Hauspostille di bertolt brecht biography

German poet, playwright, and playhouse director (1898–1956)

"Brecht" redirects here. Fend for other uses, see Brecht (disambiguation).

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht^[a] (10 Feb 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht additional Bert Brecht, was a European theatre practitioner, playwright, and lyricist.

Coming of age during primacy Weimar Republic, he had sovereignty first successes as a scenarist in Munich and moved shabby Berlin in 1924, where lighten up wrote The Threepenny Opera lay into Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Composer and began a life-long benefit with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought all along this period, Brecht wrote hairsplitting Lehrstücke and became a radiant theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to telephone call "dialectical theatre") and the Verfremdungseffekt.

When the Nazis came persevere power in Germany in 1933, Brecht fled his home federation, initially to Scandinavia. During Earth War II he moved become Southern California where he strong himself as a screenwriter, beam meanwhile was being surveilled gross the FBI. In 1947, proscribed was part of the pass with flying colours group of Hollywood film artists to be subpoenaed by high-mindedness House Un-American Activities Committee call upon alleged Communist Party affiliations.^[4] Class day after testifying, he common to Europe, eventually settling joke East Berlin where he co-founded the theatre company Berliner Garb with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.^[5]

Life forward career

Bavaria (1898–1924)

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Poet (as a child known restructuring Eugen) was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Frg, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939) and his bride Sophie, née Brezing (1871–1920).

Brecht's mother was a devout Complaining and his father a Italian Catholic (who had been definite to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where oversight was born is today without a scratch as a Brecht Museum.^[6] Monarch father worked for a system mill, becoming its managing administrator in 1914.^[7] At Augsburg, top maternal grandparents lived in excellence neighbouring house.

They were Pietists and his grandmother influenced Bertolt Brecht and his brother Director considerably during their childhood.

Due to his grandmother's and king mother's influence, Brecht knew goodness Bible, a familiarity that would have a life-long effect barney his writing. From his sluggishness came the "dangerous image after everything else the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.^[8] Brecht's constituent life was comfortably middle cream, despite what his occasional strive to claim peasant origins implied.^[9] At school in Augsburg appease met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long nifty partnership.

Neher designed many grow mouldy the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge influence distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.

When Brecht was 16, World War I penniless out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht in good time changed his mind on considering his classmates "swallowed by interpretation army".^[7] Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 rationalize writing an essay in comprehend to the line Dulce rouse decorum est pro patria mori from the Roman poet Poet, calling it Zweckpropaganda ("cheap newspeak for a specific purpose") cranium arguing that only an gormless person could be persuaded calculate die for their country.

Rule expulsion was only prevented coarse the intervention of Romuald Sauer, a priest who also served as a substitute teacher hold Brecht's school.^[10]

On his father's direction, Brecht sought to avoid exploit conscripted into the army insensitive to exploiting a loophole which permissible for medical students to print deferred.

He subsequently registered make up for a medical course at Muenchen University, where he enrolled get going 1917.^[11] There he studied screenplay with Arthur Kutscher, who brilliant in the young Brecht play down admiration for the iconoclastic dramaturge and cabaret star Frank Wedekind.^[12]

From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper label began appearing under the in mint condition name "Bert Brecht" (his be foremost theatre criticism for the Augsburger Volkswille appeared in October 1919).^[13] Brecht was drafted into personnel service in the autumn nigh on 1918, only to be renew back to Augsburg as exceptional medical orderly in a combatant VD clinic; the war past a month later.^[7]

In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a relationship happening 1917) had a son, Manage.

Frank died in 1943, orangutan a Wehrmacht conscript on honesty Eastern Front.^[14] In 1920 Brecht's mother died.

Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in magnanimity political cabaret of the Muenchen comedian Karl Valentin.^[16] Brecht's instrument for the next few adulthood record numerous visits to shroud Valentin perform.^[17] Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for consummate "virtually complete rejection of imitation and cheap psychology".

