Volker Braun was born in Dresden in 1939. After he finished school he was refused entry to university; he then worked in a printing firm, in civil engineering for the collective combine Schwarze Pumpe, and as a machine operator. From 1960 to 1964 he studied philosophy in Leipzig, and in 1965 Helene Weigel called him to the Berliner Ensemble, where his first play
Die Kipper was staged and then prohibited. From 1972 to 1977 he worked at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and from 1979 to 1990 again at the Berliner Ensemble. From 2006 to 2010 he was Director of the Literature Section of the Academy of the Arts. Braun has received numerous prizes, and he lives as a writer in Berlin.