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Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht was born on Feb. 10, 1898, in Augsburg. The son of a Catholic businessman, Brecht was raised... in his mother's Protestant faith. In 1917 he matriculated at the University of Munich to study philosophy and medicine. In 1918 he served as a medical orderly at a military hospital in Augsburg. The unpleasantness of this experience confirmed his hatred of war and stimulated his sympathy for the unsuccessful Socialist revolution of 1919.
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Brecht would include, in the text spoken in rehearsal, all stage directions. He went so far as to write what he called “practice scenes”. These were meant to cast new light on well-known scenes by use of ironic parallels. He wrote, too, what he called “bridge scenes” to be interpolated in the text in rehearsal but omitted in performance. But as these were written for classics that he never produced, their value is questionable.
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It may be that Brecht never joined the Communist Party because he was unsure that the party would follow through with its proposals, though he was in agreement with fundamental principles of communism. Thus, his answer to the HUAC may have been sincere. It did... generate a good deal of subsequent criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The remaining witnesses, the so called Hollywood Ten, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. HUAC Vice Chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for cooperating. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht flew to Europe.[52]
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Brecht clearly was a radical. His early plays are about the decay and decadence of the bourgeois society that, as a young and successful artist, he felt himself part of. But at that point, Brecht was a bohemian rather than a Marxist. It was the polarisation of Germany’s inter-war Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism that led him to deepen his politics.
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In zijn laatste levensjaren houdt Brecht zich vooral bezig met het stimuleren van in zijn ogen getalenteerde schrijvers en toneelspelers. In Oost-Berlijn verhuist hij nog één keer, naar de Chausseestraat direct naast het kerkhof waar hij na zijn dood in 1956 begraven wordt. Vlak voor zijn dood mag hij – in 1955 – nog de Stalin-Vredesprijs in ontvangst nemen. Bertolt Brecht sterft in 1956 op 58-jarige leeftijd aan een hartinfarct, zijn vrouw Helene Weigel overlijdt in 1971.
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Brecht uses the example of an accident-eyewitness. To show bystanders what happened, he may imitate, say, the victim's gait but will only quote what is relevant and necessary to his explanation. Moreover, the actor remains free to comment on what he shows.
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Bertolt Brecht