Bronnen, Arnolt

(1895-1959)

   dramatist; best known for the play Vatermord. He was born in Vienna; his father was Ferdinand Bronnen, a Jewish playwright. After World War I, in which he was wounded and imprisoned, he forsook prewar legal studies and moved to Berlin* in search of success as a freelance writer. He was soon a prominent Expressionist* dramatist. But while his work retained the crude effects and violent language associated with Ex-pressionism, he soon migrated to a severe realism. Vatermord, a story of pat-ricide first performed in 1920, provoked a riot when it was staged in 1922. It was in reference to Bronnen's early work, not that of Bertolt Brecht,* that the term "epic theater" was first used.

   Bronnen soon moved from left radicalism to an ever more prominent nation-alism and anti-Semitism.* Already working seriously with the NSDAP by 1926, he formed a contact with Joseph Goebbels* and became a drama critic on the radio in 1933. Proclaiming himself the illegitimate son of an Aryan, he retained his Nazi membership until he was dismissed from his position in 1937. Return-ing to Austria,* he was active from 1940 with the Communist resistance. He worked as a journalist in Linz after World War II and moved to Vienna in 1951 to become a theater* director. In 1955 he relocated to East Berlin.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Garland and Garland, Oxford Companion to German Literature; Peter Gay, Weimar Culture.