Arnolt Bronnen

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Arnolt Bronnen born 19 August 1895 in Wien, died 12 October 1959 in East Berlin was an Austrian playwright and director.

Bronnen's most famous play is Parricide (Vatermord, 1922); the production of which that year is notable, among other things, for being that from which Bronnen's friend, the young Bertolt Brecht in an early stage of his directing career, withdrew, after being taken to hospital with malnutrition and the actors of the cast, led by Heinrich George, walking out on him.[1] According to The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, the "erotic, anti-bourgeois, black expressionism" of the play "caused a sensation" when it was eventually produced. Bronnen also wrote Bird of Youth (Geburt der Jugend, 1922) and Die Excesse (1923).[2] After having collaborated on film treatments and various theatrical projects together, in 1923 Bronnen and Brecht co-directed a condensed version of Pastor Ephraim Magnus (a nihilistic, expressionist play, according to The Cambridge Guide, "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs") by Hans Henny Jahnn.[3] Later in his life he wrote reportage-plays.[2]

Bronnen is alleged to have supported the Nazis; after the second world war he became a communist.[2]

[edit] Works cited

  • Banham, Martin, ed. 1998a. "Bronnen, Arnolt" In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378. p.132.
  • Banham, Martin, ed. 1998b. "Jahnn, Hans Henny." In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378. p.553.
  • Sacks, Glendyr. 1994. "A Brecht Calendar." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466. p.xvii-xxvii.
  • Thomson, Peter. 1994. "Brecht's Lives." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466. p.22-39.
  • Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. "Introduction." In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 041603280X. p.vii-xvii.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Willett and Manheim (1970, viii) and Thomson (1994, 26).
  2. ^ a b c Banham (1998a, 132).
  3. ^ Banham (1998b, 553), Sacks (1994, xviii), and Willett and Manheim (1970, viii).
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