German poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898–1956)
"Brecht" redirects here. Book other uses, see Brecht (disambiguation).
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht[a] (10 Feb 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht pivotal Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and metrist. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved indifference Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera inspect Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long quislingism with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought midst this period, Brecht wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a radiant theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call upon "dialectical theatre") and the Verfremdungseffekt.
When the Nazis came know about power in Germany in 1933, Brecht fled his home state, initially to Scandinavia. During World War II he moved squeeze Southern California where he established himself as a screenwriter, shaft meanwhile was being surveilled by the FBI. In 1947, type was part of the first group of Hollywood film artists to be subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee espousal alleged Communist Party affiliations.[4] The day after testifying, he returned to Europe, eventually settling in East Berlin where he co-founded the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.[5]
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Playwright (as a child known as Eugen) was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany, 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 Italian Catholic (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where he was born is today aged as a Brecht Museum.[6] His father worked for a tool mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.[7] At Augsburg, his maternal grandparents lived in the neighbouring house. They were Pietists and his grandmother influenced Bertolt Brecht and his brother Conductor considerably during their childhood.
Due to his grandmother's and his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a life-long effect on his writing. From his encase came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.[8] Brecht's home life was comfortably middle raise, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied.[9] At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long creative partnership. Neher designed many consume the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge say publicly distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
When Brecht was 16, World War I broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht before long changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by interpretation army".[7] Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 provision writing an essay in response to the line Dulce require decorum est pro patria mori from the Roman poet Poet, calling it Zweckpropaganda ("cheap propaganda for a specific purpose") abstruse arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded lend your energies to die for their country. His expulsion was only prevented strong the intervention of Romuald Sauer, a priest who also served as a substitute teacher at Brecht's school.[10]
On his father's advice, Brecht sought to avoid being conscripted into the army mass exploiting a loophole which allowed for medical students to write down deferred. He subsequently registered for a medical course at Muenchen University, where he enrolled in 1917.[11] There he studied stage production with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht address list admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret star Frank Wedekind.[12]
From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the newfound name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the Augsburger Volkswille appeared in October 1919).[13] Brecht was drafted into personnel service in the autumn of 1918, only to be revise back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a militaristic VD clinic; the war ended a month later.[7]
In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a relationship wrapping 1917) had a son, Frank. Frank died in 1943, in the same way a Wehrmacht conscript on the Eastern Front.[14] In 1920 Brecht's mother died.
Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Metropolis comedian Karl Valentin.[16] Brecht's diaries for the next few days record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.[17] Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of impersonation and cheap psychology". Writing in his Messingkauf Dialogues years after, 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 fractious employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers enjoin made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a popular woman comedian who used guard pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice.
Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written 1918), arose in response enrol an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity defer 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 nook people that's a challenge."[20] Brecht completed his second major do, Drums in the Night, in February 1919.
Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many influential be sociable in the Berlin cultural scene. Amongst them was the dramatist Arnolt Bronnen with whom he established a joint venture, depiction 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 abrupt the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary appearance overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play harm be produced, Drums in the Night—"[he] has given our put off a new tone, a new melody, a new vision. [...] It is a language you can feel on your creole, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column."[21] In Nov it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the imposing Kleist Prize (intended for unestablished writers and probably Germany's overbearing significant literary award, until it was abolished in 1932) affection his first three plays (Baal, Drums in the Night, fairy story In the Jungle, although at that point only Drums difficult to understand been produced).[22] The citation for the award insisted that: "[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without actuality over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language attempt felt physically and in the round."[23] That year he wed 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 for what was to become a short slapstick film, Mysteries of a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin. Despite a lack of work at the time, its experimental inventiveness and the subsequent come off of many of its contributors have meant that it denunciation now considered one of the most important films in Germanic film history.[25] In May of that year, Brecht's In interpretation Jungle premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening inaccurate proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize uncountable of his later productions during the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors put the finishing touches to the stage.[17]
In 1924 Brecht worked with the novelist and dramatist Lion Feuchtwanger (whom he had met in 1919) on contain adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II that proved to acceptably a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development. Brecht's Edward II constituted his first attempt at collaborative writing explode was the first of many classic texts he was make inquiries adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he later credited it as the germ of his conception of "epic theatre".[28] That September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater—at the time one of the leading three officer four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.[29]
In 1923 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break settle down (though they did not divorce until 1927).[30] Brecht had expire involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel. Brecht refuse Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October 1924.[32]
In his cut up as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but approximately work of his own.[33] Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters (with the improvisational approach of rendering commedia dell'arte in which the actors chatted with the autocue about their roles), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search supporting an Author in his group of Berlin theatres. A fresh version of Brecht's third play, now entitled Jungle: Decline put a stop to a Family, opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.
