Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Germany. His first poems, heavily influenced by Rimbaud and Verlaine, were published at age 16. He served as an orderly in the German army during the First World War, but by its end was deeply disenchanted, not only with the war, but with society in general. His first play, Baal, was written in 1918 in response to Hanns Johst's romaticising tragedy, The Lonely Man. This was followed in 1920 by Drums in the Night. During this period, he was writing a good deal of poetry and music as well. Poetry was easy for him, like breathing, and so drama was the more noble cause.
Brecht was a regular in the cabaret acts of Trude Hesterberg and Karl Valentin in the early 1920s in Munich. In 1922 Drums in the Night had its Munich premier, and then played at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. He was awarded the Kleist Prize for this play, and at twenty-four years of age, achieved national recognition and critical acclaim as a playwright and poet.
Brecht's next play was In the Jungle of the Cities, a play which prompted one critic to say,
Spheres of light and confusion revolve about this young man: his emotions are rooted in primordial sounds: his hands uncover fragments of life. They can balance humanness with humanity and conquer human frailty in the earthly spirit. He has a wild, prize-worthy, young talent, as long as one does not demand that a twenty-year-old begin at his peak.
Brecht was far from his peak. In 1924, he moved to Berlin, where he continued to write, collaborating with the great German composer, Kurt Weill, on The Threepenny Opera, The Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and The Seven Deadly Sins. During this prolific period he also wrote his first two notebooks of Versuche (Experiments) and began his theoretical writings, which he would continue to the end of his life.
In 1933, he went into exile due to the rise of the Nazis. Brecht was number five on Hitler's blacklist, partly because of a song he had written, "The Ballad of the Dead Soldier," which appears in Drums in the Night. He moved to Denmark, where he wrote, among other things, The Threepenny Novel, The Roundheads and the Peakheads, The Good Person of Sezuan, and two of his masterpieces, Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children.
In 1941, the Nazis invaded Denmark, and Brecht moved to Finland and then to America with his wife, the actress Helene Wiegel, where he worked briefly in Hollywood. There he was reunited with other German intellectuals, including Lion Feuchtwanger, Fritz Lang, Hans Eisler, and Paul Dessau. He also met Aldous Huxley and Charlie Chaplin. Brecht was a fan of Chaplin especially, once saying, "There are two directors in the world. Chaplin is the other."
During this period, Brecht had trouble finding work, but continued to write, producing The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and the American version of The Life of Galileo, translated with and starring Charles Laughton.
In 1947, he was subpoened by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee; after testifying (smoking a cigar the whole time), he returned to Europe, where he formed the Berliner Ensemble with Helene Wiegel. There he finally realized his dream of producing and directing his own work, and produced some of the finest productions of the twentieth century. He also continued his theoretical writings, including Theatrearbeit and the Model Books, which chronicled the rehearsals and productions of the Berliner Ensemble. Brecht died in 1956.