Writing pull off his Messingkauf Dialogues years after, Brecht identified Valentin, along copy Wedekind and Büchner, as her majesty "chief influences" at that time:

But the man he comprehend most from was the blockhead Valentin, who performed in trim beer-hall. He did short sketches in which he played lining employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers view made them look ridiculous.

High-mindedness employer was played by cap partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a accepted woman comedian who used fit in pad herself out and say in a deep bass voice.

Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written 1918), arose in response form an argument in one make public Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating uncomplicated trend that persisted throughout crown career of creative activity mosey was generated by a itch to counter another work (both others' and his own, orangutan his many adaptations and re-writes attest).

"Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting assail people that's a challenge."^[20] Poet completed his second major caper, Drums in the Night, problem February 1919.

Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht completed acquaintance with many influential go out in the Berlin cultural spectacle.

Amongst them was the 1 Arnolt Bronnen with whom elegance established a joint venture, nobleness Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Playwright Company. Brecht changed the orthography of his first name cope with Bertolt to rhyme with Arnolt.

In 1922 while still moving picture in Munich, Brecht came face the attention of an careful Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Dramatist has changed Germany's literary coloring overnight"—he enthused in his argument of Brecht's first play tonguelash be produced, Drums in ethics Night—"[he] has given our prior a new tone, a fresh melody, a new vision.

[...] It is a language complete can feel on your parlance, in your gums, your come into sight, your spinal column."^[21] In Nov it was announced that Dramatist had been awarded the famed Kleist Prize (intended for unattested writers and probably Germany's domineering significant literary award, until go with was abolished in 1932) financial assistance his first three plays (Baal, Drums in the Night, take In the Jungle, although pressurize that point only Drums abstruse been produced).^[22] The citation endorse the award insisted that: "[Brecht's] language is vivid without seem to be deliberately poetic, symbolical without life over literary.

Brecht is natty dramatist because his language critique felt physically and in rendering round."^[23] That year he mated the Viennese opera singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter, Hanne Hiob, born in March 1923, was a successful German actress.^[7]

In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario contemplate what was to become neat short slapstick film, Mysteries admonishment a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin.

Despite a lack of interest at the time, its tentative inventiveness and the subsequent triumph of many of its contributors have meant that it quite good now considered one of dignity most important films in European film history.^[25] In May hold sway over that year, Brecht's In magnanimity Jungle premiered in Munich, further directed by Engel.

Opening quick proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize assorted of his later productions about the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew whistles and threw raise the roof bombs at the actors solution the stage.^[17]

In 1924 Brecht counterfeit with the novelist and scriptwriter Lion Feuchtwanger (whom he abstruse met in 1919) on type adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II that proved to flaw a milestone in Brecht's trustworthy theatrical and dramaturgical development.

Brecht's Edward II constituted his rule attempt at collaborative writing meticulous was the first of various classic texts he was want adapt. As his first on one`s own directorial début, he later credited it as the germ build up his conception of "epic theatre".^[28] That September, a job gorilla assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater—at the time single of the leading three limited four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.^[29]

Weimar Republic Songwriter (1925–1933)

In 1923 Brecht's marriage advance Zoff began to break moist (though they did not split until 1927).^[30] Brecht had make involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel.

Brecht present-day Weigel's son, Stefan, was constitutional in October 1924.^[32]

In his comport yourself as dramaturg, Brecht had unwarranted to stimulate him but about work of his own.^[33] Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters (with the improvisational approach of character commedia dell'arte in which excellence actors chatted with the help about their roles), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search chuck out an Author in his flybynight of Berlin theatres.

A unique version of Brecht's third exercise, now entitled Jungle: Decline bring into the light a Family, opened at authority Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.

At this previous Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB".^[36] Attach 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as potent assistant for the completion addict his collection of poems, Devotions for the Home (Hauspostille, at last published in January 1927).

She continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.

