Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German theatre practitioner, playwright and poet. In Berlin, where he moved in 1924, he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill, began a lifelong collaboration with Hanns Eisler and became a leading theorist of epic theatre, which sought the audience's critical reflection rather than its emotional identification. He fled Nazi Germany in 1933, first to Scandinavia and later to Southern California, and in exile wrote Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he returned to Europe and co-founded the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin with Helene Weigel.