acba-bbe5b3a78e32
NDL: 00434255
NKC: jn19990001059
NLA: 35021554
SELIBR: 179056
SNAC: w67082kg
SUDOC: 028208617
TLS: Bertolt_Brecht
ULAN: 500220023
VIAF: 2467372
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bertolt_Brecht&oldid=849178330"
Categories:
1898 births
1956 deaths
People from Augsburg
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Acting theorists
East German writers
East German poetry
German literary critics
German Marxists
German poets
Protestants in the German Resistance
German screenwriters
Writers from Bavaria
German theatre critics
German theatre directors
Hollywood blacklist
Kleist Prize winners
Marxist theorists
Marxist writers
McCarthyism
Modernist theatre
German opera librettists
Exilliteratur writers
Stalin Peace Prize recipients
Theatre practitioners
20th-century German writers
20th-century German dramatists and playwrights
Male screenwriters
German male poets
German male dramatists and playwrights
German-language poets
East German poets
Hidden categories:
CS1 German-language sources (de)
Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from April 2018
All articles with dead external links
Articles with dead external links from October 2016
Articles with permanently dead external links
Interlanguage link template link number
Articles with Encyclopædia Britannica links
All articles with unsourced statements
Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014
Articles with unsourced statements from October 2013
Internet Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata
Articles with IBDb links
Articles with Internet Archive links
Find a Grave template with ID same as Wikidata
Use dmy dates from August 2016
Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers
Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers
Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers
Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers
Wikipedia articles with HDS identifiers
Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers
Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers
Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers
Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers
Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers
Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers
Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers
Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers
Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers
Wikipedia articles with TLS identifiers
Wikipedia articles with ULAN identifiers
Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers
AC with 18 elements
Navigation menu
Personal tools
Not logged in
Talk
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Namespaces
Article
Talk
Variants
Views
Read
Edit
View history
More
Search
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
In other projects
Wikimedia Commons
Wikiquote
Languages
Afrikaans
Alemannisch
العربية
Aragonés
Asturianu
Aymar aru
Azərbaycanca
تۆرکجه
বাংলা
Bân-lâm-gú
Башҡортса
Беларуская
Беларуская (тарашкевіца)
Български
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Català
Čeština
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Euskara
فارسی
Føroyskt
Français
Frysk
Gaeilge
Galego
한국어
Հայերեն
हिन्दी
Hornjoserbsce
Hrvatski
Ido
বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী
Bahasa Indonesia
Íslenska
Italiano
עברית
Basa Jawa
ქართული
Қазақша
Kurdî
Кыргызча
Кырык мары
Latina
Latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Magyar
Македонски
Malagasy
മലയാളം
მარგალური
Nederlands
日本語
Norsk
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
Oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Piemontèis
Plattdüütsch
Polski
Português
Română
Runa Simi
Русский
Scots
සිංහල
Simple English
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
کوردی
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
Тоҷикӣ
Türkçe
Українська
اردو
Tiếng Việt
Winaray
粵語
Zazaki
中文
Lingua Franca Nova
85 more
Edit links
This page was last edited on 7 July 2018, at 03:02 (UTC).
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Cookie statement
Mobile view
Enable previews

values: mw-page-base noprint

values: mw-head-base noprint

values: firstHeading firstHeading en

values: siteSub noprint

values: mw-jump-link #mw-head

values: mw-jump-link #p-search

values:
/wiki/Brecht_(disambiguation)
mw-disambig
Brecht (disambiguation)

values:
note
hatnote navigation-not-searchable

values: Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

values:
/wiki/Roman_Catholic
mw-redirect
Roman Catholic

values:
/wiki/First_World_War
mw-redirect
First World War

values:
noprint
font-size:85%; font-style: normal;

values: Edit section: Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–33)

values:
/wiki/Servant_of_Two_Masters
mw-redirect
Servant of Two Masters

values: float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 80%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:32em; max-width: 32%;

values: Brecht denied this charge at the McCarthy trials – which requires citation. (December 2014)

values:
noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact
white-space:nowrap;

values: Edit section: Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–45)

values: float: right; clear: right; margin: 0.5em 0 0.8em 1.4em; padding: 10px; border: 1px solid #aaa; font-size: 88%; background-color: #c6dbf7; width:32em; max-width:32%;

values:
/wiki/Academy_Award
mw-redirect
Academy Award

values: Edit section: Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–56)

values:
/wiki/Communist_Party
mw-redirect
Communist Party

values:
/wiki/Hollywood_Ten
mw-redirect
Hollywood Ten

values:
/wiki/Antigone_(Sophocles)
mw-redirect
Antigone (Sophocles)