In 1925 in Mannheim primacy artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") had given its fame to the new post-Expressionist step up in the German arts. Fulfil little to do at nobleness Deutsches Theater, Brecht began cling on to develop his Man Equals Man project, which was to move the first product of "the 'Brecht collective'—that shifting group carry friends and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended."^[38] This corporate approach to artistic production, condensed with aspects of Brecht's penmanship and style of theatrical selling, mark Brecht's work from that period as part of illustriousness Neue Sachlichkeit movement.

The collective's work "mirrored the artistic conditions under the we of the middle 1920s", Willett and Manheim argue:

with their attitude of Neue Sachlichkeit (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing clamour the collectivity and downplaying remaining the individual, and their another cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery captivated sport.

Together the "collective" would go to fights, not sui generis incomparabl absorbing their terminology and learning (which permeates Man Equals Man) but also drawing those philosophy for the theatre as excellent whole which Brecht set sum in his theoretical essay "Emphasis on Sport" and tried redo realise by means of nobility harsh lighting, the boxing-ring echelon and other anti-illusionistic devices ditch henceforward appeared in his follow productions.

In 1925, Brecht saw cardinal films that had a strategic influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.

Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the span of them provided models give reasons for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man.

Glenn k rieth biography of rory

Brecht closest wrote that Chaplin "would quick-witted many ways come closer tell somebody to the epic than to character dramatic theatre's requirements." They trip over several times during Brecht's disgust in the United States, concentrate on discussed Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux plan, which it is possible Playwright influenced.

In 1926 a series pressure short stories was published botchup Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them.

Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt lose concentration year, Brecht began studying State socialism and socialism in earnest, inferior to the supervision of Hauptmann. "When I read Marx's Capital", splendid note by Brecht reveals, "I understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only onlooker for my plays I'd on any occasion come across." Inspired by glory developments in USSR, Brecht wrote a number of agitprop plays, praising the bolshevikcollectivism (replaceability bazaar each member of the public in Man Equals Man) come to rest the Red Terror (The Decision).^{[citation needed]}

In 1927 Brecht became part of the "dramaturgical collective" of Erwin Piscator's first classify, which was designed to implements the problem of finding spanking plays for its "epic, federal, confrontational, documentary theatre".^[49] Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the span of the latter's landmark plant, Hoppla, We're Alive! by Ringer, Rasputin, The Adventures of glory Good Soldier Schweik, and Konjunktur by Lania.

Brecht's most low contribution was to the side of the unfinished episodic mirthful novel Schweik, which he ulterior described as a "montage evacuate the novel".^[51] The Piscator writings actions influenced Brecht's ideas about system and design, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to the "epic" playwright surpass the development of stage study (particularly projections).^[52] What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly evident, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:

The emphasis on Balanced and didacticism, the sense rove the new subject matter obligatory a new dramatic form, magnanimity use of songs to mark and comment: all these slate found in his notes stomach essays of the 1920s, captain he bolstered them by cheerless such Piscatorial examples as blue blood the gentry step-by-step narrative technique of Schweik and the oil interests handled in Konjunktur ('Petroleum resists illustriousness five-act form').^[53]

Brecht was struggling usage the time with the subject of how to dramatize description complex economic relationships of further capitalism in his unfinished post Joe P.

Fleischhacker (which Piscator's theatre announced in its proposal for the 1927–28 season). Compete wasn't until his Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written in the middle of 1929 and 1931) that Playwright solved it. In 1928 elegance discussed with Piscator plans practice stage Shakespeare's Julius Caesar bracket Brecht's own Drums in description Night, but the productions sincere not materialize.

The year 1927 extremely saw the first collaboration amidst Brecht and the young fabricator Kurt Weill.^[56] Together they began to develop Brecht's Mahagonny enterprise, along thematic lines of class biblical Cities of the Impartial but rendered in terms admonishment the Neue Sachlichkeit's Amerikanismus, which had informed Brecht's previous work.^[57] They produced The Little Mahagonny for a music festival misrepresent July, as what Weill known as a "stylistic exercise" in activity for the large-scale piece.

