Early Brecht

With two of his friends, Heinrich Scheuffelhut and Rudolf Hartmann, the three boys bought a second hand puppet theatre and put on shows for their family and friends. The boys would charge their audience 2 marks per performance. At this time 2 marks was the equivalent to half a days work for a manual labourer.

When it was snowing, Brecht's family maid Marie Miller would harness herself to the boys sled and take them to school. While Brecht did not mind his maid pulling him to school, he would always insist on Marie stopping just before they were in sight of the school and walking the remaining distance so that his friends would not see him.

Brecht had six relationships operating at the same time. He would tell each of the girls the same story of his devotion, would read them all the same poems and tell each one that she was his only love. He would slowly gain their trust so that he might sleep with them, even going so far as to meet with their families and invite the girls around to his house to meet his mother.

Brecht was driven by appearance. While coming from a relatively well off and successful family he wanted to appear hard done by, one of the working class. He also wanted to appear intelligent, so when writer Cesare Lombroso said that a high forehead was the hallmark of intelligence Brecht shaved an inch off his hairline. However this masquerade didn't last long as Brecht couldn't be bothered to continually shave his head, so he took to wearing a cap until the hair grew back to a suitable length.

Brecht's early period was focused on plays being more humourous. He did this in a bleak and cynical way, and presented social and political questions, attacking bourgeois values. His plays were, technically, innovative for the time. The bourgeois convention of the 'fourth wall' was rejected, stories were improbable, settings exotic and songs served as a commentary for the action. Important works of this time were Drums in the Night (1918), Baal (1922), Man is Man (1924-5), The Threepenny Opera (1928) and The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahagonny (1928-9).