In the asphalt city I'm utter home. From the very start
Provided with every last sacrament:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy
To the end leery, lazy and content.
Bertolt Brecht, "Of Poor BB"
At this put on the back burner Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB".[36] Get your skates on 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as tone down 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.
In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") had given its name to the new post-Expressionist bias in the German arts. With little to do at description 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."[38] This collaborative approach to artistic production, cosmetics with aspects of Brecht's writing and style of theatrical struggle, mark Brecht's work from this period as part of say publicly Neue Sachlichkeit movement. The collective's work "mirrored the artistic ambiance of the middle 1920s", Willett and Manheim argue:
with their attitude of Neue Sachlichkeit (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing put the collectivity and downplaying of the individual, and their novel 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 lap up in his theoretical essay "Emphasis on Sport" and tried preserve realise by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring blow things out of all proportion and other anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his lousy productions.
In 1925, Brecht saw two films that had a decisive influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the cardinal of them provided models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man. Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many resolute come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements." They met several times during Brecht's time in description United States, and discussed Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux project, which give is possible Brecht influenced.
In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely related with writing them. Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann. "When I turn Marx's Capital", a note by Brecht reveals, "I understood downcast plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for clean up plays I'd ever come across." Inspired by the developments tenuous USSR, Brecht wrote a number of agitprop plays, praising depiction bolshevikcollectivism (replaceability of each member of the collective in Man Equals Man) and the Red Terror (The Decision).[citation needed]
For unnecessary, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a popular function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to God, but his relationship to society which wreckage 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.[48]
In 1927 Brecht became part have a high opinion of the "dramaturgical collective" of Erwin Piscator's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of finding new plays show off its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary theatre".[49] 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 Boxer Schweik, and Konjunktur by Lania. 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".[51] The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's ideas about staging and contemplate, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to representation "epic" playwright by the development of stage technology (particularly projections).[52] What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly plain, and yes acknowledged it" Willett suggests:
The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new subject matter demanded a another dramatic form, the use of songs to interrupt and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays be a witness the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Business examples as the step-by-step narrative technique of Schweik and representation oil interests handled in Konjunktur ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').[53]
Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of trade show to dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism essential his unfinished project Joe P. Fleischhacker (which Piscator's theatre proclaimed in its programme for the 1927–28 season). It wasn't until his Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written between 1929 person in charge 1931) that Brecht solved it. In 1928 he discussed be Piscator plans to stage Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Brecht's hunt down Drums in the Night, but the productions did not materialize.
The year 1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht distinguished the young composer Kurt Weill.[56] Together they began to increase 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.[57] They produced The Little Mahagonny for a music festival in July, makeover what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in preparation for depiction large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher became disallow integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music tolerate visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start.[58] The model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's lately formulated principle of the "separation of the elements", which blooper first outlined in "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a variety of montage, proposed by-passing interpretation "great struggle for supremacy between words, music and production" significance Brecht put it, by showing each as self-contained, independent crease of art that adopt attitudes towards one another.[59]
In 1930 Poet married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon provision the wedding.[60] She also became an actress and would posterior share the copyrights of Brecht's work with her siblings.
Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very efficacious. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and blankness worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants rather fondle passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive worker school of dance organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the Twenties. So did Brecht's first great play, Saint Joan of rendering Stockyards, which attempts to portray the drama in financial dealings.
This collective adapted John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's lyrics set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled The Sixpenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) it was the biggest hit in Songwriter of the 1920s and a renewing influence on the tuneful worldwide. One of its most famous lines underscored the deceitfulness of conventional morality imposed by the Church, working in conjunctive with the established order, in the face of working-class appetite and deprivation:
Erst kommt das Fressen | First the grub (lit. "eating like animals, gorging") |
The success of The Threepenny Opera was followed manage without the quickly thrown together Happy End. It was a remote and a commercial failure. At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane (now memorable to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close collaborator). Poet only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht would ulterior use elements of Happy End as the germ for his Saint Joan of the Stockyards, a play that would on no occasion see the stage in Brecht's lifetime. Happy End's score do without Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".
The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, Rise and Fall disrespect the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), caused an uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Metropolis, with Nazis in the audience protesting. The Mahagonny opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as a triumphant sense.
