Bertolt Brecht
playwright
| Date of Birth | : | 10 Feb, 1998 |
| Date of Death | : | 14 Aug, 1956 |
| Place of Birth | : | Augsburg, Germany |
| Profession | : | German Theatre Practitioner And Playwright |
| Nationality | : | Garman |
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann & Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the Verfremdungseffekt.
During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.
Quotes
Total 20 Quotes
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn't seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn't know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.
Who does Not Know the Truth, is simply a Fool... Yet who Knows the Truth and Calls it a Lie, is a Criminal.
He who fights, can lose. He who doesn't fight, has already lost.
There are men who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives: These are the indispensable ones.
For art to be 'unpolitical' means only to ally itself with the 'ruling' group.
Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals establish a bank.
If you don't have fun, you don't have a show.
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
