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Known for
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Developing an innovative style of drama known as epic theater
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Using drama to explore social and ideological issues
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Milestones
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1922 Produced the play Drums in the Night, a work that helped win the Kleist Drama Prize
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1924 Took the position of assistant drama specialist at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater
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1928 With Kurt Weill, produced The Threepenny Opera, a ballad opera critical of bourgeois society
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1929 Embraced Marxism, a commitment that profoundly influenced the ideas he chose to explore in his work
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1933 Was exiled from Nazi Germany for his leftist politics, and spent several years in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland before going to the United States in 1941
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1941 Produced Mother Courage and her Children, a play in which a mother figure's greed for wartime profits ultimately leads to the loss of her children
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1943 Produced The Good Person of Setzuan, the story of a compassionate prostitute forced to adopt a cruel male persona to survive
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1949 Returned to Berlin after a hiatus in Switzerland and formed the Berliner Ensemble, a theater company
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1949 Published A Little Organum for the Theater, in which he documents the style he called epic theater
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Did You Know
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Brecht began his career studying medicine and working in an army hospital.
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A Marxist, Brecht was forced to defend himself in 1947 before a congressional committee on un-American activities.
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While living in the United States, Brecht tried to make a living as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and as a playwright on Broadway, and failed at both.
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