Ruth Berlau

Who was Ruth Berlau?

Ruth Berlau was a Danish actress, director, photographer and writer, known for her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and for founding the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv in Berlin.

Born to a merchant family, she learned French at a convent school but had to drop out due to a pregnancy at the age of thirteen. She studied acting and established her Danish reputation playing Anna in Brecht's Drums in the Night. During her teenaged years she financed a bicycle tour of France by writing up a somewhat fictionalized account her travels for a Danish newspaper. In 1930 she toured the Soviet Union by bicycle and on her return joined the communist party. Later she took part behind the front lines in the Spanish civil war.

In 1933 she presented herself to the newly arrived Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel, then staying on the island of Fyn, and within two years had become his lover. In 1936, she divorced the doctor Robert Lund and threw herself into the collaboration with Brecht, acting as a secretary as well as writing, translating, photographing and directing. With Brecht she published the short story collection Jedes Tier kann es, considered obscene in its time. In 1940, she followed the Brecht clan to Sweden, Finland, the USSR and finally to the United States, where a rupture with Brecht took place in 1944. In New York she gave birth to her only child who was premature and only lived a few days.