Brecht Plays 8: The Antigone of Sophocles; The Days of the Commune; Turandot or the Whitewasher's Congress: The Antigone of Sophocles , The Days of the Comm (World Classics)
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Nowhere were the agonised contradictions of Brecht’s situation clearer than in his response to the events of 17 June 1953. On that day workers in East Berlin rose up against the government’s demands for increased productivity, and were joined in violent demonstrations by a mixed crowd from West Berlin. The disturbances were brutally swept aside by Soviet intervention. Brecht’s instant reaction was to assure the Party that, whatever its mistakes in the recent past, he was on its side. His letter to Walter Ulbricht, First Secretary of the SED, was swiftly exploited. The official newspaper, Neues Deutschland, published just the final sentence, implying all Brecht’s support, but none of his criticism. Despite Brecht’s anger, the initial outcome was a boost to his status and to that of his theatre. In private, he complained that events had ‘alienated the whole of existence’ (Journals, p.454). To his assistant, Käthe Rülicke, he wrote, ‘Difficult days. The whitewashers are hard at it. Then again: what a chance to be a good Communist!’ (BFA 30, p.180). There is no question that, from this point on, Brecht found it more difficult to lend the regime his wholehearted support.
This was the moment then, in response to the new Tuism of the German Democratic Republic, to the tensions between Moscow and East Berlin, and specifically in reaction to the workers’ uprising, that Brecht got out the old files and disentangled his Turandot once more from the complex of Tui-material. Now the play was relatively quickly written. One of the primary objects had become to illuminate the role of the intellectual ‘whitewashers’ of a regime which was becoming increasingly bureaucratic and dictatorial. As he writes in the Preface to Turandot, ‘unconvinced but cowardly, hostile but cowering, ossified officials began again to govern against the population’ (see p. 247). The material also offered Brecht an opportunity to point up traumatic continuities with the Nazi past, a matter which was very much in his mind if we are to judge by the poems of the Buckow Elegies which date from these years. At the same time, he could gesture across to the recent success of the Chinese Revolution, which he understood as the outcome of a genuinely popular movement, and so a salutary contrast to the imported Stalinist bureaucracy of the GDR. The German people had not risen up and overthrown their criminal regime, and Brecht was mistrustful of their ability to act as a basis for the development of Socialism.
There was a time
When all was different here.
The butcher’s wife knows.
The postman has too erect a gait.
And what was the electrician?
(‘Eight Years Ago’, Poems, p.443)
Turandot or The Whitewashers’ Congress is Brecht’s last (more or less) completed play. He contemplated publishing it in the Versuche (Experiments) series, and even planned a production, first under Harry Buckwitz, then under Benno Besson in Rostock (with Regine Lutz as Turandot, Helene Weigel as the Dowager, Ernst Busch as A Sha Sen, and Ekkehard Schall as Wang, the Secretary of the Tui Academy). There was even a brief flurry of rehearsals in spring 1954, when Brecht revised the text. According to Käthe Rülicke he was, however, still dissatisfied, and would have returned to it in 1955 had not the preparation of publications and of productions at the Berliner Ensemble and elsewhere intervened. In the event, Brecht died without ever coming back to the play. It was not published in German until 1967.
The premiere of Turandot took place on 5 February 1969 at the Zurich Schauspielhaus under the direction of Benno Besson and Horst Sagert, with music by Yehoshua Lakner. It had a mixed reception. No one seemed quite sure what the targets of the satire were. Subsequent productions in Cologne (1971), East Berlin (1973) and elsewhere provoked similar confusion. The confrontation of exuberant popular theatre styles with the complex political ambiguities of the parable has left generations of critics groping for a clear line. To this day it remains a difficult work, full of richly associative satirical material and wonderfully lively farce, but unwieldy on the stage. It invites revision by a firm hand.
* * *
1953 was a crucial year, both for the GDR and for Brecht. The year began with the death of Stalin in March, provoking wild turns in the Soviet attitude to the GDR. Meanwhile, the East German Academy of Arts promoted a major conference on Stanislavsky, the theorist of an emotional theatre, who seemed to represent everything Brecht opposed. Brecht did not attend. Then came the workers’ uprising in June, and all the political tensions consequent upon that. The state was struggling to assert its legitimacy, not on the basis of popular support (which it did not enjoy), but rather on the basis of a particular interpretation of German history. That is why the cultural debates were so vehement. Brecht’s adaptations of Lenz’s The Tutor, his work with Faust, Turandot, and even The Days of the Commune, were all designed to some extent to develop a critique of the class of teachers, public servants and bureaucrats, who, according to Brecht, had provided key support for Nazism, and were now to blame for the ills of the Socialist Republic. The particularly craven behaviour of this middle-class intelligentsia was seen as a long-term product of the failure of Germany’s progressive social forces in the eighteenth century. The SED, by contrast, sought to uphold the idea of the GDR as the legitimate heir to the best progressive traditions - while all the worst aspects of the past, including the Fascist past, could be located in the West. In the spirit of dialectics, Brecht appears at times to have relished the ferocious ideological exchanges with the authorities which resulted from these differences, but the continuing experience of criticism and censorship by what he saw as the lesser cultural functionaries was taking its toll. His insistence on the ‘German Misere’ interpretation of history was seen as treasonous, and even Mother Courage was attacked for its ‘pacifism; decadence and negativity’. Amongst the very sparse diary entries for 1953, Brecht noted that ‘our performances in Berlin have almost no resonance any more’, and later that, if there were free elections, the Nazis might well be returned (Journals, pp.454 and 455).
