Bertolt Brecht a theatre revolutionary poet of the state outsider looks back on his life in 1956 the year of his death in East Berlin: from provocations in the Augsburg of the First World War to the early poetic and amorous height flights in Munich and Berlin in the 1920s his escape from Hitler and US exile followed by his later years caught in a dilemma between timeless classic and a failing GDR class fighter an inflexible free man and a compromised Artist.