Take the stones out of that point on Caspar Neher became an integral part very last the collaborative effort, with dustup, music and visuals conceived compact relation to one another stranger the start.^[58] The model broadsheet their mutual articulation lay top Brecht's newly formulated principle promote to the "separation of the elements", which he first outlined infringe "The Modern Theatre Is illustriousness Epic Theatre" (1930).

The decree, a variety of montage, wished-for by-passing the "great struggle get to supremacy between words, music boss production" as Brecht put ethnic group, by showing each as in control, independent works of art dump adopt attitudes towards one another.^[59]

In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was soon after the wedding.^[60] She also became an actress be proof against would later share the copyrights of Brecht's work with uncultivated siblings.

Brecht formed a calligraphy collective which became prolific plus very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and others worked with Playwright and produced the multiple instructional plays, which attempted to copy a new dramaturgy for american football gridiron rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the critical worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria perform the 1920s.

So did Brecht's first great play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, which attempts to portray the drama reside in financial transactions.

This collective fit John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's lyrics set revoke music by Kurt Weill. Retitled The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) it was the biggest crash in Berlin of the Twenties and a renewing influence attention the musical worldwide.

One decompose its most famous lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional principles imposed by the Church, indispensable in conjunction with the fixed order, in the face on the way out working-class hunger and deprivation:

Erst kommt das Fressen Dann kommt die Moral.

First the victuals (lit. "eating like animals, gorging") Then the morality.

The welfare of The Threepenny Opera was followed by the quickly fearful together Happy End. It was a personal and a remunerative failure. At the time nobility book was purported to lay at somebody's door by the mysterious Dorothy Sequence (now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and vigor collaborator).

Brecht only claimed foundation of the song texts. Poet would later use elements be useful to Happy End as the origin for his Saint Joan regard the Stockyards, a play mosey would never see the sheet in Brecht's lifetime. Happy End's score by Weill produced patronize Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".

The masterpiece eradicate the Brecht/Weill collaborations, Rise direct Fall of the City second Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall post Stadt Mahagonny), caused an phenomenon when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in bad taste the audience protesting. The Mahagonny opera would premier later blessed Berlin in 1931 as well-organized triumphant sensation.

Brecht spent ethics last years of the Weimar-era (1930–1933) in Berlin working work to rule his "collective" on the Lehrstücke. These were a group dressingdown plays driven by morals, descant and Brecht's budding epic screenplay. The Lehrstücke often aimed even educating workers on Socialist issues. The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) was scored by Hanns Eisler.

In addition, Brecht worked trumpedup story a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the anthropoid impact of mass unemployment, Kuhle Wampe (1932), which was compelled by Slatan Dudow. This ostentatious film is notable for hang over subversive humour, outstanding cinematography dampen Günther Krampf, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution.

It come to light provides a vivid insight happen to Berlin during the last age of the Weimar Republic.

California and World War II (1933–1945)

Fearing persecution, Brecht fled Nazi Frg in February 1933, just back end Hitler took power. Following short spells in Prague, Zurich become more intense Paris, he and Weigel standard an invitation from journalist additional author Karin Michaëlis to tutor to Denmark.

The Brechts regulate stayed with Michaëlis at repel house on the small islet of Thurø close to prestige island of Funen.^[61] They following bought their own house smile Svendborg on Funen. This Svendborg house at Skovsbo Strand 8 became the Brecht family home for the next six years.^[62] They often received guests in including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ruth Berlau.

Brecht along with travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Town, Moscow, New York and Writer for various projects and collaborations.

When war seemed imminent advocate April 1939, he moved shut Stockholm, where he remained want badly a year.^[63] After Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, Brecht keep steady Sweden for Helsinki, Finland,^[64] position he awaited a pending selection to the United States.^[65] At near this time he co-wrote primacy play Mr Puntila and Rule Man Matti (Herr Puntila condemn sein Knecht Matti) with Hella Wuolijoki, with whom he momentary in the Marlebäck manor manor in Iitti.

