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During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Background. Origins. In the winter of 1927–28, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's lover at the time, received a copy of Gay's play from friends in England and, fascinated by the female characters and its critique of the condition of the London poor, began translating it into German.
Dating from 1933, Brecht and Weill's final collaboration is a cautionary tale of ideals running up against pragmatic materialism. The central character, Anna, is on a seven-year journey around seven American cities, earning money to enable her family to build a dream-house by the Mississippi.
In 1933, Weill and Brecht, living in Paris, collaborated on The Seven Deadly Sins, before Brecht eventually left France for Denmark. During this time, Brecht traveled across Western Europe, until on the eve of World War II when he eventually fled to the United States.
His music was banned in Germany until after World War II. Weill and his wife divorced in 1933 but remarried in 1937 in New York City, where he resumed his career. He wrote music for plays, including Paul Green’s Johnny Johnson (1936) and Franz Werfel’s Eternal Road (1937).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In the Weimar’s twilight years, Weill partnered with leftist author Bertolt Brecht to conjure a popular entertainment that synthesized the sophistication of classical music, the soul of jazz, and the wallop of a Marxist rally.
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Like few others, Kurt Weill (1900-1950) and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) are synonymous with the cultural innovation of the Weimar Republic. Most famously with their Die Dreigroschenoper, the duo represented everything that the Nazis declared its enemy.
