BAIERL, HELMUT

(1926- )

   Playwright. Baierl was active with Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel at the Berliner Ensemble in the 1950s, writing Frau Flinz for Weigel. She premiered it in 1961 with herself in the title role, a kind of modern-day Mother Courage. Baierl was an active member of the Socialist Unity party, which ran the East German regime. He succeeded Elisabeth Hauptmann as party secretary for the Berliner Ensemble in the 1960s, a position which granted him substantial power and influence in repertoire selection and casting. After the collapse of the East German regime, Baierl maintained his loyalty to the enterprise of which he was a part, while recognizing (as he once said) that the party was essentially a criminal organization. It had awarded him the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic in 1976 and, shortly before the regime's dissolution, the Patriotic Service Order, along with the 1985 Johannes R. Becher Medallion.