Life of Galileo, also known as Galileo, is a play by the 20th century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and collaborator Margarete Steffin with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. The play was written in 1938 and received its first theatrical production at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, opening on the 9th of September 1943. This production was directed by Leonard Steckel, with set-design by Teo Otto. The cast included Steckel himself, Karl Paryla and Wolfgang Langhoff.
1971 Berliner Ensemble production
Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans, c. 1640
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann & Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.
Brecht in 1954
Brecht's house in Santa Monica, 1063 26th Street (2014)
Brecht and Weigel on the roof of the Berliner Ensemble during the International Workers' Day demonstrations in 1954
Graves of Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery