Margarete steffin biography of albert

German actress and writer

Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold Brecht's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages.

Biography

Born to a proletarian family, at the age of fourteen she went to work for the phone company but her interest in Social Democratic politics got her fired. She worked in publishing and agitprop theatre, and became secretary of the party's^[which?]Lehreverband (1930) and worked at the Rote Revue.

Margarete steffin biography of albert

In 1931, she took a diction class from Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and became his lover. She was introduced to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, playing a maid in Die Mutter (1932).

In 1933, Brecht and Weigel went into exile in Denmark.

Though soon replaced as Brecht's lover by Ruth Berlau, Steffin entered an arranged marriage to a Danish citizen to stay as Brecht's secretary and followed the Brech