Germany 1900 - 1919: "I felt the world shifting beneath my feet"

NOTES from 9/7/2012 Brecht lecture, part I

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (later changed it to Bertolt Brecht)

Born: February 10, 1898

Died: August 14, 1956

The artist to be known as Bertolt Brecht was born in 1898, the tail end of 19^th century, and he was deeply influenced by massive world changes, personal frailties, two world wars, the rich and tense life between the wars, as well as the cross-cultural currents in the most vibrant art period since the Renaissance. Munich and Berlin, the two cities where he spent his youth and early adulthood, were cultural crossroads, allowing the young Brecht to soak up a wide range of experiences and influences.

In few years from 19^th – 20^th century the whole world changes:

• Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (written 1898/published 1900) revolutionizes thinking about the mind
• Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905) revolutionizes thinking about science, time and space
• Advances in theatrical lighting (electric lighting, focusable lights) revolutionize how cultural events can be presented
• Film becomes the entertainment medium of choice—extreme realism and episodic scenes steal thunder from traditional naturalistic theater styles
• Cars speed up life and make it more dangerous
• Airplanes mean human beings are no longer earth-bound but can inhabit the sky as well

These are all life-changing developments, and they all happen within a very short period of time, meaning that life in 1898 and life in 1905 are radically different

The rise of industrialization is also the rise of the machine age, and the dream of peace and ease due to mechanization of labor gives way to horror on a wide scale in WWI's mass mechanized warfare.

No longer “shoot when you see the whites of their eyes” of 18^th c, nor even Ironclad ships and accurate-to-900ft guns of Civil War.

Now:

• tanks,
• poison gas,
• hand and rifle grenades,
• airplanes and zeppelins dropping bombs

make war less personal face-to-face and more overwhelmingly terrifying.

German soldiers at the front said:

 “When I joined the army in the spring of 1916, I carried presumptions that the war would be fought like the 1870 War between Germany and France. Man-to-man combat, for instance. But in the trenches friend and foe alike suffer from the effects of invisible machinery. It is not enough to conquer the enemy. He has to be utterly destroyed.”

—Reinhold Spengler, 1^st Bavarian Infantry Regiment

“During the early hours of 15^th September [1916], a forest of guns opened up in a ceaseless rolling thunder of fire…. It was like a crushing machine, mechanical, without feelings, snuffing out the last resistance with a thousand hammers.”

—Reserve Leutnant Herman Kohl, 17^th Bavarian Infantry Reg.

“After only ten minutes, the battle of the Somme was working away like a giant machine. Everything operated with a terrible rhythm… Splinters clattered against our steel helmets but we took no notice. An attack absorbs all the senses…. “

—Unteroffizier Feuge, 6^th Company, 68^th Infantry Regiment

“Whose heart was not in his mouth at times during this appalling storm of steel. All were seized by a deep bitterness at the inhuman machine of destruction which hammered endlessly.”

—Landwehr Leutnant M. Gerster

“Life is one hell, death is a mere trifle; we are all screws in a machine that wallows forward, nobody knows where to.”

—Ernst Toller, 1916

Even responses to new technologies made it more scary—the face of a gas mask looks like the stuff of nightmares.

In addition to the dehumanization of the war machine itself,  medical techniques mean more soldiers survive more serious injuries and return home looking like robots or Frankenstein monsters to their loved ones.

End of war:

In Russia, Russian revolution—Germany had attempted revolutions as well, as had Ireland.

Tough times in Germany—they lose the war and come home tails between their legs to a destroyed country. Demoralized. Economic crash—they’ve lost everything. Open to change.

Major swing towards political extremes: liberalism, socialism, communism and what would become fascism: Horrors, fear injected with idealism, possibility for change, hope, willingness to experiment. Lots of people become Marxist, Communist, Socialist because it seems like a reasonable alternative to having these dynasties continue to rule from high above.