Death of Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht died on 14 August 1956 in East Berlin, aged 58. A German poet, playwright and theatre director, Brecht was born in Augsburg and became known in the Weimar Republic for plays such as Baal and The Threepenny Opera, written with the composer Kurt Weill. A committed Marxist, he developed epic theatre, in which techniques such as direct address and a deliberate alienation effect were used to make audiences think rather than simply feel. After the Nazis came to power he went into exile, living in Scandinavia and the United States, where he wrote Mother Courage and Her Children and The Life of Galileo. He returned to East Berlin in 1949 and founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, the actress Helene Weigel.

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