Bertolt Brecht’s return to East Berlin

An émigré from Nazi rule, the author Bertolt Brecht returns to East Berlin on 22 October 1948 accompanied by his wife Helene Weigel. After the end of the war the Americans, British and French had refused him entry into their respective occupation zones. Brecht, who was already a Communist sympathiser in the twenties, is very open to „establishing Socialism“ in the Eastern part of Germany.

Not until the June 1953 popular uprising in the DDR is put down will he distance himself from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He will die in 1956 from the results of a heart attack.

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Berthold Brecht and Helene Weigel on the roof of the Berlin Ensemble theater in East Berlin, which was founded by Brecht himself, 1954