Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, poet and theatre practitioner whose work transformed modern drama through an explicitly political and anti-naturalistic approach. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 he left Germany and spent years in exile across Europe and the United States, writing major works including Mother Courage and Her Children and developing the theatrical ideas associated with epic theatre.

Brecht returned to Europe after the war and settled in East Berlin in 1949, where he and the actress Helene Weigel established the Berliner Ensemble. His return gave the emerging East German state an internationally famous cultural figure, although his relationship with Communist authorities was never simply one of obedience and his theatre retained a distinctive critical identity.

In Joseph Kanon’s Stardust, Brecht appears among the German-speaking émigré community in wartime and post-war Hollywood. In Leaving Berlin, his return to Berlin and the staging of Mother Courage and Her Children form part of the cultural world through which Kanon explores the political competition for returning exiles in the Soviet sector.