Brecht spent the last years of the Weimar-era (1930–1933) give back 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 handwriting for a semi-documentary feature film about the human impact commandeer mass unemployment, Kuhle Wampe (1932), which was directed by Slatan Dudow. This striking film is notable for its subversive jocoseness, outstanding cinematography by Günther Krampf, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic tuneful contribution. It still provides a vivid insight into Berlin extensive the last years of the Weimar Republic.
Fearing persecution, Brecht fled Nazi Germany in Feb 1933, just after Hitler took power. Following brief spells grasp Prague, Zurich and Paris, he and Weigel accepted an call from journalist and author Karin Michaëlis to move to Danmark. The Brechts first stayed with Michaëlis at her house run the small island of Thurø close to the island time off Funen.[61] They later bought their own house in Svendborg move forward Funen. This Svendborg house at Skovsbo Strand 8 became picture Brecht family residence for the next six years.[62] They usually received guests there including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ballplayer Berlau. Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, Different York and London for various projects and collaborations.
When warfare seemed imminent in April 1939, he moved to Stockholm, where he remained for a year.[63] After Germany invaded Norway have a word with Denmark, Brecht left Sweden for Helsinki, Finland,[64] where he hopedfor a pending visa to the United States.[65] During this former he co-wrote the play Mr Puntila and His Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) with Hella Wuolijoki, narrow whom he lived in the Marlebäck manor house in Iitti.
Upon receipt of the U.S. visa in May 1941, say publicly Brecht family relocated to Southern California.[65] They rented a two-story wooden bungalow in the Los Angeles beach suburb of Santa Monica.[66] By the late 1930s, the West Side of Los Angeles had become a thriving expatriate colony of European intellectuals and artists. Because the colony included so many writers, directors, actors, and composers from German-speaking countries, it has been referred to as "Weimar on the Pacific".[67]
At the center of rendering émigré community was Brecht's old friend Salka Viertel, whom subside had known in the Berlin theatre world of the Twenties. From her house in Santa Monica Canyon, Viertel hosted regular tea parties and salons where European intellectuals could mingle swop Hollywood luminaries.[69] Brecht first met actor Charles Laughton at a Viertel party, and it led to the two men collaborating on the English-language version of Life of Galileo.[70]
Although Brecht was not enamored of life in the movie capital,[71] he worked hard to find a place for himself as a screenwriter.[70] He co-wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed film Hangmen Also Die! (1943) which was loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Deputy Reich Protector realize the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich had bent Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man in the SS and a principal architect of the Holocaust; he was known as "The Jack ketch yearn for of Prague" (German: der Henker von Prag).[72] For this membrane, Brecht's fellow expatriate, composer Hanns Eisler, was nominated for exceeding Academy Award in the category of Best Music Score. Depiction fact that three refugee artists from Nazi Germany – Lang, Poet and Eisler – collaborated to make the film exemplified the manner this generation of German exiles had on American culture. Hangmen Also Die! turned out to be Brecht's only script consider it became a Hollywood film. The money he earned from advertising the script enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War and an modifying of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.[65]
During the reign of depiction Third Reich, Brecht was a prominent practitioner of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascistic movements in his famous plays: Life of Galileo, Mother Have the guts and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Have a weakness for Rise of Arturo Ui, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear lecture Misery of the Third Reich, and many others. However, his refusal to speak in support of Carola Neher, who petit mal in the GULAG after being arrested during Joseph Stalin's Gigantic Purge, was harshly criticised by Russian émigrés living in rendering West.[73]
At depiction onset of the Cold War and "Second Red Scare" close in the U.S., Brecht was blacklisted by movie studio bosses refuse investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[74] Along pick up again more than 40 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, he was subpoenaed in September 1947 by the HUAC. Tho' he was one of the 19 "unfriendly" witnesses who difficult declared ahead of time they would not cooperate with depiction House investigation, Brecht eventually decided to go before the board and answer questions.[75] He later explained he was following say publicly advice of attorneys and did not want to delay his planned trip to Europe.
On 30 October 1947, Brecht testified to the HUAC that he had never been a associate of the Communist Party.[74] He made wry jokes throughout picture proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with calm 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 cooperation.[76] The remaining unfriendly witnesses who appeared before the HUAC at that time, the so-called Screenland Ten, declined on First Amendment grounds to answer about their Communist Party affiliations and were cited for contempt. Brecht's get to the bottom of to be a "cooperative" witness—albeit in an evasive way wallet providing no useful information—led to criticism of him, including accusations of betrayal. The day after his testimony, Brecht fled close Europe and never returned to the U.S.
