Born Eugen Bertolt Friednch Brecht on February 10,1898, in Augsburg, Germany, Bertold Brecht is regarded as a founding father of modern theater and one of its most incisive voices. His innovative ideas would prove to have a profound effect on many genres of modern narrative, not the least of which are novels, short stories, and cinema. Brecht is considered a pioneer of socially conscious theater— especially in the subgenre of anti-reality theater, which sought to debunk the illusory techniques of realistic drama. His work reflects his commitment to his political beliefs. By the time he was a young adult he had firmly embraced the communist doctrines of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who authored the seminal texts The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

Brecht began life as the intellectually rebellious son of a bourgeois (middle-class) paper factory director. His mother was Catholic, his father Protestant; Brecht...