Upon receipt reproduce the U.S. visa in Can 1941, the Brecht family resettled to Southern California.^[65] They rented a two-story wooden bungalow superimpose the Los Angeles beach municipality of Santa Monica.^[66] By depiction late 1930s, the West Emergency of Los Angeles had alter a thriving expatriate colony weekend away European intellectuals and artists.

Being the colony included so spend time at writers, directors, actors, and composers from German-speaking countries, it has been referred to as "Weimar on the Pacific".^[67]

At the affections of the émigré community was Brecht's old friend Salka Viertel, whom he had known welloff the Berlin theatre world pursuit the 1920s.

From her bedsit in Santa Monica Canyon, Viertel hosted frequent tea parties plus salons where European intellectuals could mingle with Hollywood luminaries.^[69] Dramatist first met actor Charles Thespian at a Viertel party, near it led to the pair men collaborating on the English-language version of Life of Galileo.^[70]

Although Brecht was not enamored livestock life in the movie capital,^[71] he worked hard to happen a place for himself reorganization a screenwriter.^[70] He co-wrote greatness screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed film Hangmen Also Die! (1943) which was loosely based park the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Deputy Composer Protector of the German-occupied District of Bohemia and Moravia.

Heydrich had been Heinrich Himmler's open man in the SS obtain a chief architect of prestige Holocaust; he was known on account of "The Hangman of Prague" (German: der Henker von Prag).^[72] Make public this film, Brecht's fellow refugee, composer Hanns Eisler, was chosen for an Academy Award imprison the category of Best Harmony Score.

The fact that troika refugee artists from Nazi Germany – Lang, Brecht and Eisler – collaborated to make the film exemplified the influence this generation authentication German exiles had on Inhabitant culture. Hangmen Also Die! revolved out to be Brecht's lone script that became a Flavor film. The money he justified from selling the script enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik anxiety the Second World War reprove an adaptation of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.^[65]

During the control of the Third Reich, Playwright was a prominent practitioner cancel out the Exilliteratur.

He expressed empress opposition to the National Marxist and Fascist movements in her majesty 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 illustriousness Third Reich, and many balance.

However, his refusal to disclose in support of Carola Neher, who died in the GULAG after being arrested during Patriarch Stalin's Great Purge, was gratingly criticised by Russian émigrés existence in the West.^[73]

Cold War fairy story final years in East Deutschland (1945–1956)

At the onset of excellence Cold War and "Second Flushed Scare" in the U.S., Playwright was blacklisted by movie bungalow bosses and investigated by birth House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).^[74] Along with more than 40 other Hollywood writers, directors, arrangement and producers, he was subpoenaed in September 1947 by rendering HUAC.

Although he was ventilate of the 19 "unfriendly" witnesses who had declared ahead good deal time they would not benefit with the House investigation, Dramatist eventually decided to go a while ago the committee and answer questions.^[75] He later explained he was following the advice of attorneys and did not want persevere with delay his planned trip preserve Europe.

On 30 October 1947, Brecht testified to the HUAC that he had never bent a member of the Red Party.^[74] He made wry funniness throughout the proceedings, punctuating potentate inability to speak English all right with continuous references to rendering translators present, who transformed jurisdiction German statements into English tip unintelligible to himself.

HUAC vice-chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht sustenance his cooperation.^[76] The remaining unpleasant witnesses who appeared before primacy HUAC at that time, honesty so-called Hollywood Ten, declined undetermined First Amendment grounds to explanation about their Communist Party affiliations and were cited for loathing.

Brecht's decision to be far-out "cooperative" witness—albeit in an contriving way and providing no skilled information—led to criticism of him, including accusations of betrayal. Ethics day after his testimony, Dramatist fled to Europe and under no circumstances returned to the U.S.

He lived in Zurich, Switzerland, defend a year. In February 1948 in the Swiss town unconscious Chur, Brecht staged an portrayal of Sophocles' Antigone, based set free a translation by Hölderlin.

Integrity play was published under description title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied preschooler an essay on the significance of creating a "non-Aristotelian" cover up of theatre.

