M. Ted-

You should consider writing the book or at least an article. Brecht is an important literary figure and there isn't much perspective evident in this thread.

I don't have a lot of familiarity with traditional German folk music, other than drinking songs and sea shanties. But I don't think either of those have much to do with what I find intriguing about the music that Brecht and his friends created.

I also think that Brecht found Hollywood in the World War 2 period only endurable because he was doing something to help the war effort to defeat Nazi Germany.

When he fled the States in the late 1940's to Switzerland, it was only a temporary haven. And the offer from East Germany for financial support for his own theatre company was compelling, and his wife did have family in East Berlin; his wife was also a principal actress in his plays. The East German "commissars" were never comfortable with Brecht but their Moscow counterparts were savvy enough to engineer a Starlin Prize or whatever it was called.

Charley Noble