Glued to Hitler: what Brecht’s overlooked collages tell us

Throughout his life, the great German playwright made punky montages that explored how Nazism infested the country he had to flee. Why have they taken so long to come to light?

Bertolt Brecht believed that theatre should not merely entertain its audience but make them think politically. To achieve this effect, thought the German playwright and poet, a play should not be polished – but jarring. Actors should break out of character to address their audience, plotlines should be broken up and interrupted. In one memorable phrase, he described his ideal play as one that could be “cut into individual pieces, which still remain fully capable of life”.

A new exhibition at Raven Row in London shows how literal the author of The Threepenny Opera was being when he came up with that description. Curated with the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin, brecht: fragments is the most extensive display to date of the visual material the playwright collected over the course of his career, from newspaper and magazine pictures to photocopies of medieval paintings and images from Chinese theatre.