Education
She studied acting and established her Danish reputation playing Anna in Brecht"s Drums in the Night.
She studied acting and established her Danish reputation playing Anna in Brecht"s Drums in the Night.
Born to a merchant family, she learned French at a convent school, but had to drop out due to a pregnancy at the age of thirteen. During her teenage years, she financed a bicycle tour of France, by writing up a somewhat fictionalized account of her travels for a Danish newspaper. In 1930, she toured the Soviet Union by bicycle, and on her return joined the communist party.
Later she took part behind the front lines in the Spanish civil war.
With Brecht, Berlau published the short story collection Jedes Tier kann es, considered obscene in its time. In 1940, she followed the Brecht clan to Sweden, Finland, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics and finally to the United States, where a rupture with Brecht took place in 1944.
After the war, she followed the Brechts to Berlin, but was blacklisted from the Berliner Ensemble by Weigel, after Brecht"s death in 1956. She died in the Charité hospital after setting her bed alight with a cigarette.