Helene Weigel (1900–1971)

Helene Weigel was born in Vienna, where she attended a progressive school founded by social reformer Eugenie Schwarzwald. As a teenager, she began taking acting lessons. She got work with the New Theater in Frankfurt am Main in 1919–1921, and with the Frankfurt Playhouse in 1921–1922. In 1922 she moved to Berlin, where for the next 10 years she acted in numerous play. She had a son with Brecht in 1924 and married him in 1929; they had a daughter in 1930. The couple worked together closely for more than 30 years. Both Weigel and Brecht were committed members of the Communist Party. Following the rise of the Nazi regime, they went into exile in Denmark. In 1937 Weigel traveled with a group of other German émigrés to Paris to play the title role in Brecht’s play Señora Carrar’s Rifles. The following year, the group performed Brecht’s The Private Life of the Master Race (also known as Fear and Misery of the Third Reich). The Nazis revoked the family's German citizenship and they moved to Sweden, then Finland, and then in 1941 to the USA, where they settled in California. Weigel spent most of her time raising her children and arranging for Brecht to continue with his work without interruption. In 1947 the day after Brecht testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the couple moved back to Germany and settled in the Soviet sector of East Berlin. She became the city's most celebrated actor with her performance in Mother Courage and Her Children in 1949. Later that year, Weigel and Brecht founded the Berliner Ensemble with Weigel as manager and actor. She also became involved in costume design, due to her interest in art history. After Brecht died in 1956, she became the company's artistic director. She continued to act and direct until her death, supervised the publication of Brecht’s complete works, and set up his archives.