Revolutionary in the world of theater like few others, Bertolt Brecht is today remembered for being a great poet and playwright. Here is the story of his career and success in the twentieth century.
Who was Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known simply as Bertol Brecht, (February 10, 1898 – August 14, 1956 East Berlin) was a German playwright and poet.
He grew up in a bourgeois family that educated him according to the Protestant doctrine, also marking his education on a linguistic and cultural level. His childhood does not pass in a totally peaceful way due to the health problems and the difficult character that lead him to devote himself to poetry at a very young age.
In 1913 he wrote “The tree in flames”, one of the first compositions, followed by others with a war theme with the beginning of the First World War.
He also decides to enlist and so he obtained the emergency diploma for young soldiers and then was sent home and enrolled at the University of Munich. Here he attends different faculties but without too much interest so he decides to approach the world of theater and literature, closer to him.
The beginning of Bertolt Brecht’s career
Later he starts collaborating as theater critic for two different city newspapers before deciding to move to Monaco.
Here he joins the group “The cellar of laughter” which is dedicated to singing and cabaret shows with Karl Valentin. Also important is the collaboration with Frank Wedeking, committed to fighting bourgeois privilege by giving space to characters defined as “cursed”.
Bertolt is formed in a Dadaist environment, futurist and impressionist composed of rebellious and interesting personalities of the period. In this period he wrote poems that highlight the degradation and misery in which the marginalized, for whom he feels great pity, live.
Bertolt Brecht between exile and great successes
During the 1930s, his works did not find much acceptance by the Reich ministry of culture. The playwright, along with his family, is cost me to leave Berlin to move first to Prague and then to Vienna, Zurich and Paris. A friend meets them and invites him to Denmark where he stays for the next five years.
Exile, in all its difficulty, allows him to write his own better works and more famous then represented in different cities of the world. In 1934 he published “Threepenny Novel” and wrote other highly successful works for the next five years and then left Denmark for Stockholm. From Sweden he then moves on to Finland where he continues to write tragedies and poems concluded once in Russia. Numerous transfers that follow and the works realized, but among the most important moments we remember the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble theater in 1948 where he dedicated himself to directing for the well-known theater company.