German playwright Bertolt Brecht, a 20th Century theatrical giant, saw the writing on the wall soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933. He left Berlin and kicked around the capitals of Europe for the rest of the decade until settling in Helsinki while awaiting a U.S. visa. It was there in 1941 that he penned the satire, “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” a thinly-veiled parable in the guise of a Depression era tale with Hollywood gangsters standing in for Nazis as he connects crony capitalism (via the cauliflower trade) and militarism.
German playwright Bertolt Brecht, a 20th Century theatrical giant, saw the writing on the wall soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933. He left Berlin and kicked around the capitals of Europe for the rest of the decade until settling in Helsinki while awaiting a U.S. visa. It was there in 1941 that he penned the satire, “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” a thinly-veiled parable in the guise of a Depression era tale with Hollywood gangsters standing in for Nazis as he connects crony capitalism (via the cauliflower trade) and militarism.