THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Brecht, Bertolt ___ 1898-1956 ___ German
___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria,
into a mixed Catholic/Protestant family. He was educated at Königliches
Realgymnasium, and then enrolled as a medical student at the Ludwig Maximilian
University in Munich. He never finished training as a doctor but did do
some military service as a medical orderly. He wrote his first play in 1918,
during the Bavarian revolutionary turmoil, but it was not produced until
1923. In 1919, he joined the Independent Social Democratic party and became
friends with the writer Lion Feuchtwanger. In consequence of a brief affair,
Brecht's son Frank was born. In 1922, Brecht married the actress Marianne
Zoff. Two years later, he was appointed a consultant at Max Reinhardt's
Deutches Theater in Berlin. In 1928, he was married a second time, to Helen
Waigel. The same year he wrote 'The Threepenny Opera' with Kurt Weill. It
was translated and staged in the US in 1933. Already in the mid-1920s, Brecht
had been studying Marxism, and this interest led him to write several political
dramas such as 'Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny', also with Weill.
In fear of Hitler, Brecht fled from Germany in 1933, first to Scandinavia
then to California, writing poems and plays all the while. His famous plays
include 'Galileo', 'Mother Courage and Her Children' and 'The Caucasian
Chalk Circle'. In 1948, Brecht returned to Germany, settled in East Berlin,
and launched the celebrated Berliner Ensemble. In 1955, he received the
Stalin Peace Prize.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1920-1922 1934-1955 ___ literary
self love/sex theatre Denmark Sweden Finland Switzerland
WEB TEXT LINKS
one
extract on Feuchtwanger
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Bertolt
Brecht Archive
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Bertolt Brecht Journals
Diaries 1920-1922
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |