Abstract
A combination of leading experts (on Brecht as well as on the GDR), makes this a reliable source of information on aspects of the author’s complex life and work in the GDR, the way in which his legacy was ‘managed’, and his influence on posterity. Without Brecht, the history of theatre in the GDR would have been completely different: in all probability conformist, boring, undialectical and totally in the spirit of socialist realism. Yet Brecht faced a regular dilemma in the GDR of wanting to support socialism but questioning its implementation, and he constantly needed courage to stand up to difficulties – physical as well as psychological – in order to achieve this aim.
Brecht’s detractors can easily mock his apparently half-hearted commitment to the emerging ‘first socialist state on German soil’. The possession of an Austrian passport, a West German publisher, and of course a Swiss bank account, made him an easy target. But Brecht repeatedly stood up for his beliefs, and in one of the most important essays in this volume Stephen Parker builds on recently discovered medical information to shed greater light on the particular health problems which plagued the author at this point of his career, and which make his support for genuine socialism all the more admirable. East Berlin was very far from being the natural home for an independent thinker with a long-standing commitment to scepticism and doubt, and all high-profile figures were subjected to much politico-cultural pressure to conform. Brecht was no exception, despite the fact that he was a trophy author for the country. Even in the Weimar Republic his aesthetic position ran directly counter to that of the Communists, and if he had not enjoyed an international reputation with which the East could claim superiority over the West – not least after his death – it is doubtful whether he could have survived. Although he was able to resist the SED’s determination to force their views on art upon him, without the temporary relief created by the uprising of 17 June 1953 (very well reassessed here by Patrick Harkin), the importance of his stance would probably have been much diminished; but chronic heart problems were exacerbated by serious and long-standing urological problems, and together with the psychological pressures of his new life, he aged rapidly.
Brecht’s physical and psychological health clearly took its toll on his creativity. The work produced in the GDR – with the exception of the late poetry, here sensitively analysed by Karen Leeder with particular relation to the concept of ‘late style’ – lacks the force of his earlier productions. Yet, as David Barnett shows, Brecht nevertheless engaged seriously in rehearsals with the Berliner Ensemble, making clear he had not lost his capacity to seek new insights into the workings of the stage and the world. As Paula Hanssen points out, however, in much of his work he depended on others, and in particular on Elisabeth Hauptmann, who was the first editor of his Complete Works and who was also a key backstage figure at the Berliner Ensemble. Hauptmann’s contribution is usually seen as lying mainly in the Weimar Republic period, but Hanssen proves this is far from being the case.
Brecht’s legacy was both intellectual and material, and his large archive was preserved as a whole thanks to the uneasy truce between the legal inheritors and the state, a tension which, as Erdmut Wizisla shows, was probably in the best interests of the material. The definitive history of the Archive has, of course, yet to be written, as has that of the Berliner Ensemble, and Laura Bradley shows the importance of Brecht ‘anniversaries’ to that institution (as well as to the GDR), the development of which was never easy, torn as it was between those who managed it, Brecht’s relatives, and the state.
The final section of this volume deals with very different creative responses to Brecht’s life and inspirational force. In her piece on ‘musical threnodies for Brecht’ Joy Calico considers the response to Brecht’s death of his two closest musical collaborators, Eisler and Dessau, and she is especially strong on the latter. In a lively piece to match his subject, David Robb shows how Biermann, Wenzel and Mensching offered a Brecht-inspired grotesque alternative to the false basis and lame conformism of the songs encouraged by the state. And with regard to literature, Moray McGowan, in one of the best essays in the collection, surveys the history of Brecht’s Fatzer project and its revival by Heiner Muller, concluding by suggesting a link between the GDR as socialist failure and the new significance the play has acquired since 1989. Finally, Loren Kruger shows how Brecht’s early anti-capitalist plays, notably Johanna, have acquired fresh impetus in the twenty-first century.
We shall never know the exact nature of Brecht’s ambivalent relationship with the GDR, but this volume provides us with some unusual angles. Many of the scholars featured here have worked on, or are completing, larger studies of the topics they consider, and the result is therefore authoritative and often new.