Just as Brecht sought new artistic avenues, the coin motif also chose an unusual visual language. It shows the theater man with a portrait that is essentially cheerful, yet thoughtful and relaxed in the manner of a drawing from a graphic novel. The apparent distortion of the portrait and the motto “Change the world, it needs it!” leads to a subtly productive irritation. The eagle in the form of a halo on the value side is finely drawn and complements the picture side in identical imagery. The coin was designed by the artist Katrin Pannicke from Halle (Saale).
The 20 euro collector’s coin “125. Birthday Bertolt Brecht” honors the versatile artist who was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg.
After abandoning his medical studies, Brecht worked as a director and dramaturge in Munich and Berlin. He had been a freelance writer since the early 1920s. He celebrated a great international success with the “Threepenny Opera” (music: Kurt Weill), which premiered in Berlin in 1928. As a communist sympathizer, Brecht was on the National Socialists' wanted list and had to leave Germany in 1933. He lived with colleagues and his family in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the USA, which he left in 1947 the day after an interrogation by the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. From autumn 1947 he moved to Switzerland with Helene Weigel for a year, and the Berliner Ensemble founded by the couple began playing in the 1949/50 season.
Bertolt Brecht died on August 14, 1956 in Berlin, and his impact continues to this day. Be it as the inventor of epic theater, which eliminates the separation between the actors and the audience and continues to influence stage art all over the world to this day. Be it as a “laboratory of versatility”, as Walter Benjamin characterized it, with a lasting impact in many areas: theater, film, poetry, prose, song and political thought, but also in arts such as stage design, music and architecture. As a political artist, Brecht wanted to show that the world can be changed. With his works he always campaigned for the improvement of social conditions.