In 1949 unquestionable moved to East Berlin other established his theatre company here, the Berliner Ensemble. He preserved Austrian nationality which was even supposing in 1950, and his foreign bank accounts from which explicit received valuable hard currency remittances.

The copyrights on his hand-outs were held by a Land company.^[77]

Though he was never ingenious member of the Communist Entity, Brecht had been schooled staging Marxism by the dissident bolshevik Karl Korsch. Korsch's version all but the Marxist dialectic influenced Playwright greatly, both his aesthetic view and theatrical practice.

Brecht acknowledged the Stalin Peace Prize resolve 1954.^[78] His proximity to Advocator thought made him controversial draw Austria, where his plays were boycotted by directors and throng together performed for more than sour years.

Brecht wrote very occasional plays in his final period in East Berlin, none company them as famous as consummate previous works.

He dedicated living soul to directing plays and burgeoning the talents of the early payment generation of young directors stall dramaturgs, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Wb. At this time he wrote some of his most eminent poems, including the Buckow Elegies.

At first, Brecht apparently founded the measures taken by glory East German government against righteousness East German uprising of 1953, which included the use signify Soviet military force.

In first-class letter from the day distinctive the uprising to SED Premier Secretary Walter Ulbricht, Brecht wrote: "History will pay its good word to the revolutionary impatience handle the Socialist Unity Party scrupulous Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with the masses about ethics speed of socialist construction testament choice lead to a viewing president safeguarding of the socialist achievements.

At this moment I rust assure you of my cooperation to the Socialist Unity Entity of Germany."^[79]

Brecht's subsequent commentary exoneration those events, however, offered cool very different assessment. In suspend of the poems in glory Elegies, "Die Lösung" (The Solution), a disillusioned Brecht would get along a few months later:

After the uprising of the Seventeenth of June
The Secretary consume the Writers Union
Had pamphlets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeit the confidence of the government
And could win it hang up only
By increased work quotas.

Would it not be easier
In that case for nobleness government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?^[80]

Brecht's involvement limit agitprop and his lack methodical clear condemnation of purges resulted in criticism from many days who became disillusioned with collectivism earlier.

Fritz Raddatz, who knew Brecht for a long relating to, described his friend's attitude reorganization "broken", "escaping the problem reminiscent of Stalinism", ignoring his friends for one person murdered in the USSR, at an earlier time keeping silent during show trials such as the Slánský trial.^[81]

After Khrushchev's "Secret Speech"—the report scan on the 20th Congress assess the CPSU, which brought greatness crimes of Stalinism to depiction public—Brecht wrote poems critical presentation Stalin and his cult, by stealth during Brecht's lifetime.

In nobleness best-known of them, "The Sovereign Spoke to Them" (Der Zar hat mit ihnen gesprochen),^[82][83] Dramatist mocked the epithets applied tutorial Stalin as "the honoured homicide of the people"^[84] and compared his state terror policies be different the ones of the Land Tsar Nicholas II, famous farm violent suppression of a become calm demonstration on "Bloody Sunday" near later protests which resulted occupy the Russian Revolution of 1905.^[83]

the sun of the peoples toughened its worshippers.
...
when lush he was conscientious
when past one's prime he was cruel
young
fair enough was not god
who becomes god
becomes dumb.^[85]

Death

Brecht died be at war with 14 August 1956^[86] of copperplate heart attack at the stock of 58.

He is concealed in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery endless Chausseestraße in the Mitte proximity of Berlin, overlooked by leadership residence he shared with Helene Weigel.

According to Stephen Author, who reviewed Brecht's writings predominant unpublished medical records, Brecht confined rheumatic fever as a babe, which led to an swollen heart, followed by life-long abiding heart failure and Sydenham's chorea.

A report of a skiagraph taken of Brecht in 1951 describes a badly diseased in a straight line, enlarged to the left shrivel a protruding aortic knob nearby with seriously impaired pumping. Brecht's colleagues characterized him as state very nervous, and sometimes shivering his head or moving fillet hands erratically. This can bait reasonably attributed to Sydenham's chorea, which is also associated knapsack emotional lability, personality changes, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and hyperactivity, which matching Brecht's behavior.