Nevertheless, the end of 1953 saw a relative upturn in Brecht’s situation. He moved into a new flat in central Berlin, and the German collected works edition began with his Plays One; there were several interesting productions in hand. The political unrest had in fact given force to his own arguments and strengthened the hands of his allies. At the beginning of 1954 the various commissions for the arts were replaced by a new Ministry for Culture, partly in response to Brecht’s vigorous campaigning. The new Minister was an old colleague, Johannes R. Becher, and Brecht served on an advisory committee. Gradually, the old ‘formalism’ arguments were allowed to wither away. In March 1954 some of the pressures on the Berliner Ensemble were relieved when at last, after extensive building-works, they were able to move into the old Schiffbauerdamm Theatre (where they opened with Molière’s Don Juan). Brecht himself directed the premiere of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in June. He became vice-president of the Academy in July, and in December 1954 was awarded the Stalin Prize (the ceremony took place in Moscow in May 1955). Brecht chose to interpret the award as encouragement for his work for peace, and for a peaceful unification of Germany. At the same time, work on the many productions of the Berliner Ensemble, and on films and productions of his own plays by other companies, continued. He participated in the hugely successful Berliner Ensemble tours to Paris, with Mother Courage in 1954 and with The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1955. In 1956 he began preparing The Caucasian Chalk Circle for London.
Also from about 1954, however, an elegiac tone begins to enter Brecht’s poems and an unmistakable air of disappointment and exhaustion invades his sparse journal entries and letters. ‘This country still gives me the creeps,’ one note reads. To Becher he ended up complaining, ‘the era of collectivism has become largely an era of monologue’ (Journals, p.458, Letters, p.559). He was suffering from minor ailments, worried about his eyesight and his heart. Early in 1956 he had a brief stay in hospital, where he was treated for the after-effects of a bout of influenza. He died of a heart attack on 14 August 1956, shortly before the London season opened.
His early death, aged 5
8, spared him much of the recrimination within the Communist Party following upon Krushchev’s revelation of Stalin’s ‘crimes’ at the Twentieth Party Congress. He did not live to see either the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising, or the hardening of political attitudes which was to lead before long to the building of the Berlin Wall. Nevertheless, Brecht’s years in the GDR had been dominated by the escalating Cold War and by the many conflicts between his engagement with the ideas of Socialism and their far from perfect realisation in the difficult world of a divided post-Fascist Germany. It is hardly surprising that he had not had all that much time for original compositions. Instead, his priority had been to devote himself to cultural politics, and to the promotion of his vision of the role of the arts and of the theatre in the newly Socialist half of the country.
The three plays in this volume are nonetheless challenging literary documents of those negotiations, important experiments in textual adaptation and quotation and in the epic mode, and models of a new political drama, able to respond allusively to historical change. Despite some similarities in the working methods behind them, they are also astonishingly different. One would hardly imagine that this serious verse adaptation from Sophocles, this semi-naturalistic historical drama, and this funny, sprawling comedy could all be by the same author. The range of Brecht’s interests and the variety of his responses to his situation continue to surprise.
Increasingly also, Brecht had been giving his energies as a mentor to new writers and to the younger members of the Ensemble. He had developed projects for and with them, bequeathing a whole generation of Brechtian directors, writers and actors to the theatres of both East and West. It was they who were to continue the struggles of the creative intellectual, wrestling with the details of commitment: to Communism, to the East German state, and to the discipline of dialectics. To theatre and to song.
THE EDITORS
Chronology
1898
10 February: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht born in Augsburg.
1917
Autumn: Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Brecht to Munich university.
1918
Work on his first play, Baal. In Augsburg Brecht is called up as medical orderly till end of year. Elected to Soldiers’ Council as Independent Socialist (USPD) following Armistice.
1919
Brecht writing second play Drums in the Night. In January Spartacist Rising in Berlin. Foundation of German Communist Party (KPD). Rosa Luxemburg murdered. April–May: Bavarian Soviet. Summer: Weimar Republic constituted. Birth of Brecht’s illegitimate son Frank Banholzer.
1920
May: death of Brecht’s mother in Augsburg.
1921
Brecht leaves university without a degree. Reads Rimbaud.
1922
A turning point in the arts. End of utopian Expressionism; new concern with technology. Brecht’s first visit to Berlin, seeing theatres, actors, publishers and cabaret. He writes ‘Of Poor BB’ on the return journey. Autumn: becomes a dramaturg in Munich. Premiere of Drums in the Night, a prize-winning national success. Marries Marianne Zoff, an opera singer.
