هو شاعر وكاتب ومخرج مسرحي ألماني. يعد من أهم كتاب المسرح في القرن العشرين. عمل مخرجا مسرحيا. وهناك اخرج العديد من مسرحياته.وتزوج عام 1929 من الممثلة هلينا فايجل Helene Weigel وفي عام 1933 بعد استيلاء هتلر على السطة في ألمانيا, هرب إلى الدانمارك. ثم هرب عام 1941 من الدانمارك من القوات الألمانية التي كانت تتوغل في أوروبا, وتحتل كل يوم بلدا جديدا, فهرب إلى سانتا مونيكا في كاليفورنيا, وهناك قابل العديد من المهاجرين الألمان الذين فروا من الدولة الهتلرية, التي بدأت تمارس القهر والاغتيالات ضد المعارضين, وتفرض اضطهادا لا حدود له ضد اليهود, وتحرق كتب الأدباء التي لا ترضى عنهم. والتي كانت كتب بريشت من الكتب التي أحرقت. وهناك في أمريكا لم يكن بريشت راضيا عن الأوضاع الاجتماعية والأخلاقية في أمريكا. وفي عام 1947 حوكم برتولت بريشت في واشنطن, بسبب قيامه بتصرفات غير أمريكية وفي عام 1948 عاد إلى الوطن ألمانيا, ولكن لم يسمح له بدخول ألمانيا الغربية, فذهب إلى ألمانيا الشرقية, حيث تولى هناك في برلين الشرقية إدارة المسرح الألماني. ثم أسس في عام 1949 "مسرح برلينر إنسامبل" (فرقة برلين). وتولى عام 1953 رئاسة نادي القلم الألماني. وحصل عام 1954 على جائزة ستالين للسلام. وقد أثر مسرح "برلينر إنسامبل" على المسرح الألماني في فترة ما بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية, وظل بريشت يعمل في هذا المسرح حتى وفاته في عام 1956 أعماله المسرحية بعل طبول في الليل حياة إدوارد الثاني ملك إنجلترا الرجل هو الرجل أوبرا الثلاثة قروش صعود وسقوط مدينة مهاجوني حياة جاليليو الاستثناء والقاعدة الأم البؤس والخوف في الرايخ الثالث الأم شجاعة وأبنائها الإنسان الطيب من سيتشوان دائرة الطباشير القوقازية

Bertolt Brecht (born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions. From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time." As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience." There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley. During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.