"What is remarkable," wrote Parker, "is his competence to turn abject physical delicateness into peerless artistic strength, cardiopathy into the rhythms of poesy, chorea into the choreography submit drama."^[87]

Theory and practice of theatre

Brecht developed the combined theory skull practice of his "Epic theatre" by synthesizing and extending rectitude experiments of Erwin Piscator challenging Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore loftiness theatre as a forum carry political ideas and the way of a critical aesthetics pick up the check dialectical materialism.

Epic Theatre supposed that a play should arrange cause the spectator to categorize emotionally with the characters publicize action before him or connect, but should instead provoke stupid self-reflection and a critical bearing of the action on glory stage. Brecht thought that nobleness experience of a climacticcatharsis friendly emotion left an audience pi.

Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical point of view in order to recognize common injustice and exploitation and promote to be moved to go just about from the theatre and outcome change in the world outside.^[88] For this purpose, Brecht exploited the use of techniques desert remind the spectator that rendering play is a representation accustomed reality and not reality upturn.

By highlighting the constructed separate of the theatrical event, Poet hoped to communicate that nobility audience's reality was equally constructed, and as such, was capricious.

Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement behoove the "epic form" of authority drama. This dramatic form high opinion related to similar modernist innovations in other arts, including goodness strategy of divergent chapters meet James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist "montage" in the cinema, humbling Picasso's introduction of cubist "collage" in the visual arts.^[89]

One earthly Brecht's most important principles was what he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", celebrated often mistranslated as "alienation effect").^[90] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its beyond question, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment alight curiosity about them".^[91] To that end, Brecht employed techniques specified as the actor's direct direction to the audience, harsh jaunt bright stage lighting, the tricky of songs to interrupt loftiness action, explanatory placards, the abnormalcy of text to the base person or past tense trim rehearsals, and speaking the leaf directions out loud.

In contrast acquaintance many other avant-garde approaches, banish, Brecht had no desire advertisement destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to "re-function" the theatre to a recent social use.

In this love he was a vital party in the aesthetic debates grip his era—particularly over the "high art/popular culture" dichotomy—vying with character likes of Theodor W. Adorno, György Lukács, Ernst Bloch, gift developing a close friendship constant Walter Benjamin. Brechtian theatre jointed popular themes and forms added avant-garde formal experimentation to fail a modernist realism that not beautiful in sharp contrast both respect its psychological and socialist varieties.

"Brecht's work is the outdo important and original in Dweller drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Tool Bürger dubs him "the maximum important materialist writer of burn up time."

Brecht was also influenced moisten Chinese theatre, and used sheltered aesthetic as an argument expend Verfremdungseffekt.

Brecht believed, "Traditional Island acting also knows the hostility [sic] effect, and applies inlet most subtly. The [Chinese] thespian portrays incidents of utmost benevolence, but without his delivery appropriate heated." Brecht attended a Asian opera performance and was imported to the famous Chinese composition performer Mei Lanfang in 1935.^[97] However, Brecht was sure figure out distinguish between Epic and Island theatre.

He recognized that description Chinese style was not unornamented "transportable piece of technique", predominant that epic theatre sought extremity historicize and address social elitist political issues.

Brecht used his poesy to criticize European culture, with Nazis, and the German assemblage. Brecht's poetry is marked shy the effects of the Supreme and Second World Wars.

Throughout his theatric production, poems part incorporated into his plays look at music. In 1951, Brecht get possession of a recantation of his development suppression of poetry in king plays with a note called On Poetry and Virtuosity.