values:
/wiki/Stalin_Peace_Prize
mw-redirect
Stalin Peace Prize

values:
/wiki/Aortic_knob
mw-redirect
Aortic knob

values: Edit section: Theory and practice of theatre

values: Brecht denied this charge at the McCarthy trials – which also requires citation. (December 2014)

values:
/wiki/Second_World_War
mw-redirect
Second World War

values: Edit section: Brecht in fiction, drama and film

values:
/wiki/Viva_la_libert%C3%A0
mw-redirect
Viva la libertà

values: Edit section: Collaborators and associates

values: Edit section: List of collaborators and associates

values:
/wiki/Oskar_Homolka
mw-redirect
Oskar Homolka

values: -moz-column-width: 11em; -webkit-column-width: 11em; column-width: 11em;

values: Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner (page does not exist)

values: Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar (page does not exist)

values: de:Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar

values:
/wiki/The_Flight_across_the_Ocean
mw-redirect
The Flight across the Ocean

values:
/wiki/Antigone_(Brecht)
mw-redirect
Antigone (Brecht)

values: The Trial of Joan of Arc of Proven, 1431

values: This claim needs references to reliable sources. (October 2013)

values:
/wiki/Solidarity_Song
mw-redirect
Solidarity Song

values: An die Nachgeborenen (page does not exist)

values: -moz-column-width: 20em; -webkit-column-width: 20em; column-width: 20em;

values:
nofollow
external text
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/Brecht

values:
/wiki/Oxford_Dictionaries
mw-redirect
Oxford Dictionaries

values: This citation requires a reference to the specific page or range of pages in which the material appears. (April 2018)

values: Michael Rohrwasser (page does not exist)

values: File:Brecht HUAC hearing (1947-10-30).ogg

values:
/wiki/PubMed_Identifier
mw-redirect
PubMed Identifier

values:
nofollow
external text
//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21465701

values:
nofollow
external text
//www.jstor.org/stable/40246399

values: -moz-column-width: 30em; -webkit-column-width: 30em; column-width: 30em; list-style-type: decimal;

values: Edit section: Essays, diaries and journals

values:
/wiki/Sternberg,_Fritz
mw-redirect
Sternberg, Fritz

values: -moz-column-width: 40em; -webkit-column-width: 40em; column-width: 40em;

values:
nofollow
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0106517/
external text

values:
nofollow
external text
https://www.ibdb.com/Person/View/4511

values:
/wiki/Internet_Off-Broadway_Database
mw-redirect
Internet Off-Broadway Database

values: nowraplinks collapsible autocollapse navbox-inner mw-collapsible mw-made-collapsible mw-collapsed

values: nowraplinks hlist collapsible autocollapse navbox-inner mw-collapsible mw-made-collapsible mw-collapsed

values: Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

values: Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

values:
/wiki/Fritz_Angst
mw-redirect
Fritz Angst

values: nowraplinks collapsible collapsed navbox-inner mw-collapsible mw-collapsed mw-made-collapsible

values:
nofollow
external text
https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768

values:
nofollow
external text
http://isni.org/isni/0000000368636577

values:
nofollow
external text
https://nla.gov.au/anbd.aut-an35021554

values:
nofollow
external text
https://libris.kb.se/auth/179056

values:
nofollow
external text
https://www.idref.fr/028208617

values:
nofollow
external text
https://viaf.org/viaf/2467372

values: Category:People from the Kingdom of Bavaria

values: Category:Protestants in the German Resistance

values: Category:20th-century German dramatists and playwrights

values: Category:German male dramatists and playwrights

values: Category:CS1 German-language sources (de)

values: Category:Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from April 2018

values: Category:All articles with dead external links

values: Category:Articles with dead external links from October 2016

values: Category:Articles with permanently dead external links

values: Category:Interlanguage link template link number

values: Category:Articles with Encyclopædia Britannica links

values: Category:All articles with unsourced statements

values: Category:Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014

values: Category:Articles with unsourced statements from October 2013

values: Category:Internet Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata

values: Category:Articles with Internet Archive links

values: Category:Find a Grave template with ID same as Wikidata

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with HDS identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with TLS identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with ULAN identifiers

values: Category:Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers

values: Discussion about edits from this IP address [ctrl-alt-n]

values: A list of edits made from this IP address [ctrl-alt-y]

values: You are encouraged to create an account and log in; however, it is not mandatory

values: You're encouraged to log in; however, it's not mandatory. [ctrl-alt-o]

