Bertolt Brecht

As a young man he was in a relationship with Paula Banholzer and had a son with her. He married actress and singer Marianne Zoff in 1922 and divorced her in 1927. They had one daughter together.

In 1930, he married Helene Weigel, a German actress. They remained married till his death. They had two children.

Brecht died of a heart attack in 1956 at the age of 58.

Bertolt Brecht was born in Germany to a protestant mother and a catholic father. His father worked in a paper mill and his mother was a religious woman who ensured that he learned the bible.

He met Caspar Neher in school who later designed many of the sets for Brecht’s dramas and helped design a distinctive visual iconography that would uniquely identify the epic theatre.

The World War I broke out when he was just 16. He studied medicine at Munich University and served as a medical orderly in a military hospital in 1918.

He wrote his first play ‘Baal’ in 1918. It was the story of an aimless youth involved in several affairs. The play was theatrically produced in 1923.

‘Drums in the Night’ was the second play he wrote, but it was his first play to receive a theatrical production. It was written between 1918 and 1920, and produced in 1922.

In 1923, he wrote the script for a comic, slapstick film ‘Mysteries of a Barbershop.’ It was not successful during its time, but later on came to be regarded as one of the most important films in German film history.

His play ‘Man Equals Man’, produced in 1926, explored the themes of war, and human identity. The musical, ‘The Threepenny Opera’ was premiered under collaboration between Brecht, Kurt weill and Caspar Neher in 1928.

In 1930, his play ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, a political satire opera, composed by Kurt Weill, was performed. In the year 1932, Brecht wrote the script for ‘Kuhle Wampe’, a German film dealing with issues of unemployment and left wing politics.

‘The Threepenny Opera’, a musical that premiered in 1928 had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times across European by 1933.

The historical drama, ‘Life of Galileo’ dealt with the latter period of the life of the great Italian philosopher Galileo Galilei who was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church.

The play ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ which Brecht co-wrote with Margarete Steffin in 1939 is considered by some to be the greatest play of the 20th century. The play was also filmed several years after his death.

‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ is a play he wrote in 1944 while he was in the U.S. It tells the story of a child who is rescued and brought up by a peasant girl. This play is considered as one of his most important works.