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| Brecht in Berlin before exile. |
Well
I guess it’s time for a dead white male,
but probably not one of the usual
suspects. German born Bertolt Brecht is best remembered as a daring playwright who overturned many of the conventions of established theatrics with his epic
theater and its ironic
acknowledgement of the artificiality
of the performance, didactic
concerns, integration of music, and sets reflective of German Post
Expressionism and other movements. But he was also a poet and a Marxist radical who
had to flee rise of the Nazis.
Yes,
yet another refugee who sought
safety successively in Prague, Zurich, Paris, Denmark for
nearly six years until the outbreak of World
War II, Stockholm, and Helsinki. In 1941 he finally got permission to immigrate to
the United States where he finished
the war years working on his most famous
anti-fascist plays and doing the screen
play for Fritz Lang’s anti-Nazi film noir Hangmen Also Die! Many of the plays he wrote during these years
are among his most famous and widely produced.
But after the war
Brecht’s fierce anti-fascism and Marxism fell quickly under suspicion. By 1947 he was blacklisted by Hollywood
and was one of 42 writers, directors, actors, and producers subpoenaed
to appear before the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC). At first he was among the 19 who declared
that they would refuse to testify, but
he reconsidered and went before the
Committee on October 30. He truthfully denied ever having been a
member of the Communist Party. Even in Germany he had never joined the Social Democrats or the Communists. He was an intellectual and theoretical
Marxist who had been tutored in a variant
heresy taught by Karl Korsch. I am not an expert on the theology of Western Communism, but this put Brecht at odds with the international line laid down by the Comintern under Stalin.
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| Brecht testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee. |
Brecht
testified in German with a translator
through whom he played with his interrogators pretending not to understand their questions or the meaning of their terms,
even subtlety mocking them. He did not name names, but neither
did he employ the Constitutional claim to a Fifth Amendment Right to Silence used
by others.
His
appearance would cause some of the Hollywood
left to consider him a traitor to
solidarity.
But
Brecht recognized the danger he was in. He had been to this dance before when Nazi goons threw stink bombs and tomatoes and
rushed the stage of his productions on the Berlin stage. The day after
his HUAC appearance, Brecht and his wife
and long-time collaborator Helene Weigel fled to Europe, refugees once more. The
couple lived in hotels in London,
Switzerland, and Austria mounting
productions in the latter two countries.
He applied for Austrian citizenship,
which was granted in 1950 and which he maintained the rest of his life.
Meanwhile
the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—East Germany offered sponsorship
of his own theater company and
eventually to build it a permanent home
if he would return to East Berlin. Ordinarily his espousal of Korsch-style
Marxism, his refusal to join the German Communist Party, or to take GDR citizenship would have resulted in arrest and long term imprisonment, but by this time Brecht was regarded by
many as the preeminent playwright of the 20th Century and as such a cultural
jewel that legitimized the East
German regime in the world. He got promises
for the right to control his own company and produce plays without censorship or government interference.
This extraordinary request
was granted and—mostly—adhered to by
the government. Brecht and Weigel returned to East Berlin and in January
1949 founded their collaborative Berliner
Ensemble.
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| Brecht, second from the left and his wife Helene Weigel as Mother ionCourage in the intial Berliner Ensemble production. |
The
new company opened with a fresh production of Brecht’s greatest work, Mother
Courage and Her Children with Weigel as Mother Courage. That 1939 play set in the brutal Thirty Years War of 1618–1648,
was an Epic examination of the brutality,
futility, and anti-heroic waste written in “white
heat” in the month after the Nazi invasion
of Poland. Coming to the stage while
the East Germans and Soviets were blockading land access to Western Powers occupied West Berlin and
the American and British Berlin Airlift to supply the beleaguered half-city, the East Germans
considered it a rebuke to Allied aggression.
Brecht,
in declining health, wrote no new plays in his hears with the Berliner Ensemble
but oversaw new productions of previously staged work including The
Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Life of Galileo. The company also mounted first productions of
his un-produced plays including The
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Schweik in the Second World War, and The
Visions of Simone Machard. All
of these were anti-fascist plays written in the period of his first refugee
exile in Europe and the U.S. during World War II.
In
1954 the company moved into the completely State
refurbished and modernized Theater am Schiffbauerdamm—the same theater where one of
Brecht’s earliest triumphs, the Three Penny Opera premiered in
1928. In that play he wrote the lyrics for songs by the young composer Kurt Weill including the songs known in
English as Mack the Knife and Pirate Jenny. That’s right, if you
listen to version of Mack the Knife famously
performed by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin you are hearing Brecht’s
words as translated by Marc Blitzstein. The same with the song first made famous
by Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya and covered by Judy Collins and Nina
Simone.
Although
the theater, company, and Brecht’s work continued to draw the international accolades, his tenure in East Berlin was not without controversy. Brecht tacitly
supported the suppression of the
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany
which had its origin with a construction
workers’ strike and spread to towns throughout the East often led by dissident leftists. It was violently
put down by the State Volkspolizei
and Soviet occupation forces including
tanks.
He
came to regret that silence and later wrote Die Lösung—The Solution—a
highly critical poem that was published posthumously in West Germany in 1959
and widely, but secretly distributed in the East.
Brecht
died on August 14, 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58 and was buried in
the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery
which is overlooked by the home he and Weigel shared. She continued as managing director of the Berliner Ensemble until she died on May 6,
1971. She was laid to rest beside her
husband. The company endures in the home
built for it by the GDR. It is now operated
by a private foundation but remains
true to Brecht’s vision of a cooperative and collaborative troupe and is still considered one of the top international theater companies which still produces revivals of Brecht’s work as well a newly commissioned original plays.
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| Brecht and his editor, collaborator, and dramaturge Elisabeth Hauptmann in the 1920's. |
Brecht,
who was born in Augsburg, Bavaria on
February 10, 1898, arrived in Berlin after World
War I and in the chaotic era of
the Weimar Republic and hyper-inflation. The post-war
uprisings by workers and soldiers had been crushed. After early success
with plays like Baal, Drums in the Night, and In
the Jungle he published his first collection of poetry, Devotions
for the Home was edited by Elisabeth
Hauptmann who became a long-time collaborator and dramaturge. The loyal
Hauptmann, who had survived the war
in Berlin, rejoined Brecht and
Weigel in the post-War Berliner ensemble.
Hauptmann
was also the first to encourage Brecht to seriously study Marxism. After that much of his poetry, like his plays
castigated Capitalism.
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| Brecht late in life. |
Questions
From A Worker Who Reads
Who built Thebes
of the seven gates?
In the books you
will find the names of kings.
Did the kings
haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon,
many times demolished
Who raised it up
so many times? In what houses
of
gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the
evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons
go? Great Rome
Is full of
triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars
triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for
its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the
ocean engulfed it
The drowning
still bawled for their slaves.
The young
Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the
Gauls.
Did he not have
even a cook with him?
Philip of Spain
wept when his armada
Went down. Was
he the only one to weep?
Frederick the
Second won the Seven Year's War. Who
Else won it?
Every page a
victory.
Who cooked the
feast for the victors?
Every ten years
a great man?
Who paid the
bill?
So many reports.
So many
questions.
—Bertolt Brecht
The Solution
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 forfeited 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?
—Bertolt Brecht
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