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
It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality.
Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons.
In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.
When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.
In the contradiction lies the hope.
The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
It isn't important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
If you join the rat race you're in the race of rats.
Love is the wish to give, not to receive.