A Threepenny Tragedy

Shy, sensitive Christian Weisbrod, at 26, had a bright future on the East German stage. He was the youngest member of the eminent Berliner Ensemble, the theater company famed for its productions of Bertolt Brecht's acid satires. Yet Weisbrod was not happy.

He longed for the freer life, and just as the Berliner Ensemble was completing a triumphant London engagement, he chose to defect. He easily received a West German passport, a temporary home with his married half-brother outside Cologne, even a job offer. Yet, only eight days after he arrived in the Rhineland's Lorelei-land, he returned to East Berlin. His brother tried to understand. "Christian obviously stood in conflict between his loyalty to the company he loved and his desire to quit East Germany," he said. "I recall a similar experience. In 1945 I was cut off from my armored outfit behind American lines, and be cause I hated the idea of leaving my outfit in the lurch, crawled back through the lines--even though I knew I could easily have given myself up. Today I know I was an idiot, and Christian may have come to the same realization."

Perhaps he did. His friends in the Berliner Ensemble may have jeered at him as a fool for returning, or perhaps acidly criticized him for bringing the police around to question their possible complicity. No one will ever be certain, for Christian Weisbrod was quite dead when they found his body in East Berlin's 13th century Marienkirche. He had swallowed pesticide.

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