Brecht was playwright by trade--he came from a middle/upper middle class family and had the same sort of aspirations that someone from that background would have. He made a lot of money on Threepenny Opera, and bought a country house with his money--He wrote for both Hollywood and Broadway, and if he was not commercially very successful, it was not for want of trying--he was politically on the left, but he was a social moralist rather than a political ideologist, and had no problem with any of the material rewards that his work brought him.

Brecht escaped from the Nazis by way of Moscow, and had meetings there with Soviet Intelligence. He continued to have contact with them while he was in the US, though his relationship with them is not clear. As Germany's leading playwright, it was in the Soviets interest that he not speak out against them, and he never did.

Likely, he was received in East Germany as a person of great importance because of his long standing relationship with the soviets, and because of his stature as a literary figure, rather than with any ideological agreement with his views.