Therese Giehse

In exile, Giehse played the first Mother Courage in the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, in 1941 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.[4][5]

After the war, Giehse returned to Munich and to the Munich Kammerspiele, where, in 1950, she again played the role of Mother Courage, this time directed by Brecht himself. This production became documented as the second "Model production" of Brecht's play (the first "Model production" had been performed by Brecht's wife, Helene Weigel in 1949 in Berlin). Giehse and Brecht would often converse in their strong Bavarian (southern German) dialect during rehearsals, making Brecht's wife jealous of their kindred spirit.[6]

In the 1950s, Giehse played several roles as a member of Brecht's theatre, the Berliner Ensemble. In the mid-1970s, she returned to the Berliner Ensemble to perform several Brecht Evenings of the poems, plays, and writings of her lifelong friend and colleague. As a member of the Berliner Ensemble and collaborator with Brecht, she was a much-sought-after interpreter of his work and recordings of her reciting and singing his work appeared on records in both East and West Germany.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Giehse continued to perform many lead roles in various theaters in Germany, often using her considerable comic skills to play character roles, as well as great dramatic roles, such as the leads in several landmark productions by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the world premiere of The Visit in 1956, and The Physicists in 1962. She later worked with Peter Stein's renowned Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in Berlin.[7]

She also appeared in over 20 films and a number of television productions. In 1988, a commemorative stamp was printed in her honor as part of the Women in German history series. In the same year a commemorative exhibition took place at the Deutsches Theatermuseum in Munich [8]