Helene Weigel

Weigel, Helene (Helene Helli Weigel) (Vienna, 1900-71, (East) Berlin), the actress-wife and collaborator of B. Brecht, to whose productions she devoted her remarkable talents after acting under Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin; her transition to the Epic Theatre (see Episches Theater) was referred to by Brecht as the ‘Abstieg der Weigel in den Ruhm’ (Der Messingkauf, 3. Nacht). Her co-operation with Brecht began with Baal in a production of 1926. She became particularly famous for her portrayal of Brecht's mother-figures, notably in Die Mutter, performed in 1932 before she shared Brecht's years of exile, and in Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder in Berlin in 1949 and later in Paris and London. She last came into the limelight with the part of Volumnia in Coriolan (an adaptation by Brecht of Shakespeare's play) in 1964.

Helene Weigel was co-founder of the Berliner Ensemble, which she directed after Brecht's death in 1956 until her own death.

Weigel in 1967, as "Mother" in Bertolt Brecht's play The Mother.

Stamp

Helene Weigel (12 May 1900 in Vienna – 6 May 1971 in Berlin) was one of the outstanding actors of her generation. She was the second wife of Bertolt Brecht, and together they had a son Stefan.

The daughter of a Jewish lawyer, she became a Communist Party member from 1930 and Artistic Director of the Berliner Ensemble after her husband Brecht's death in 1956. Among the Brecht roles she is most noted for creating are: Pelagea Vlassova, The Mother of 1932, Antigone in Brecht's version of the Greek tragedy, the title role in his civil war play Señora Carrar's Rifles and, most famously, the iconic Mother Courage.

Between 1933 and 1947, as a refugee from Hitler's Germany, she was seldom able to pursue her acting craft - even during the family's six-year stint in Los Angeles. It was only with the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble in the German Democratic Republic in 1949 that the brilliance of Brecht's theatre began to be recognised worldwide. She died in 1971, still at the helm of the company, and many of the roles that she created with Brecht are still in the theatre's repertoire today.

External links

• Berliner Ensemble

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