East Berlin, 1956. Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary of the theater and poet of the state, looks back: his exploits as a teenager during the World War I; his romantic adventures during the twenties; the escape of the Nazi regime; the return from exile. The life of a timeless classic, a class fighter, an indefatigable free spirit, a committed artist.
The documentary traces the tragic story of the "Threepenny Opera" from stage to screen and ultimately to the bitter lawsuit between Bertolt Brecht and the film producers.
"Cause of Death Unknown" - Carola Neher (1900-1942) actress, singer and feminist. Brecht wrote the role Polly Peachum for her. She practiced boxing with Marlene Dietrich. After Hitler seized power, thousands of German communists and anti-fascists fled to the Soviet Union, the "fatherland of the working people". The tragedy of German communism is that the vast majority of them perished or were lost during Stalin's "cleansing". Carola Neher is one of the fate figures of that time. In the 20s, she belonged to the narrow circle of Brecht actresses. The film accompanies her son Georg Becker in search of his mother's traces in the sinking Soviet Union.
Archive footage of bomb detonations during the Second World War combined with abstract graphic elements which show the destructive potential of modern nuclear missiles. Together the images are a silent warning of armament and war.
Eugen Berthold Friedrich "Bertolt" Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century.
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