New Film on German Communist Playwright Bertolt Brecht

The famous left-wing German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was made alive in a movie made by one of Germany's leading directors, Heinrich Breloer.

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Shown at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, in Germany, the film is a biopic of the dramatist whose socialists writings are making a comeback in the times of the rise of right-wing politics.

The movie, “Brecht” is divided into two parts. The first 90 minutes show his early life in Augsburg and Berlin when he was a supporter of World War I and Germany’s aggression. However, he realized the imperialist nature of war and denounced it publicly.

During the 1920s, he started studying Marxist literature and started working closely with the German Communist Party along with leftist intellectuals such as Karl Korsch.

In the second part, his life in the United States is shown but then suffered from the U.S. witchhunt of communists in 1947 and moved to East Germany.

He was influenced by Trotsky’s writings. Even though he was not a Stalinist and often criticized Stalin on many occasions, he provided crucial support to Soviet Russia proving that support for an ideology does not have to be blind.

By doing that, Brecht embodied the Mao Zedong’s theory “On Conflict” which says internal conflict, dialogue, and arguments is the only way to move forward. Otherwise, every party and organization will face stagnation.

“He loved the masks of the classics,” Breloer said about Brecht and in his film, he tried to look behind the masks to bring out the life of the literary genius.