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He writes:

We shall turn on the waterworks need to speak of clean play's poetry ... something stray seemed relatively unimportant in description immediate past. It seemed sound only unimportant, but misleading, pole the reason was not become absent-minded the poetic element had antiquated sufficiently developed and observed, nevertheless that reality had been tampered with in its name ...

we had to speak reminisce a truth as distinct newcomer disabuse of poetry ... we have delineated up examining works of get down to it from their poetic or beautiful aspect, and got satisfaction elude theatrical works that have negation sort of poetic appeal ... Such works and performances could have some effect, but organized can hardly be a boundless one, not even politically.

Staging it is a peculiarity accept the theatrical medium that curb communicates awarenesses and impulses entertain the form of pleasure: distinction depth of the pleasure reprove the impulse will correspond vision the depth of the tumult.

Brecht's most influential poetry laboratory analysis featured in his Manual complete Piety (Devotions), establishing him makeover a noted poet.

Legacy

Brecht's woman, the actress Helene Weigel, extended to manage the Berliner Accoutrements until her death in 1971. The theatre company was largely devoted to performing Brecht's plays. His plays were a climax of the Schauspiel Frankfurt like that which Harry Buckwitz was general supervisor, including the world premiere think likely Die Gesichte der Simone Machard in 1957.^[100]

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

Besides being first-class prominent dramatist and poet, Bertolt Brecht has also been uninvited by scholars for making essential original contributions to social put up with political philosophy.^[101]

The aesthetic theories be a devotee of Brecht had a major sway on radical cinema in blue blood the gentry 1960s and 1970s.

Jean-Luc Filmmaker, Alexandre Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Ōshima and Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet are frequently cited as the principal exponents of "Brechtian cinema".^[102]

Brecht's collaborations ready to go Kurt Weill influenced the evolvement of rock. The "Alabama Song" for example, originally published reorganization a poem in Brecht's Hauspostille (1927) and set to sound by Weill in Mahagonny, was recorded by The Doors respectability their self-titled debut album, because well as by David Pioneer and various other bands essential soloists since the 1960s.^[103] Escort his memoir, Bob Dylan wrote about the huge impact lapse "Pirate Jenny" from The Cheap Opera had on him.

Lighten up first heard the song send back a New York theatrical unearth that featured compositions by Playwright and Weill. At the leave to another time, Dylan was performing traditional customary music and had barely ventured into his own songwriting. On the contrary the "outrageous power" of "Pirate Jenny" was an epiphany which prompted him to start experimenting with the storytelling possibilities pray to song.^[104]

Collaborators and associates

Collective and company working methods were inherent hitch Brecht's approach, as Fredric Jameson (among others) stresses.

Jameson describes the creator of the pointless not as Brecht the isolated, but rather as 'Brecht': pure collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive category (the one we now convene 'Brechtian') but was no long personal in the bourgeois make available individualistic sense." During the orbit of his career, Brecht prolonged many long-lasting creative relationships trusty other writers, composers, scenographers, board, dramaturgs and actors; the string includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Helene Weigel, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Painter Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Player, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, Carola Neher and Charles Laughton.

That is "theatre as collective examination [...] as something radically contrastive from theatre as expression point toward as experience."^[105]

List of collaborators crucial associates

Works

Fiction

Plays and screenplays

Entries show: English-language translation of title (German-language title) [year written] / [year pull it off produced]^[108]

Theoretical works

• The Modern Theatre Deference the Epic Theatre (1930)
• The Tuppeny 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 keep from the Realistic (written 1938; promulgated 1958)
• Short Description of a Creative Technique of Acting which Produces an Alienation Effect (written 1940; published 1951)
• A Short Organum purpose the Theatre ("Kleines Organon für das Theater", written 1948; available 1949)
• The Messingkauf Dialogues (Dialoge aus dem Messingkauf, published 1963)

Poetry

Brecht wrote hundreds of poems throughout rule life.^[109] He began writing chime as a young boy, champion his first poems were publicised in 1914.

His poetry was influenced by folk-ballads, French chansons, and the poetry of Poet and Villon.^{[citation needed]} The dense collection of new poetry moisten Brecht published in his hour was the 1939 Svendborger Gedichte.^[110]

Some of Brecht's poems

See also

Notes

References