Bertolt Brecht

"Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality
 but a hammer with which to shape it"

Research I have made on Brecht, the master of "Epic theatre"
German Poet
Playwright
Theatre director

His full name is Eugen(his name as a child) Berthold Friedrich Brecht. He was born in Augsburg, Germany on the 10th of February 1898, and he died in East Berlin on August the 14th 1956. Brecht had five children with 3/4 different women.
The house Brecht was born in is now preserved as a Brecht Museum. He lived a comfortable middle class life. Brecht first began his love of theatre when he went to school in Augsburg and met Caspar Neher who he began a life long creative partnership with and Caspar created the sets for Brecht's dramas and he helped Brecht create the visual iconography of Epic Theatre.
When Brecht was 16, the first world war had began and he refused to become "swallowed up by the war" and wanted to go study on a medical course at Munich University. He then studied Drama instead, and began his passion and love of theatre and creating drama.
Brecht wrote his play "Baal" in 1917, whilst he was studying at University and it was about suffering caused from excessive sexual pleasures, at the same time Brecht's mother was heavily dosed on morphine because of her progressive cancer, so I am not sure if this play is something to do with his mother's sufferings? Or his mothers illness is what inspired him to write such a abstract play.
From research I have learned that Brecht's sexuality was very undecided throughout his life, he experimented with homo sexuality and visited brothels to widen his experience and his mind, he is said to have been with 8 different women at the same time between the ages of 16 and 20, and one of these women, Paula Banholzer, gave birth to his first child, who was seen as "Illegitimate" and was born in 1919, when Brecht was 20/21. His diaries stated that he needed males and females in order to satisfy his sexual desires. Suggesting that he was bi-sexual.
I never knew any of this about Brecht, and it makes me wonder that his political plays all stem from his own personal struggles. As he lived a very erratic life.
He travelled back and forth to Berlin throughout the 1920's, his play "Drums in the night" first opened in Munich and then later in Berlin, he attended the rehearsals of very famous directors, including Max Reinhardt.
He also met his first wife, Marianne Zoff when he was 24. And his second child was born a year later, Hanne their daughter, who later became a very successful actress. Brecht had multiple affairs and spent little time with his wife and daughter, and he moved to Berlin in 1924, and his wife moved in with her parents and stopped contact with Brecht due to his erratic lifestyle and poor parenting. He met a communist actress in Berlin, Helene Weigel. When Brecht was 26, he had his third child with Weigel, a son called Stefan. And in 1929, after getting divorced from Marianne Zoff, he married Helene and in 1930 Brechts fourth child, Barbara was born. By this point, Brecht was only 31 and had already married twice and had four children, 2 were illegitimate. He was a womaniser, but saw all the women in his life as very important for his writing and inspired his plays.
Brecht was obsessed with the idea of "abandonment" and was constantly ending relationships and moving onto someone else, I feel he was never satisfyed with his life and constantly wanted changes, and I feel he liked the idea of using women and leaving them. Maybe this could be stemmed from his mother dying when he was at a young age.
Some of his mistresses helped him write some of his plays, for example, "The Threepenny opera" was largely accredited to Elisabeth Hauptmann.
Ruth Berlau was another one of his mistresses he had whilst he was stilled married to Helene Weigel, and she gave birth to his third illegitimate child in 1944. His wife was very tolerant of his affairs, which is bizarre to me, and she often warned other men off his mistresses as Brecht became upset when his mistresses were seeing other men! 

In 1948, Brecht and his wife travelled to East Berlin and set up together the Berliner Ensemble, with the full support of the Communist regime. Later in 1950, Brecht and his wife were granted full Austrian citizenship.

Brecht's four great plays were written between 1938 and 1945. These included, for one, The Life of Galileo, which followed history slavishly. It dealt with the protagonist's self-hatred for giving up his convictions in the face of the Inquisition. The others were Mother Courage and Her Children; The Good Woman of Setzuan, which in some ways follows from Mother Courage in examining the compatibility of virtue and a capitalist world and lastly "The Caucasian chalk circle" which introduces questions about power and who is entitled to own things. After this period, Brecht worked on his famous adaptation of Antigone and spent much of his energy recording his theoretical ideas.

All his life Brecht had suffered with a heart condition, he had his first heart attack when he was just 12 years old, and was sent to a medical institution to calm him down, as he was always very nervous and used to twitch a lot.

This remained a problem his whole life, and in 1956, he died from a heart attack, whilst in the middle of working on a play called "Waiting for Godot" Brecht was very interested in modern drama and had very strange requests for his funeral, he instructed that a stiletto be placed through his heart and that he was buried in a steel coffin so his body was not riddled with worms. I think his stiletto request definitely stemmed from his sexual fantasies and desires. His will said that he wanted to give specific mistresses money, and his wife Helene Weigel did this for him generously. He was buried in Berlin.

Brechts life was very turbulent and erratic, which reflected in his plays massively.