Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill (; ; March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he wrote his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which includes the ballad “Mack the Knife”. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He fled Nazi Germany in 1933, arriving in the United States two years later. Settling in New York, he made a substantial contribution to American musical theater through works such as Lady in the Dark and Street Scene. Family and childhood Weill was born on March 2, 1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill (née Ackermann; 1872–1955). He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the “Sandvorstadt”, the Jewish quarter in Dessau in Saxony (now part of Saxony-Anhalt), where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at