Who Was Ruth Berlau? / Wer War Ruth Berlau?

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English / German
Deutsch / English

One of the most controversial aspects of Brecht scholarship in the last two decades has been Brecht’s relationship with the many women in his life. Who Was Ruth Berlau? is devoted primarily to the life and work of Bertolt Brecht’s collaborator and lover Ruth Berlau, the Danish actress and journalist who accompanied Brecht and his family on their epic journey from Finland across the Soviet Union and the Pacific Ocean, as Brecht sought to put as much distance as possible between himself and Nazi Germany. In addition to contributions by leading scholars on Berlau and her relationship to Brecht—scholars such as Sabine Kebir, Hans Christian Nørregard, Franka Köpp, and Grischa Meyer—volume 30 of the Brecht Yearbook also makes available, for the first time, Bertolt Brecht’s and the great exile filmmaker Fritz Lang’s scenario “Never Surrender,” a recently discovered preliminary stage of the work on Lang’s classic 1943 anti-Nazi film Hangmen Also Die. Included are sections on contemporary theater in Great Britain, Hungary and Brazil; music, theater, and politics; and the Brechtian Lehrstück and the concept of Gestus. Roughly half of the contributions to volume 30 are in English and half are in German.

Distributed for the International Brecht Society.