1923
Galloping German inflation stabilised by November currency reform. In Munich Hitler’s new National Socialist party stages unsuccessful ‘beer-cellar putsch’.
1924
‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ exhibition at Mannheim gives its name to the new sobriety in the arts. Brecht to Berlin as assisant in Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater.
1925
Field-Marshal von Hindenburg becomes President. Elisabeth Hauptmann starts working with Brecht. Two seminal films: Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. Brecht writes birthday tribute to Bernard Shaw.
1926
Première of Man equals Man in Darmstadt. Now a freelance; starts reading Marx. His first book of poems, the Devotions, includes the ‘Legend of the Dead Soldier’.
1927
After reviewing the poems and a broadcast of Man equals Man, Kurt Weill approaches Brecht for a libretto. Result is the text of Mahagonny, whose ‘Songspiel’ version is performed in a boxing-ring at Hindemith’s Baden-Baden music festival in July. In Berlin Brecht helps adapt The Good Soldier Schweik for Piscator’s high-tech theatre.
1928
August 31: premiere of The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill, based on Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
1929
Start of Stalin’s policy of ‘socialism in one country’. Divorced from Marianne, Brecht now marries the actress Helene Weigel. May 1: Berlin police break up banned KPD demonstration, witnessed by Brecht. Summer: Brecht writes two didactic music-theatre pieces with Weill and Hindemith, and neglects The Threepenny Opera’s successor Happy End, which is a flop. From now on he stands by the KPD. Autumn: Wall Street crash initiates world economic crisis. Cuts in German arts budgets combine with renewed nationalism to create cultural backlash.
1930
Nazi election successes; end of parliamentary government. Unemployed 3 million in first quarter, about 5 million at end of the year. March: premiere of the full-scale Mahagonny opera in Leipzig Opera House.
1931
German crisis intensifies. Aggressive KPD arts policy: agitprop theatre, marching songs, political photomontage. In Moscow the Comintern forms international associations of revolutionary artists, writers, musicians and theatre people.
1932
Premiere of Brecht’s agitational play The Mother (after Gorky) with Eisler’s music. Kuhle Wampe, his militant film with Eisler, is held up by the censors. He meets Sergei Tretiakov at the film’s premiere in Moscow. Summer: the Nationalist Von Papen is made Chancellor. He denounces ‘cultural bolshevism’, and deposes the SPD-led Prussian administration.
1933
January 30: Hitler becomes Chancellor with Papen as his deputy. The Prussian Academy is purged; Goering becomes Prussian premier. A month later the Reichstag is burnt down, the KPD outlawed. The Brechts instantly leave via Prague; at first homeless. Eisler is in Vienna, Weill in Paris, where he agrees to compose a ballet with song texts by Brecht: The Seven Deadly Sins, premiered there in June. In Germany Nazi students burn books; all parties and trade unions banned; first measures against the Jews. Summer: Brecht in Paris works on anti-Nazi publications. With the advance on his Threepenny Novel he buys a house on Fyn island, Denmark, overlooking the Svendborg Sound, where the family will spend the next six years. Margarete Steffin, a young Berlin Communist, goes with them. Autumn: he meets the Danish Communist actress Ruth Berlau, a doctor’s wife.
1934
Spring: suppression of Socialist rising in Austria. Eisler stays with Brecht to work on Round Heads and Pointed Heads songs. Summer: Brecht misses the first Congress of Soviet Writers, chaired by Zhdanov along the twin lines of Socialist Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism. October: in London with Eisler.
1935
Italy invades Ethiopia. Hitler enacts the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews. March–May: Brecht to Moscow for international theatre conference. Meets Kun and Knorin of Comintern Executive. Eisler becomes president of the International Music Bureau. At the 7th Comintern Congress Dimitrov calls for all antifascist parties to unite in Popular Fronts against Hitler and Mussolini. Autumn: Brecht with Eisler to New York for Theatre Union production of The Mother.
1936
Soviet purges lead to arrests of many Germans in USSR, most of them Communists; among them Carola Neher and Ernst Ottwalt, friends of the Brechts. International cultural associations closed down. Official campaign against ‘Formalism’ in the arts. Mikhail Koltsov, the Soviet jounalist, founds Das Wort as a literary magazine for the German emigration, with Brecht as one of the editors. Popular Front government in Spain resisted by Franco and other generals, with the support of the Catholic hierarchy. The Spanish Civil War becomes a great international cause.
1937
Summer: in Munich, opening of Hitler’s House of German Art. Formally, the officially approved art is clo
sely akin to Russian ‘Socialist Realism’. In Russia Tretiakov is arrested as a Japanese spy, interned in Siberia and later shot. October: Brecht’s Spanish war play Señora Carrar’s Rifles, with Weigel in the title part, is performed in Paris, and taken up by antifascist and amateur groups in many countries.