Poetry and Prose

Bertolt Brecht: German writer, theater director and poet, and one of the most important theater writers in the twentieth century. Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. He wrote poetry and prose at the secondary level, and joined the Faculty of Medicine and Natural Sciences in Munich in 1917, in addition to attending lectures in literature, philosophy and art history. He moved to Munich to work as a theater consultant in the Chamber Theatre, after which he moved to Berlin to begin his directing and playwriting career. He was forced to flee to Denmark after Hitler took power in 1933 because of his anti-Nazi ideas. The escape followed successively the incursion of German forces until he reached the United States. The United States of America, then returned to his homeland in 1948 and took over the management of the German theater in East Berlin. Collective oppression, and the role of power in deciding fate, all within the framework of dramatic plots that are not without comic irony. He was awarded the East German National Prize in 1951 and the International Lenin Peace Prize in 1954. He was a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, then chaired it until his death, and also chaired the PEN Club in both Germany. Bertolt Brecht died in Berlin on August 14, 1956.