Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht (help·info) (born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht
(help·info); 10 February 1898–14 August 1956) was a German poet,
playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of
the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to
dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through
the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the
post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time
collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally
acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist
who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic
theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Erwin Piscator and
Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas
and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.
Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement
of the 'epic form' of the drama. This dramatic form is related to
similar modernist innovations in other arts, including the strategy of
divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's
evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and Picasso's
introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts. In contrast to many
other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy
art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the theatre to
a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the
aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular
culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and
developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre
articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal
experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp
contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's
work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen
and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger dubs him
"the most important materialist writer of our time."
Collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to
Brecht's approach, as Fredric Jameson (among others) stresses. Jameson
describes the creator of the work not as Brecht the individual, but
rather as 'Brecht': a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have
a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer
personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course
of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships
with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and
actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth
Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar
Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre,
Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, Carola Neher, and Helene Weigel
herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something
radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt
the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and
directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario
Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner
Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner, Robert Bolt and Caryl Churchill. In
addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted
considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic
practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Jean-Luc
Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Joseph Losey, Nagisa
Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
Bavaria (1898–1924)
Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria (about fifty miles north-west
of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic
father (who had been persuaded to a Protestant wedding). His father
worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks
to his mother's influence, Brecht knew his Bible, a familiarity that
would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the
"dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.
Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his
occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied.[8] At school in
Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long creative
partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and
helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic
theatre.
When he was sixteen, the first World War broke out; initially
enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates
"swallowed by the army". On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought a
loophole by registering for an additional medical course at Munich
University, where he enrolled in 1917. There he studied drama with
Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the
iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Wedekind.
From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the
new name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the Augsburger
Volkswille appeared in October 1919).[11] Brecht was drafted into
military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to
Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic; the war ended a
month later.
In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a
relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died.
Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the
political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin. Brecht's diaries
for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.
Brecht compared Valentin to Chaplin, for his "virtually complete
rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology" Writing in his
Messingkauf Dialogues years later, Brecht identified Valentin, along
with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time:
"But the man he [Brecht writes of himself in the third person] learnt
most from was the clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did
short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral
musicians or photographers, who hated their employer and made him look
ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, a popular woman
comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice."
Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written 1918), arose in response
to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend
that persisted throughout his career of creative activity that was
generated by a desire to counter another work (both others' and his own,
as his many adaptations and re-writes attest). "Anyone can be creative,"
he quipped, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge." Brecht
completed his second major play, Drums in the Night, in February 1919.
In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of
an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert
Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused
in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, Drums in the
Night—"[he] has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision.
[...] It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your
ear, your spinal column." In November it was announced that Brecht had
been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize (intended for unestablished
writers and probably Germany's most significant literary award, until it
was abolished in 1932) for his first three plays (Baal, Drums in the
Night, and In the Jungle, although at that point only Drums had been
produced). The citation for the award insisted that:
[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic,
symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because
his language is felt physically and in the round."
That year he married the Viennese opera-singer Marianne Zoff. Their
daughter—Hanne Hiob (born in 1923)—is a successful German actress.
In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short
slapstick film, Mysteries of a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and
starring Karl Valentin. Despite a lack of success at the time, its
experimental inventiveness and the subsequent success of many of its
contributors have meant that it is now considered one of the most
important films in German film history. In May of that year, Brecht's In
the Jungle premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening night
proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize many of
his later productions during the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew
whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.
In 1924 Brecht worked with the novelist and playwright Lion
Feuchtwanger (whom he had met in 1919) on an adaptation of Christopher
Marlowe's Edward II that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early
theatrical and dramaturgical development. Brecht's Edward II constituted
his first attempt at collaborative writing and was the first of many
classic texts he was to adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he
later credited it as the germ of his conception of 'epic theatre'. That
September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches
Theater—at the time one of the leading three or four theatres in the
world—brought him to Berlin.
Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–1933)
In 1924 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they
did not divorce until 1926). Brecht had become involved with both
Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel. Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan,
was born in October 1924.
In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little
work of his own.[ Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant
of Two Masters (with the improvisational approach of the commedia
dell'arte in which the actors chatted with the prompter about their
roles), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in his
group of Berlin theatres. A new version of Brecht's third play, now
entitled Jungle: Decline of a Family, opened at the Deutsches Theater in
October 1924, but was not a success.
In the asphalt city I'm at home. From the very start
Provided with every last sacrament:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy
To the end mistrustful, lazy and content.
Bertolt Brecht, "Of Poor BB".
