Edinburgh German Yearbook 5 by Laura Bradley, Karen Leeder - 9781571134929

Edinburgh German Yearbook 5Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity\nAuthor(s): Laura Bradley, Karen Leeder\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, United States\nImprint: Camden House Inc\nISBN-13: 9781571134929, 978-1571134929\nSynopsis\nBrecht's activities in the GDR, the regime's marginalizing response and posthumous appropriation of his legacy, and creative responses in the GDR and after.\n\nThe avant-garde writer and director Bertolt Brecht left the West for good in 1949, returning to East Berlin and founding the Berliner Ensemble. While he quickly became identified internationally as the cultural figurehead of the young socialist state, his relationship with the authorities was always complex, and he was increasingly marginalized by restrictive and authoritarian structures of power. It was only after his death that the regime sought to elevate him as a socialist classic - a shift that entailed the selective appropriation of his legacy and the developmen.