values:
/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht
View the content page [ctrl-alt-c]
c

values: Discussion about the content page [ctrl-alt-t]

values: p-namespaces navigation vectorTabs p-namespaces-label

values:
p-variants
navigation
vectorMenu emptyPortlet
p-variants-label

values: Past revisions of this page [ctrl-alt-h]

values: p-views navigation vectorTabs p-views-label

values:
p-cactions
navigation
vectorMenu emptyPortlet
p-cactions-label

values:
mw-wiki-logo
/wiki/Main_Page
Visit the main page

values:
/wiki/Main_Page
Visit the main page [ctrl-alt-z]
z

values: List of all English Wikipedia pages containing links to this page [ctrl-alt-j]

values: Recent changes in pages linked from this page [ctrl-alt-k]

values:
/wiki/Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard
Upload files [ctrl-alt-u]
u

values: A list of all special pages [ctrl-alt-q]

values: Permanent link to this revision of the page

values: Link to connected data repository item [ctrl-alt-g]

values: Printable version of this page [ctrl-alt-p]

values: portal navigation p-wikibase-otherprojects p-wikibase-otherprojects-label

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-af
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-als
display: none;

values: برتولت بريشت – Arabic

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-an
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ast
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ay
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-az
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-azb
display: none;

values: বের্টোল্ট ব্রেশ্‌ট – Bangla

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-bn
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-zh-min-nan
display: none;

values: Бертольт Брехт – Bashkir

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ba
display: none;

values: Бертальд Брэхт – Belarusian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-be
display: none;

values: Бэртальд Брэхт – Belarusian (Taraškievica orthography)

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-be-x-old
display: none;

values: Бертолт Брехт – Bulgarian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-bg
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-bs
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-br
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ca
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-cs
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-cy
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-da
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-de
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-et
display: none;

values: Μπέρτολτ Μπρεχτ – Greek

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-el
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-eo
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-eu
display: none;

values: برتولت برشت – Persian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-fa
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-fo
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-fy
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ga
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-gl
display: none;

values: 베르톨트 브레히트 – Korean

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ko
display: none;

values: Բերտոլդ Բրեխտ – Armenian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-hy
display: none;

values: बर्तोल्त ब्रेख्त – Hindi

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-hsb
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-hr
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-io
display: none;

values: বেরতেলৎ ব্রেশট – Bishnupriya

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-bpy
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-is
display: none;

values: ברטולט ברכט – Hebrew

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-jv
display: none;

values: ბერტოლტ ბრეხტი – Georgian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ka
display: none;

values: Брехт Бертольт – Kazakh

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-kk
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ku
display: none;

values: Брехт Бертольт – Kyrgyz

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ky
display: none;

values: Брехт, Бертольт – Western Mari

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-mrj
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-la
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-lv
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-lb
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-lt
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-hu
display: none;

values: Бертолт Брехт – Macedonian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-mk
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-mg
display: none;

values: ബെർടോൾഡ് ബ്രെഹ്ത് – Malayalam

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ml
display: none;

values: ბერტოლტ ბრეხტი – Mingrelian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-xmf
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-nl
display: none;

values: ベルトルト・ブレヒト – Japanese

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ja
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-no
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-nn
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-oc
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-uz
display: none;

values: ਬਰਤੋਲਤ ਬਰੈਖ਼ਤ – Punjabi

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-pa
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-pms
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-nds
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ro
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-qu
display: none;

values: Брехт, Бертольт – Russian

values: interlanguage-link interwiki-ru badge-Q17437796 badge-featuredarticle

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sco
display: none;

values: බර්ටෝල් බ්‍රෙෂ්ට් – Sinhala

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-si
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-simple
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sk
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sl
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ckb
display: none;

values: Бертолт Брехт – Serbian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sr
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sh
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sv
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-tl
display: none;

values: பெர்தோல்ட் பிரெக்ட் – Tamil

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ta
display: none;

values: Бертолд Брехт – Tajik

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-tg
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-tr
display: none;

values: Бертольт Брехт – Ukrainian

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-uk
display: none;

values: برتولت بریخت – Urdu

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-vi
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-war
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-zh-yue
display: none;

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-diq
display: none;

values: 贝托尔特·布莱希特 – Chinese

values:
interlanguage-link interwiki-lfn
display: none;

values: All languages (initial selection from common choices by you and others)

values:
suggestions
display: none; font-size: 13px;

values: mediawiki ltr sitedir-ltr mw-hide-empty-elt ns-0 ns-subject page-Bertolt_Brecht rootpage-Bertolt_Brecht skin-vector action-view