Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht(1898-1956), German dramatist and poet; He served in the Medical Corps in World War I but later abandoned medicine for the theater. The play Drums in the Night (1923) won immediate acclaim. From 1924 he lived in the left-wing intellectual circles of Berlin and in the late 1920s became a Marxist. With the composer Kurt Weill he wrote successful musical dramas, including The Three penny Opera (1928). Brecht left Germany when the Nazis came to power and spent some time in Scandinavia and the US before returning to Germany in 1947. From 1949 he directed the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre company he had founded in East Berlin. His plays include The Life of Galileo (1943) and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1949).