At this time Brecht revised his important 'transitional poem' "Of Poor
BB". In 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as an
assistant for the completion of his collection of poems, Devotions for
the Home (Hauspostille, eventually published in January 1927). She
continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.
In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ('new
objectivity') had given its name to the new post-Expressionist movement
in the German arts. With little to do at the Deutsches Theater, Brecht
began to develop his Man Equals Man project, which was to become the
first product of "the 'Brecht collective'—that shifting group of friends
and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended." This collaborative
approach to artistic production, together with aspects of Brecht's
writing and style of theatrical production, mark Brecht's work from this
period as part of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. The collective's work
"mirrored the artistic climate of the middle 1920s," Willett and Manheim
argue:
with their attitude of 'Neue Sachlichkeit' (or New
Matter-of-Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and downplaying
of the individual, and their new cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport.
Together the 'collective' would go to fights, not only absorbing their
terminology and ethos (which permeates Man Equals Man) but also drawing
those conclusions for the theatre as a whole which Brecht set down in
his theoretical essay 'Emphasis on Sport' and tried to realise by means
of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring stage and other
anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his own
productions.
In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on
him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.
Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided
models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man. Brecht later wrote that Chaplin
"would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic
theatre's requirements." They met several times during Brecht's time in
the United States, and discussed Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux project,
which it is possible Brecht influenced.
In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name,
though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them. Following the
production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began
studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of
Hauptmann. "When I read Marx's Capital", a note by Brecht reveals, "I
understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for my
plays I'd ever come across."
For us, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a social
function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to
God, but his relationship to society which is central. Whenever he
appears, his class or social stratum appears with him. His moral,
spiritual or sexual conflicts are conflicts with society.
Erwin Piscator, 1929.
In 1927 Brecht became part of the 'dramaturgical collective' of Erwin
Piscator's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of
finding new plays for its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary
theatre". Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the period of the
latter's landmark productions, Hoppla, We're Alive! by Toller, Rasputin,
The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, and Konjunktur by Lania.
Brecht's most significant contribution was to the adaptation of the
unfinished episodic comic novel Schweik, which he later described as a
"montage from the novel". The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's
ideas about staging and design, and alerted him to the radical
potentials offered to the 'epic' playwright by the development of stage
technology (particularly projections). What Brecht took from Piscator
"is fairly plain, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:
The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new
subject matter demanded a new dramatic form, the use of songs to
interrupt and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays of
the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Piscatorial examples as
the step-by-step narrative technique of Schweik and the oil interests
handled in Konjunktur ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').
Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of how to
dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism in his
unfinished project Joe P. Fleischhacker (which Piscator's theatre
announced in its programme for the 1927–28 season). It wasn't until his
Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written between 1929–1931) that Brecht
solved it. In 1928 he discussed with Piscator plans to stage
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Brecht's own Drums in the Night, but the
productions did not materialize.
1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young
composer Kurt Weill.Together they began to develop Brecht's Mahagonny
project, along thematic lines of the biblical Cities of the Plain but
rendered in terms of the Neue Sachlichkeit's Amerikanismus, which had
informed Brecht's previous work. They produced The Little Mahagonny for
a music festival in July, as what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in
preparation for the large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher
became an integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music
and visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start. The
model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's newly-formulated
principle of the 'separation of the elements', which he first outlined
in "The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a
variety of montage, proposed by-passing the "great struggle for
supremacy between words, music and production" as Brecht put it, by
showing each as self-contained, independent works of art that adopt
attitudes towards one another.
In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born
soon after the wedding. She also became an actress and currently holds
the copyrights to all of Brecht's work.
Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very
influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth
Berlau and others worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching
plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants
rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive
worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the
1920s. So did Brecht's first great play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards,
which attempted to portray the drama in financial transactions.
This collective adapted John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's
songs set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled The Threepenny Opera (Die
Dreigroschenoper) it was the biggest hit in Berlin of the 1920s and a
renewing influence on the musical worldwide. One of its most famous
lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional morality imposed by the
Church, working in conjunction with the established order, in the face
of working-class hunger and deprivation:
The success of The Threepenny Opera was followed by the quickly
thrown together Happy End. It was a personal and a commercial failure.
At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane
(now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close
collaborator). Brecht only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht
would later use elements of Happy End as the germ for his Saint Joan of
the Stockyards, a play that would never see the stage in Brecht's
lifetime. Happy End's score by Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits
like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".
The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, Rise and Fall of
the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), caused an
uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in the audience
protesting. The Mahagonny opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as
a triumphant sensation.
