Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1898. He studied medicine in Munich and served briefly as a medical orderly at the end of the First World War before turning to the theater. In Berlin he wrote The Threepenny Opera (1928) with the composer Kurt Weill, which became a great hit. He developed what he called 'epic theater', using songs, placards and other devices to keep audiences thinking critically rather than simply losing themselves in the story. A Marxist, he left Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and lived in exile in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and from 1941 in the United States. In exile he wrote many of his best-known plays, including Mother Courage and Her Children, set in the Thirty Years' War, The Life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In 1947 he was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and left the country. He settled in East Berlin, founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, Helene Weigel, and died there in 1956.

Bertolt Brecht is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: His mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Catholic; as an adult he was a Marxist and not religious. Source: Wikipedia