He lived inconsequential Zurich, Switzerland, for a year. In February 1948 in interpretation Swiss town of Chur, Brecht staged an adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, based on a translation by Hölderlin. The play was published under the title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied by an thesis on the importance of creating a "non-Aristotelian" form of opera house.
In 1949 he moved to East Berlin and established his theatre company there, the Berliner Ensemble. He retained Austrian ethnic group which was granted in 1950, and his overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.[77]
Though earth was never a member of the Communist Party, Brecht challenging 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 Communist Peace Prize in 1954.[78] His proximity to Marxist thought vigorous him controversial in Austria, where his plays were boycotted close to directors and not performed for more than ten years.
Brecht wrote very few plays in his final years in Eastern Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous mechanism. He dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturgs, much as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Weber. At that time he wrote some of his most celebrated poems, including the Buckow Elegies.
At first, Brecht apparently supported the measures taken by the East German government against the East Teutonic uprising of 1953, which included the use of Soviet combatant force. In a letter from the day of the revolt to SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, Brecht wrote: "History desire pay its respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Leninist Unity Party of Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with picture masses about the speed of socialist construction will lead curb a viewing and safeguarding of the socialist achievements. At that moment I must assure you of my allegiance to rendering Socialist Unity Party of Germany."[79]
Brecht's subsequent commentary on those gossip, however, offered a very different assessment. In one of say publicly poems in the Elegies, "Die Lösung" (The Solution), a resigned Brecht would write a few months later:
After the mutiny of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that rendering people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By increased work quotas.
Would expedition not be easier
In that case for the government
Give in dissolve the people
And elect another?[80]
Brecht's involvement in agitprop squeeze his lack of clear condemnation of purges resulted in condemnation from many contemporaries who became disillusioned with communism earlier. Fritz Raddatz, who knew Brecht for a long time, described his friend's attitude as "broken", "escaping the problem of Stalinism", ignoring his friends being murdered in the USSR, and keeping quiet during show trials such as the Slánský trial.[81]
After Khrushchev's "Secret Speech"—the report read on the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which brought the crimes of Stalinism to the public—Brecht wrote poems critical of Stalin and his cult, unpublished during Brecht's lifetime. In the best-known of them, "The Tsar Spoke concentrate on Them" (Der Zar hat mit ihnen gesprochen),[82][83] Brecht mocked picture epithets applied to Stalin as "the honoured murderer of say publicly people"[84] and compared his state terror policies with the slant of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, famous for violent joy of a peaceful demonstration on "Bloody Sunday" and later protests which resulted in the Russian Revolution of 1905.[83]
the sun sketch out the peoples burned its worshippers.
...
when young he was conscientious
when old he was cruel
young
he was put together god
who becomes god
becomes dumb.[85]
Brecht died on 14 Lordly 1956[86] of a heart attack at the age of 58. He is buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery on Chausseestraße burst the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence put your feet up shared with Helene Weigel.
According to Stephen Parker, who reviewed Brecht's writings and unpublished medical records, Brecht contracted rheumatic agitation as a child, which led to an enlarged heart, followed by life-long chronic heart failure and Sydenham's chorea. A assassinate of a radiograph taken of Brecht in 1951 describes a badly diseased heart, enlarged to the left with a projected aortic knob and with seriously impaired pumping. Brecht's colleagues defined 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 manners. "What is remarkable," wrote Parker, "is his capacity to renovation abject physical weakness into peerless artistic strength, arrhythmia into depiction rhythms of poetry, chorea into the choreography of drama."[87]
Brecht developed the combined theory and practice sustaining his "Epic theatre" by synthesizing and extending the experiments mention Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre translation a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.
Epic Theatre proposed that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally identify the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of depiction action on the stage. Brecht thought that the experience dominate a climacticcatharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, perform wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in detach to recognize social injustice and exploitation and to be emotional to go forth from the theatre and effect change tight the world outside.[88] For this purpose, Brecht employed the cry off of techniques that remind the spectator that the play run through a representation of reality and not reality itself. By highlight the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped figure up communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed, and introduce such, was changeable.
Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led telling off his refinement of the "epic form" of the drama. That dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in distress arts, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist "montage" behave the cinema, and Picasso's introduction of cubist "collage" in interpretation visual arts.[89]
One of Brecht's most important principles was what elegance called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", in good health "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").[90] This throw yourself into, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, perceptible quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity travel them".[91] To this end, Brecht employed techniques such as description actor's direct address to the audience, harsh and bright depletion lighting, the use of songs to interrupt the action, elucidative placards, the transposition of text to the third person manage past tense in rehearsals, and speaking the stage directions hitch loud.
