Bertolt Brecht lived in the United States from 1941 to 1947. During these six years, he made relatively little impact on the American cultural landscape. However, although he failed to catch the eye of Hollywood producers, he nevertheless fell under the watchful eye of Uncle Sam as the subject of sustained government scrutiny by both the executive and legislative branches.

In an effort to support and promote Brecht scholarship, E-CIBS has recently undertaken initiatives to make these records more easily accessible and transparent.

The corpus of congressional materials is related to Brecht’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Pursuant to the access provisions governing congressional records (specifically House Rule VII) E-CIBS has requested and obtained all records related to Brecht from the Center for Legislative Archives. While the testimony itself is well known, the broader documentary record is much less so. We are therefore pleased to publish these materials below, making them openly accessible, free of charge, to scholars around the world for the first time.

The records of the executive branch, primarily FBI files, are currently available only in heavily redacted form, some of which can be accessed here. According to an initial assessment undertaken by the E-CIBS editorial staff, Brecht is the subject of FBI case file 100-HQ-190707, a domestic security investigation compiled between March 1943 and March 1979, consisting of approximately 600 pages across four volumes and two bulky enclosures.

On behalf of the International Brecht Society (IBS) and E-CIBS, a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on 13 February 2026, seeking the full, unredacted release of these materials. These materials remain under review for information protected from disclosure, with an estimated processing time of 39 months (May 2029). The currently available scans are often barely legible, so when the materials are released, we plan to reproduce them using modern scanning equipment to make them significantly easier to read. Once available, we will publish them on our forum.