Brecht: Politics and Exile (1926 – 1947)

At the same time the Brecht Collective is writing the big musicals, Brecht is becoming more radicalized by those around him, and this leads to him also writing plays that are much more specifically political.

Timeline:

1926 introduced to Marxism by Elisabeth Hauptmann

1927   Mahagonny                   Fatzer (also worked w/Piscator esp on Good Soldier Schweyk)

1928   3Penny

1929   Happy End                    Flug der Lindbergs

1930   Mahagonny                   Die Massnahme, St Joan,

1931   directs Man's a Man      Kuhle Wampe, Die Mutter, police ban Mutter & Kuhle Wampe

1933   Reichstag burned—BB and family escape to Prague the next day

Marxism

“When I read Marx’s Capital, I understood my plays. He was the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across.”

He understood Marxism in a particularly wide and deep sense, as something demanding the whole person and all his deeds; not simply as a program for political thought, but a program for thought and deed as a whole.

—Wieland Herzfeld

Take care that when you leave the world

You have not merely been good, but are leaving

A better world.

—St. Joan of the Stockyards

He not only perceived the contradictory nature of events, but tried to uncover the social roots of the contradictions, and to examine what they revealed.

—Wieland Herzfeld

Brecht’s Actual Politics

“If Brecht had belonged to the Communist party, he would be anti-Communist. He was anti-everything, so that the moment he became part of a country he was anti- that country… I think he was a professional ‘anti.’”

—Elsa Lanchester

“The only three commandments he wanted to obey were: Thou shalt survive; Thou shalt work hard; and Thou shalt disagree.”

—Heyman

• Political (agit prop)

• Didactic (teaching via a moral)

• Some for professional theaters

• Some for students, workers (amateurs)

• Explore different aspects of individual within group

• Not static—meant to change after feedback

• Increasingly protested by Nazis

 Lehrstücke for students:

•Most from Asian fables/universal stories

• Historicization and cultural distance

• Jasager/Neinsager

 Lehrstücke for professionals

• The Flight of Lindberg

• The Measures Taken

• St. Joan of the Stockyards

• The Mother

EXILE (1933 - 1947)

Prague – Paris – Denmark (visits London, Moscow—sees Mei Lan-Fang— NYC, Copenhagen, Paris, ) –  Stockholm – Helsinki – Moscow – Vladivostok – Los Angeles

European Exile (1933 - 1941)

•Meets Ruth Berlau

•Travels for many productions of his work:              London, Paris, Copenhagen, NY, Moscow

•Moscow—sees Méi Lánfāng perform

•Develops theory of “Alienation effect”

•Writes a ton of plays!

How do you write for no audience?

(What audience do you need for an epic play?)

•Plays about Marxism

•Plays about Nazis

•Plays about Universal Human Themes

 Plays about Nazis

•Roundheads & Pointyheads (1934)

•Fear & Misery in the Third Reich (1938)

•The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)

Plays about being human

•Herr Puntila and his Man Matti

•Galileo

•Good Person of Szechuan

•Mother Courage

Finally gets visa to go to the US in 1941

•Film work

•Eric Bentley

•Galileo

•HUAC

BRECHT HUAC TESTIMONY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiqGxD4CZ8

During his testimony on October 30, 1947, BB has a flight ticket in his pocket.
The following day—Hallowe'en—he flies back to Europe.