Eugen Berthold Friedrich "Bertolt" Brecht (; German: [bʀɛçt]; 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Living in Munich during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes with theatre plays, whose themes were often influenced by his Marxist thought. He was the main proponent of the genre named epic theatre (which he preferred to call "dialectical theatre").