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Bertolt Brecht, 1898 to 1956, was one of the greatest european playwrights of the 20th century.
His aim was to make the familiar strange with plays such as Mother Courage and the Caucasian Chalk circle.
He wanted his audiences not to sit back, but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life and act on what they learned.
And he developed his approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post war life in East Berlin.
And he since inspired dramatists around the world.
With me to discuss Bertold Brecht are Laura Bradley, professor of german and theatre at the University of Edinburgh, David Barnett, professor of theatre at the University of York and Tom Kuhn, professor of 20th century german literature and emeritus fellow of St.
Hugh's College, University of Oxford.
Tom Kuhn Brecht was born in Augsburg in Bavaria.
Can you tell us something about his early life?
Yes, of course.
He was born, as you just said, in 1898.
It's quite worth holding onto that because he's two years older than the century, always as we go on then through the 20th century.
So his childhood fell before the First World War and Augsburg then was the Augsburg is, will never forgive me, but quite a sleepy, conservative sort of place.
It has a great cultural and political past, but that really lies in the Renaissance period when the Fuggers, the banking house, were based there, who financed the Holy Roman Empire.