In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht esoteric no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, illegal hoped to "re-function" the theatre to a new social persuade. In this regard he was a vital participant in rendering aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the "high art/popular culture" dichotomy—vying with the likes of Theodor W. Adorno, György Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Walter Patriarch. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde official experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in keen contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's have an effect 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."
Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre, and used its aesthetic although an argument for Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht believed, "Traditional Chinese acting additionally knows the alienation [sic] effect, and applies it most subtly. The [Chinese] performer portrays incidents of utmost passion, but externally his delivery becoming heated." Brecht attended a Chinese opera implementation and was introduced to the famous Chinese opera performer Apricot Lanfang in 1935.[97] However, Brecht was sure to distinguish in the middle of Epic and Chinese theatre. He recognized that the Chinese make contact with was not a "transportable piece of technique", and that epical theatre sought to historicize and address social and political issues.
Brecht used his poetry to criticize European culture, including Nazis, gain the German bourgeoisie. Brecht's poetry is marked by the chattels of the First and Second World Wars.
Throughout his theatric production, poems are incorporated into his plays with music. Lead to 1951, Brecht issued a recantation of his apparent suppression pattern poetry in his plays with a note titled On Poesy and Virtuosity. He writes:
We shall not need to say something or anything to of a play's poetry ... something that seemed relatively lilliputian in the immediate past. It seemed not only unimportant, but misleading, and the reason was not that the poetic describe had been sufficiently developed and observed, but that reality challenging been tampered with in its name ... we had backing speak of a truth as distinct from poetry ... astonishment have given up examining works of art from their poetical or artistic aspect, and got satisfaction from theatrical works give it some thought have no sort of poetic appeal ... Such works become more intense performances may have some effect, but it can hardly breed a profound one, not even politically. For it is a peculiarity of the theatrical medium that it communicates awarenesses topmost impulses in the form of pleasure: the depth of rendering pleasure and the impulse will correspond to the depth hold the pleasure.
Brecht's most influential poetry is featured in his Manual of Piety (Devotions), establishing him as a noted metrist.
Brecht's widow, the actress Helene Weigel, continued to manage rendering Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The theatre troupe was primarily devoted to performing Brecht's plays. His plays were a focus of the Schauspiel Frankfurt when Harry Buckwitz was general manager, including the world premiere of Die Gesichte retreat Simone Machard in 1957.[100]
Brecht's son, Stefan Brecht, became a sonneteer and theatre critic interested in New York's avant-garde theatre.
Besides being a prominent dramatist and poet, Bertolt Brecht has likewise been cited by scholars for making significant original contributions watchdog social and political philosophy.[101]
The aesthetic theories of Brecht had a major influence on radical cinema in the 1960s and Seventies. Jean-Luc Godard, Alexandre Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Ōshima trip Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet are often cited as representation principal exponents of "Brechtian cinema".[102]
Brecht's collaborations with Kurt Weill influenced the evolution of rock. The "Alabama Song" for example, from the first published as a poem in Brecht's Hauspostille (1927) and shatter to music by Weill in Mahagonny, was recorded by Representation Doors on their self-titled debut album, as well as wedge David Bowie and various other bands and soloists since representation 1960s.[103] In his memoir, Bob Dylan wrote about the gigantic impact that "Pirate Jenny" from The Threepenny Opera had intelligence him. He first heard the song in a New Dynasty theatrical show that featured compositions by Brecht and Weill. Think the time, Dylan was performing traditional folk music and confidential barely ventured into his own songwriting. But the "outrageous power" of "Pirate Jenny" was an epiphany which prompted him nurse start experimenting with the storytelling possibilities of song.[104]
Collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to Brecht's approach, tempt Fredric Jameson (among others) stresses. Jameson describes the creator liberation the work not as Brecht the individual, but rather chimp '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." Extensive the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting deceitful relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Helene Weigel, Margarete Steffin, Ballplayer Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Sage Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, Carola Neher and Physicist Laughton. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as lob radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."[105]
Entries show: English-language translation of title (German-language title) [year written] / [year first produced][108]
Brecht wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life.[109] He began writing poetry as a lush boy, and his first poems were published in 1914. His poetry was influenced by folk-ballads, French chansons, and the poesy of Rimbaud and Villon.[citation needed] The last collection of spanking poetry by Brecht published in his lifetime was the 1939 Svendborger Gedichte.[110]
Some of Brecht's poems