John Gay's 1728 comic opera, The Beggar's Opera was Brecht's source material and offers a good source for comparison. The differences between the two works illustrate the ideologies of the authors who produced them.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and The Trial give an imaginative sense of the futility and nameless anxiety of the pre-World War I years in Europe. For a British perspective, T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (1922) expresses a sense of spiritual vacuity, with imagery recalling the devastation of World War I.

The 1972 film Cabaret directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, and Michael York presents a vivid and compelling picture of the hedonism, decadence, and spiritual longings of post-World War I Germany (circa 1931) in which Hitler began his ascent to power.

Brecht had a profound influence on the literary artists who succeeded him. His...