Helene Weigel

Helene Weigel (born May 12, 1900, Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now in Austria]—died May 6, 1971, East Berlin, East Germany [now Berlin, Germany]) was an Austrian actress and stage director who, with her husband, Bertolt Brecht, in 1949 established the Berliner Ensemble theatre group in what was then East Berlin. Weigel was born into an assimilated Jewish family during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the model of her independent and professional mother (who owned...