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The Tutor (Brecht)

play written by Bertolt Brecht

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ7770768 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Tutor is the 1950 adaptation, by 20th-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, of the 18th-century play The Tutor by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. The original Lenz play was produced in 1774 and is also known by the title "The Advantages of a Private Education". Brecht contributed few additions to the plot of the original work, but made many cuts and alterations. Brecht's work is two-thirds the length of the original play and over half the material is new. The play was Brecht's first production which featured work from the German Classical Era for the Berliner Ensemble. Overall, it was the third production the Berliner Ensemble performed. Brecht himself directed this production. 'The Tutor' was translated by Ralph Manheim and Wolfgang Sauerlander.

Plot

Lauffer is a tutor who earns a meagre living teaching a retired major's two children. When he tries to negotiate his salary it is cut by his masters.

Editorial summary

“The Tutor (Brecht)” enters the record as play written by Bertolt Brecht. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tutor, Brecht and play can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1774—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Tutor, Brecht and play.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Tutor (Brecht)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tutor, Brecht and play provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7770768. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1774.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Tutor (Brecht)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Tutor (Brecht) primary sources, The Tutor (Brecht) archive and Tutor research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Tutor (Brecht)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Tutor (Brecht)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.