Brecht's play is based on another by his host during his exile in Finland—the Finnish-Estonian playwright Hella Wuolijoki—called The Sawdust Princess, a German translation of which Wuolijoki dictated to Margarete Steffin during August 1940.
[5] Along with the structural transformation from dramatic to epic, Brecht described his main tasks in re-working Wuolijoki's original as: "to bring out the underlying farce, dismantle the psychological discussions so as to make place for tales from Finnish popular life or statements of opinion, find a theatrical form for the master/man contradiction, and give the theme back its poetic and comic aspects.
"[7] Brecht gave his story a downbeat ending, in which Matti resigns himself to the impossibility of authentic human relationships across the divide of social class, excepting the intoxicated illusions that alcohol provides.
[9] The two authors agreed that Wuolijoki could develop the Finnish version for production throughout Scandinavia (for which she renamed the protagonist "Johannes Iso-Heikkilä"), while Brecht could negotiate performances anywhere else, where the royalties would be split equally between them.
[9] A theatrical production of the play became a priority for Brecht on his return from exile in 1947; he helped to direct its premiere at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, where it opened on 5 June 1948, with scenic design by Teo Otto.
[11] Brecht chose Puntila for the opening production of the first season of the Berliner Ensemble, the world-renowned theatre company that he founded in 1949 in East Germany with his wife, Helene Weigel.