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The Week in Germany: Culture

August 18, 2006

From Berlin to Broadway: Remembering Bertolt Brecht 50 Years On

"Change the world; it needs it" - this appeal from Bertolt Brecht has lost none of its validity although 50 years have passed since his death.

"Brecht is the only genuinely world famous German dramatist," says theater director Claus Peymann, who heads the Berlin Ensemble originally founded by Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel. People all over the world continue to passionately seek explanations for what is going on around them, maintains Peymann. "Brecht can still help people to pose the right questions and he can sometimes provide the right answers," he says. "How does injustice arise? How can the world be made a better place to live in? Why has armed conflict in the world not come to an end?"

Bertolt Brecht has been called the most enigmatic of the great modern dramatists.

Brecht, a native of the southern German city of Augsburg, died on August 14, 1956 in East Berlin at the age of 58. Today, his works are the most frequently performed of any author on the German stage, after those of Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm. Brecht's most popular works include the anti-capitalistic The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage and Her Children, which revolves around war and those who profit from it.

Cyndi Lauper, Meryl Streep star in Brecht plays

Several productions in Germany and the United States this year are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the playwright's death.

On this side of the Atlantic, a world premiere interpretation of The Threepenny Opera, which featured a powerful performance by American popstar icon Cyndi Lauper was staged by The Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54 on Broadway in a spring run that came to a close on June 25. At present, Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline are starring in a version of Mother Courage and her Children in New York's Central Park through September 3.

Brecht was intrigued by America, which led him to write two plays set in Chicago, Saint Joan of the Stockyards and In the Jungle of Cities, long before he was forced into an exile from Nazi Germany which brought him to Hollywood in 1941.

Following his return to postwar Germany from this self-imposed American exile in 1948, Brecht, who was drawn to the sweeping utopian ideals of Marxism since 1926, chose the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as his new home.

Merkel's Thoughts on Brecht

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the GDR, spoke of her appreciation for Brecht's works and about its political significance then and now in a double interview with actor and director Klaus Maria Brandauer recently published in Die Welt newspaper.

"I saw him as a free spirit, certainly a confirmed leftist, but he did not fit into the GDR program; that made him interesting," said Merkel. She was fascinated by his eloquence and ability to get to the heart of the matter. Arturo Ui, which Merkel saw numerous times in the Berlin Ensemble, is one of the most accurate artistic confrontations of the Third Reich but also says much about the nature of dictatorships, she said.

"Brecht gave voice on stage to those people who in the public discourse had no voice," Merkel said. "In this he was something of a folksinger who gave ordinary people a voice and who described their lives in an unvarnished way."

Links:

Mother Courage and Her Children in New York's Central Park

Berlin Ensemble (in German)

Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) at Admiralspalast (in German)

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