Brecht, Playwright And Author, Died Suddenly: New Theory Behind Death

Yahoo! News:

A professor at Manchester University in Britain says he has uncovered the truth behind the death of German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

Professor Stephen Parker, an expert on modern German literature, said the playwright died from an undiagnosed rheumatic fever which attacked his heart and motorneural system, eventually leading to a fatal heart failure in 1956.

Read the whole story: Yahoo! News

Comments

[LMPE]

01:24 AM on 11/17/2010

As I understand it, when the red-baiters questioned Bertolt Brecht, he pulled one on them. They asked him "Did you write this?" and he answered "No. What I wrote was in German."

[Schweik]

11:54 PM on 11/14/2010

"People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long."--Bertolt Brecht

An unfortunate utterance.

[Stuzzadelic]

06:28 PM on 11/14/2010

Arturo Ui - now who does he remind you of in American Politics.

[ponderingmuch]

01:11 AM on 11/14/2010

I wish he could still be around and writing plays.

I saw Olympia Dukakis play Mother Courage at the Charles Playhouse in Boston when I was in high school and finally I knew what world I belonged in.

Of course by the time I got their all the those arty theaters that PAID were out of business.

For free I eventually got to do some of Brecht's plays, but making a living at it? Nah. Maybe if he were here he could lead the revolution.

[ponderingmuch]

01:13 AM on 11/14/2010

There, not their, but if you say it out loud you cannot tell the difference.

[leftbehind2000]

12:12 AM on 11/14/2010

...and all along I thought it was Mac the Knife...

[Remendado]

02:17 PM on 11/14/2010

Very witty..not bad!

[JScott]

08:46 AM on 11/17/2010

In the city of Mahagonny

[DAE]

10:48 PM on 11/13/2010

My father also had a rheumatic heart and died in his 50s.

[GeorgeWGump]

09:19 PM on 11/13/2010

Just the other day I was thinking "Who killed Bertolt Brecht?" Not.

[FZliveson]

09:00 PM on 11/13/2010

I'd bet money he was offed by the Stasi. Watch the film "The Lives of Others" and the depths that the intelligence networks went to had no bottom in dastardliness. Great film, even though it requires fluency in the German language or reading sub-titles. Huge impact film.

[Aelfgifu]

12:20 PM on 11/14/2010

It wasn't actually a documentary though. You should say that.

[FZliveson]

12:30 PM on 11/14/2010

If you want to say "that" go ahead.  
Toot your own freaking horn but don't tell others how to play their own.
What's your actual comment there, Aelfgifu?

[MaxwellPuthoff]

02:17 PM on 11/14/2010

Who said it was?

[anotherplayaguy]

02:23 PM on 11/14/2010

Just as likely the C.I.A. He really made the House Unamerican Activities Committee look foolish. Someone should write a play about that, "Father Courage and the American Dwarves."

[dirigentin]

03:17 PM on 11/13/2010

writer of one of my all-time favorite lines, fondly remembered from HS German class, "Gegen Morgen in der grauen Frühe pissen die Tannen " (from his poem, "Vom armen B.B.")

[FZliveson]

09:16 PM on 11/13/2010

A penny for the translation. Google is not helping much.

[unkn1]

09:41 AM on 11/14/2010

"Against morning in the grey dawn piss the fir trees" ?
"Towards tomorrow in the grey dawn pee the evergreens" ?

[Remendado]

02:25 PM on 11/14/2010

The real translation: "Close to dawn in the grey morning, the fir trees are pissing."

[ProgressiveAggie]

11:25 AM on 11/13/2010

Nothing is more alienating than a heart attack. Bertolt I wish you were here to weigh in on some of the current craziness!

[FZliveson]

09:16 PM on 11/13/2010

The Stasi were pretty alienating.

[ProgressiveAggie]

01:21 PM on 11/14/2010

No argument there. I have no pinings for communism as a system, nor for the dictatorship masquerading as socialism of the former Eastern Block. I think the true value of Marx and Brecht was in their observations and criticisms of capitalism.

[Berlinica]

05:21 PM on 11/14/2010

He was here. He fled the U.S. after he was supposed to be questioned by the HUAC.