Brecht spent his last years in the Weimar-era Berlin (1930–1933)
working with his ‘collective’ on the Lehrstücke. These were a group of
plays driven by morals, music and Brecht's budding epic theatre. The
Lehrstücke often aimed at educating workers on Socialist issues. The
Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) was scored by Hanns Eisler. In addition,
Brecht worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the
human impact of mass unemployment, Kuhle Wampe (1932), which was
directed by Slatan Dudow. This striking film is notable for its
subversive humour, outstanding cinematography by Günther Krampf, and
Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution. It still provides a vivid
insight into Berlin during the last years of the Weimar Republic.
By February 1933, Brecht’s work was eclipsed by the rise of Nazi rule
in Germany. (Brecht would also have his work challenged again in later
life by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which
believed he was under the influence of communism.
Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–1945)
Fearing persecution, Brecht left Germany in February 1933, when
Hitler took power. He went to Denmark, but when war seemed imminent in
1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he remained for a year. Then
Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, and Brecht was forced to leave Sweden
for Finland where he waited for his visa for the United States until 3
May 1941.
During the war years, Brecht expressed his opposition to the National
Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: Galileo,
Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Sezuan, The
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear and
Misery of the Third Reich, and many others.
During the war, Brecht's poetry continued to garner attention. Though
he derived no real success or pleasure in this, he worked on a few
screenplays for Hollywood, including Hangmen Also Die.
Cold War and final years in East Germany
(1945–1956)
In the years of the Cold War and "red scare", the House
Un-American Activities Committee called Brecht to account for his
communist allegiances, and he was soon blacklisted by movie studio
bosses. Brecht, along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors,
actors and producers, was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in
September 1947.
Initially, Brecht was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they
would refuse to testify about their political affiliations. Eleven
members of this group were actually questioned on this point but, as
Brecht later explained, he did not want to delay a planned trip to
Europe, so he followed the advice of attorneys and broke with his
earlier avowal. On 30 October 1947, he appeared before the committee and
testified that he had never actually held party membership.
During his appearance before the committee, Brecht wore overalls and
smoked an acrid cigar that made some of the committee members feel
slightly ill. He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating
his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the
translators present, who transformed his German statements into English
ones unintelligible to himself.
Brecht's decision to testify led to criticism, including accusations
of betrayal. The remaining witnesses, the so called Hollywood Ten,
refused to testify and were cited for contempt. HUAC Vice Chairman Karl
Mundt thanked Brecht for cooperating. The day after his testimony, on 31
October, Brecht flew to Europe.
In Switzerland, Brecht composed an adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone,
which was performed at Chur. It was based on the translation by
Hölderlin, but was considerably modified. It was published under the
title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied by an essay on the importance of
creating a 'non-Aristotelian' form of theatre. He was subsequently
invited to return to Berlin by the Communist regime in East Germany.
Horrified at the reinstatement of former Nazis into West Germany's
government, Brecht accepted the offer and made East Berlin his home in
1949. He was enticed by the offer of his own theatre (completed in 1954)
and theatre company (the Berliner Ensemble). He retained his Austrian
nationality (granted in 1950), however, and overseas bank accounts from
which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on
his writings were held by a Swiss company. He used to drive around East
Berlin in a pre-war DKW car—a rare luxury in the austere divided
capital.
While Brecht's communist sympathies were a bane in the United States,
East German officials sought to make him their hero. Though he had not
been a member of the Communist Party, he had been deeply schooled in
Marxism by the dissident communist Karl Korsch, and his communist
allegiances were sincere. He claimed communism appeared to be the only
reliable antidote to militarist fascism and spoke out against the
remilitarization of the West and the division of Germany. Brecht used
Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic in both his aesthetic theory
and practice in a central way when presenting his plays.
Brecht wrote very few plays in his last years in East Berlin, none of
them as famous as his previous works. Instead, he dedicated himself to
directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of
young directors and dramaturges, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson
and Carl Weber. Some of his most famous poems, however, including the
"Buckower Elegies", came from this era. One of the poems in the
"Buckower Elegies," Die Lösung (The Solution) was Brecht's later
commentary on the uprising of 17 June 1953 in East Germany:
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Brecht had previously supported the measures taken by the East German
government to crush the uprising, including the use of Soviet military
force; he even wrote a letter on the day of the uprising (17 June) to
SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht stating that, "History will pay its
respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Socialist Unity Party of
Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with the masses about the speed
of socialist construction will lead to a viewing and safeguarding of the
socialist achievements. At this moment I must assure you of my
allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany".
Death
Brecht died on 14 August 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58. He
is buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof on Chausseestraße in the
Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence he shared
with Helene Weigel.
