Weigel, Helene

(1900-1971)

   Actress, manager. Weigel was best known for her marriage to Bertolt Brecht, though she was an outstanding performer in her own right. She began her career in Frankfurt am Main and then established herself in Berlin during the 1920s at the State Theater. There she appeared in several productions, winning serious critical attention in a 1926 staging of Friedrich Hebbel's Herodes und Miramne and in 1928 at the Volksbühne production of Brecht's Mann ist Mann (A Man's a Man). The latter, along with a subsequent version of the play in 1931, set precedents for the collaboration between Brecht and her in the years to come.

   With Brecht and their children, Weigel fled Germany in 1933 and ultimately settled in Santa Monica, California; they returned to East Berlin in 1948 at the invitation of Soviet Zone officials. At the Deutsches Theater, she played the title role in Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) in 1949, the role for which she is best remembered. Her performances at the 1954 Theater Festival of Nations in Paris won her world renown. Weigel became manager of the Berliner Ensemble, and other honors from the German Democratic Republic followed, including professorships, honorary degrees, artistic citations, and membership in the largely ceremonial House of Deputies. She continued her acting career concomitant with her managerial duties through the 1960s for the Berliner Ensemble, appearing in Brecht's adaptation of Coriolanus, his Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe (St. Joan of the Stockyards), and Helmut Baierl's Frau Flinz.