Franz Servatius Bruinier

Franz Servatius Bruinier (13 May 1905 – 31 July 1928) was a pianist and composer. He was the first professional composer to collaborate with Bertolt Brecht. On account of his early death from tuberculosis, and because the results of his work went unpublished or were published only without attribution in respect of the musical score, his contribution went unrecognised by mainstream Brecht scholarship till the mid 1970s. Life Franz Servatius Bruinier was born at Biebrich, across the river from Mainz. He and his twin sister, Julie Anne Elisabeth “Anneliese” Bruinier, were the youngest of their parents’ six recorded children. Bruinier’s father, Jan Berend Hendrik Bruinier (1863-1935), had been born in Amsterdam and came to Germany, having held a senior position with a Biebrich company since 1904 and then, in 1907, accepting appointment as Chief Executive Officer (“Geschaeftsführer”) with a heavy engineering firm in Berlin-Steglitz. Despite being resident and “economically active” in Germany “from the age of nine”, he remained Dutch. He applied for German citizenship in 1914 but without success, and seems never to have repeated the application. Probably his children also retained their