To mark the event, free guided tours of Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel’s original apartments will provide an insight into the artist couple’s theatre work with the Berliner Ensemble.

Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht, 1936
© Akademie der Künste / photo: Mordecai Gorelik

“Wir waren nicht das, was sie wollten, aber sie wollten auch nicht verlieren, was sie mit uns hatten.” (We weren’t what they wanted, but they didn’t want to lose what they had with us either.)

Neighbouring the Theatre

Shortly after moving into the rear building at 125 Chausseestraße, Brecht wrote to his publisher, Peter Suhrkamp: “It is really advisable to live in houses and with furniture that are at least 120 years old – in other words, in a former capitalist environment – until one gets a later socialist one.”

Bertolt Brecht lived in his flat on the first floor from October 1953 until his death on 14 August 1956. He had been drawn to the flat primarily by its proximity to the Berliner Ensemble, the Akademie der Künste and the historic cemeteries next door. It offered him sufficient space for his work – the indispensable large tables, conversations and his library.

During Brecht’s lifetime, Helene Weigel lived in rooms on the second floor, which she made available after Brecht’s death to the Bertolt Brecht Archive, which she had founded. She had a veranda leading to the garden added and moved to the ground floor in 1957, where she lived as an actress and artistic director until her death in 1971.

With Brecht and Weigel, the Berliner Ensemble – viewed with suspicion by its own government – achieved world fame.

On International Museum Day, the museum invites visitors to free guided tours of the artist couple’s apartments, which have been preserved in their original state.

International Museum Day at the Brecht-Weigel Museum17 May 2026, 11 am – 6 pm

International Museum Day at the Brecht-Weigel Museum
17 May 2026, 11 am – 6 pm