In 1933, when Hitler assumed power, Brecht fled Nazi Germany for Denmark and spent the subsequent years moving throughout Scandinavia as the Nazis occupied country after country, eventually fleeing to Los Angeles. The Threepenny Opera premiered in 1928, becoming a verified hit in Berlin and the impetus for a new experimental era in musicals worldwide. Brecht and his collaborators sought new methods of theater-making which pointed out the hypocrisy of capitalism and the absurdity of art as escapism. As Brecht’s star rose, his first marriage began to deteriorate-he sought the company of his lovers Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel in Berlin, where he formed theatrical connections and built artistic collectives in the thriving cultural center even as the sun began to set on the Weimar Republic. In the early 1920s, Brecht moved to Munich, where he continued writing plays and found himself hailed by critics as a harbinger of a new era in the theater.

His interests soon turned to drama, and in 1918, he wrote his first full-length play, Baal, a drama about a degenerate young poet. At the onset of World War I, Brecht avoided conscription into the army by enrolling in medical school. Born into a middle-class family in Bavaria at the turn of the 20th century, Bertolt Brecht enjoyed a comfortable childhood-though later in life, he’d claim to have roots in the peasant class.

Brecht the threepenny opera