Bertolt Brecht was born February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Germany to a middle-class family. He rejected religion as a child. He studied at Munich University and joined the Communist Party in 1930. He left Germany when Hitler came to power. He became the artistic director to a theater company financed by the East Germans with his wife, Helene Weigel, the director. He had an Austrian passport, a Swiss bank account and a West German publisher. He died of a heart attack on August 14, 1954.