Who Was Alive

Bertolt Brecht

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Born 10 February 1898 · died 14 August 1956, aged 58

Who was alive at the same time as Bertolt Brecht?

  1. Leo Tolstoy
  2. Mark Twain
  3. Friedrich Nietzsche
  4. Thomas Edison
  5. Sigmund Freud
  6. Marie Curie
  7. Mahatma Gandhi
  8. Vladimir Lenin
  9. Winston Churchill
  10. Joseph Stalin
  11. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
  12. Albert Einstein
  13. Pablo Picasso
  14. Charlie Chaplin
  15. Adolf Hitler
  16. Bertolt Brecht
  17. Ronald Reagan
  18. John F. Kennedy
  19. Nelson Mandela
  20. Elizabeth II
  21. Joe Biden
  22. Donald Trump
  23. George W. Bush
  24. Vladimir Putin
Drag across the timeline to see who was alive in any year and the age each person reached that year. Faded ends mark uncertain dates.

When Bertolt Brecht was born, Adolf Hitler was 8, Albert Einstein was 18, Vladimir Lenin was 27, Mahatma Gandhi was 28 and Leo Tolstoy was 69.

When Bertolt Brecht died, Donald Trump was 10, Vladimir Putin was 3, Ronald Reagan was 45, Nelson Mandela was 38 and George W. Bush was 10.

Born during Bertolt Brecht’s lifetime: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Elizabeth II and John F. Kennedy.

Not quite contemporaries: Barack Obama was born 5 years after Bertolt Brecht died, Michael Jackson was born 2 years after Bertolt Brecht died, Karl Marx died 15 years before Bertolt Brecht was born and Victor Hugo died 13 years before Bertolt Brecht was born.

Compare

All 1,007 contemporaries we track

  1. Donald Trump born 1946
  2. Adolf Hitler 1889 – 1945
  3. Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
  4. Vladimir Putin born 1952
  5. Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004
  6. Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
  7. Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
  8. Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948
  9. Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910
  10. George W. Bush born 1946
  11. Joseph Stalin 1878 – 1953
  12. Joe Biden born 1942
  13. Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973
  14. Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
  15. Charlie Chaplin 1889 – 1977
  16. Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900
  17. Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022
  18. Thomas Edison 1847 – 1931
  19. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1879–1881 – 1938
  20. Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
  21. Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939
  22. John F. Kennedy 1917 – 1963
  23. Marie Curie 1867 – 1934
  24. Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 – 1968
  25. Salvador Dalí 1904 – 1989
  26. Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941
  27. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945
  28. Bill Gates born 1955
  29. Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924
  30. Anton Chekhov 1860 – 1904
  31. Marilyn Monroe 1926 – 1962
  32. Pope Francis 1936 – 2025
  33. Mao Zedong 1893 – 1976
  34. Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
  35. Che Guevara 1928 – 1967
  36. Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900
  37. Bill Clinton born 1946
  38. Charles de Gaulle 1890 – 1970
  39. Angela Merkel born 1954
  40. Otto von Bismarck 1815 – 1898
  41. Nikola Tesla 1856 – 1943
  42. Neil Armstrong 1930 – 2012
  43. François Hollande born 1954
  44. Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
  45. Elvis Presley 1935 – 1977
  46. George Orwell 1903 – 1950
  47. Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
  48. Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013
  49. James Joyce 1882 – 1941
  50. John Paul II 1920 – 2005
  51. Gabriel García Márquez 1927 – 2014
  52. Fidel Castro 1926 – 2016
  53. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892 – 1973
  54. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960
  55. Yuri Gagarin 1934 – 1968
  56. Henry Ford 1863 – 1947
  57. Marlene Dietrich 1901 – 1992
  58. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931 – 2022
  59. Benito Mussolini 1883 – 1945
  60. Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980
  61. Stephen Hawking 1942 – 2018
  62. Le Corbusier 1887 – 1965
  63. Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954
  64. Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
  65. Jimmy Carter 1924 – 2024
  66. Benedict XVI 1927 – 2022
  67. Harry S. Truman 1884 – 1972
  68. Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976
  69. Hillary Clinton born 1947
  70. George H. W. Bush 1924 – 2018
  71. Jorge Luis Borges 1899 – 1986
  72. Sarah Bernhardt 1844 – 1923
  73. Nicolas Sarkozy born 1955
  74. Theodore Roosevelt 1858 – 1919
  75. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 – 1964
  76. Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922
  77. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890 – 1969
  78. Jules Verne 1828 – 1905
  79. Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
  80. Rosa Luxemburg 1871 – 1919
  81. Roald Amundsen 1872 – c. 1928
  82. Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
  83. Richard Nixon 1913 – 1994
  84. Xi Jinping born 1953
  85. Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
  86. Alfred Hitchcock 1899 – 1980
  87. Noam Chomsky born 1928
  88. Simone de Beauvoir 1908 – 1986
  89. Hugo Chávez 1954 – 2013
  90. George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
  91. John Maynard Keynes 1883 – 1946
  92. Niels Bohr 1885 – 1962
  93. Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970
  94. Muammar Gaddafi 1942 – 2011
  95. Leon Trotsky 1879 – 1940
  96. John Lennon 1940 – 1980
  97. Bob Dylan born 1941
  98. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 1954
  99. Max Planck 1858 – 1947
  100. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
  101. Pelé 1940 – 2022
  102. Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016
  103. Maxim Gorky 1868 – 1936
  104. Henri Matisse 1869 – 1954
  105. Giuseppe Verdi 1813 – 1901
  106. Dmitri Mendeleev 1834 – 1907
  107. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867 – 1959
  108. Andy Warhol 1928 – 1987
  109. Louis Armstrong 1901 – 1971
  110. Kofi Annan 1938 – 2018
  111. Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941
  112. Akira Kurosawa 1910 – 1998
  113. Lech Wałęsa born 1943
  114. Freddie Mercury 1946 – 1991
  115. Charles III born 1948
  116. Victoria 1819 – 1901
  117. Lyndon B. Johnson 1908 – 1973
  118. Gerald Ford 1913 – 2006
  119. Ernest Rutherford 1871 – 1937
  120. Leo XIV born 1955
  121. Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 – 1951
  122. Indira Gandhi 1917 – 1984
  123. Narendra Modi born 1950
  124. Max Weber 1864 – 1920
  125. Huang Xianfan 1899 – 1982
  126. Enrico Fermi 1901 – 1954
  127. Naguib Mahfouz 1911 – 2006
  128. Aung San Suu Kyi born 1945
  129. Steven Spielberg born 1946
  130. Henrik Ibsen 1828 – 1906
  131. Nikita Khrushchev 1894 – 1971
  132. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944
  133. Anne Frank 1929 – 1945
  134. Saddam Hussein 1937 – 2006
  135. Benjamin Netanyahu born 1949
  136. H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946
  137. Helen Keller 1880 – 1968
  138. Tenzin Gyatso born 1935
  139. Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973
  140. Rafael Orozco Maestre 1954 – 1992
  141. Émile Zola 1840 – 1902
  142. Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
  143. David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
  144. Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955
  145. Bruce Lee 1940 – 1973
  146. Erwin Schrödinger 1887 – 1961
  147. Silvio Berlusconi 1936 – 2023
  148. Bob Marley 1945 – 1981
  149. Shinzō Abe 1954 – 2022
  150. Herbert Hoover 1874 – 1964

The 150 best known are listed.