Location: Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, Berlin, Germany
Cause of death: Heart Attack
Photo taken by: DeadGoodBooks
Buy books by Bertolt Brecht
German dramatist and poet who questioned the accepted practices of theatre and produced a unique political theatre.
He was born in Bavaria and during the First World War he worked as an orderly in a hospital in Munich. After the war he moved to Berlin where he married Marianne Zoff, an opera singer, with whom he had two children.
Brecht formed a writing collective that became very influential. They produced an adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar's Opera, called The Threepenny Opera, which was the biggest hit in 1920s Berlin.
In 1930 he married his second wife, the actress Helene Weigel. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Brecht went into exile, moving through Europe and ending up in the United States. During his exile he produced his most famous plays, including Mother Courage and Her Children and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Whilst living in Hollywood he tried his hand at screenwriting, but found little pleasure in it. During the Cold War Brecht was blacklisted by the film studios, due to ‘un-American activities’, so he returned to Europe and made East Berlin his home until his death.
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