by Peter Weiss
— Peter Weiss, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag: 1981. Annotated with handwritten corrections by the author and Manfred Haiduk, with dedication and date on the endpaper: “9th May 1981.” Personal archives of Manfred Haiduk.
— Peter Weiss, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag: 1981. Annotated with handwritten corrections by the author and Manfred Haiduk, with inscription and date on the endpaper: “Corrected copy for re-typesetting P. Weiss 1 sept 81.” Personal archives of Manfred Haiduk.
— Further corrections transmitted either in written correspondence or verbally, particularly in Weiss’s correspondence with Siegfried Unseld and Manfred Haiduk.
The text of the New Berlin Edition is based on the 2005 paperback edition from Suhrkamp Verlag with continuous pagination. The arrangement of the text follows the visual intentions of the author, so far as these can be ascertained from the aforementioned textual and supplementary sources. To provide a more in-depth exploration, a register of the people and works referenced within the novel—along with a concordance of the various editions and commentary on the artworks mentioned—was published in 2018 (see Jürgen Schutte, in collaboration with Axel Hauff and Stefan Nadolny, Register zur Ästhetik des Widerstands von Peter Weiss [Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag, 2018]). Manfred Haiduk has also elaborated upon the divided history of the work in a clear and detailed text (see “Zur Entstehung der Berliner Ausgabe,” in Das Argument 316 [2016]). I owe special thanks to Haiduk, a longtime colleague and friend of Weiss, for his support during my work on this edition. This edition accommodates Peter Weiss’s desire to realize his complete artistic intention in a new edition of The Aesthetics of Resistance—a late but wonderful gift for his hundredth birthday.
Jürgen Schutte
Berlin, June 2016
The New Berlin Edition, which was published in 2016, provides the source text for this translation.
Glossary
Albert of Mecklenburg (c. 1338–1412). From the northern German region of Mecklenburg; invaded Sweden with the support of local nobility and was crowned King of Sweden in 1364; deposed by *Margaret I of Denmark in 1389.
Aschberg (Olof, 1877–1960). Swedish financier and close friend of *Hjalmar Branting and *Willi Münzenberg; founded Nya Banken, the first Swedish bank for trade unions and cooperatives, in 1912; following his departure from the bank in 1919, worked closely with the USSR. In late 1935 he established a kind of politico-cultural salon called the Cercle des nations in his residence on Place Casimir-Périer in Paris; at his property La Brévière, located in the forest of Compiègne, his wife, Siri, set up a home for child refugees from Germany and Spain.
Balabanoff (Angelica, 1878–1965). Russian-Jewish-Italian Communist and Social Democratic activist; joined the Bolshevik Party and became secretary of the *Comintern in 1919. Became an open critic of Bolshevism and left Russia in 1922. After World War II, moved to Italy and joined the Socialist Workers’ Party, which later became the Italian Democratic Socialist Party.
Battle of the Ebro. The longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil War. Lasting from July to November 1938, the Battle of the Ebro caused massive casualties for both Republicans and Nationalists. Ultimately, the conflict was disastrous for the Republicans, essentially destroying their army as an effective fighting force.
Bebel (August, 1840–1913). Cofounder and leader of German Social Democracy; a friend of Marx and Engels; author of Woman and Socialism.
Berlau (Ruth, 1906–1974). Danish actor and director; member of the Danish Communist Party; founder of a revolutionary workers’ theater; a colleague of *Brecht. A translator and director of Brecht’s works, Berlau emigrated with Brecht to Sweden, Finland, and the United States. Following the war she moved to the Soviet Occupation Zone of Berlin, and continued to work in theater in the GDR.
Bridget (Saint Bridget, c. 1303–1373). Swedish author of the Revelationes coelestes. Critical of both church and court, Bridget was perhaps the most significant literary and religious figure of the Nordic Middle Ages. She founded the Vadstena Abbey, moved to Rome in 1350, and was canonized posthumously in 1391.
Bischoff (Charlotte, 1901–1994). German Communist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. In 1941 Bischoff traveled illegally to Germany, disguised as a sailor, on behalf of the German Communist Party in Stockholm; became a member of the Harnack-Schulze-Boysen organization in Berlin; and communicated with Charlotte Eisenblätter and the resistance organization of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany). She worked with Kowalke and Knöchel of the Central Committee and then, following their arrests in 1943, worked as a cleaner. After the arrests of numerous resistance fighters, Bischoff ensured that the illegal newspaper Die innere Front [The Internal Front] continued to appear. Following the war, she lived in the GDR.
Branting (Georg, 1897–1965). Son of *Hjalmar; lawyer and Swedish Social Democratic politician; member of the Swedish Commission for Refugees; chair of the Swedish Committee for Spanish Aid.
Branting (Hjalmar, 1860–1925). Father of *Georg; became the first Swedish Social Democratic prime minister in 1920; awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921.
Brecht (Bertolt, 1898–1956). German writer; lived in exile in Denmark from the autumn of 1933, in Sweden from April 1939, and then moved to Finland in April 1940 before heading to the United States in 1941; returned to East Germany after the war.
Bretonne (Restif de la, 1734–1806). French author of often-scandalous and highly erotic literature. A protocommunist, he was later rediscovered by the Surrealists.
Bukharin (Nikolai, 1888–1938). A member of the Bolsheviks, a close collaborator of Lenin, and an important Marxist theorist; elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party in 1917; became a member of the Politburo in 1924; appointed secretary-general of the *Comintern in 1926; and was relieved of all his Comintern and Politburo duties in 1929. In 1934 many of his Party duties were reinstated; in 1938, during the third of the *Moscow trials, he was sentenced to death and executed.
Cabet (Étienne, 1788–1856). French lawyer and writer, utopian communist, and author of Voyage en Icarie.
Comintern. Short for “Communist International” (also sometimes referred to as “the International” or “the Third International”). Founded in Moscow in 1919 as an international association of Communist parties from numerous countries. Under Stalin, it deteriorated into an instrument of Soviet and Stalinist foreign policy and was disbanded in 1943.
Coppi (Hans, 1916–1942). German worker, trained as a turner. At age sixteen, as a member of the Communist Youth Organization, he spent a year in jail for distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets. In 1941, he became a radio operator for the group led by Harro Schulze-Boysen, which was associated with the Red Orchestra resistance organization. On September 12, 1942, he was arrested with other members of the group and was executed in Berlin on December 22.
Daladier (Édouard, 1884–1970). French politician from the center-left Radical-Socialist Party; served as prime minister of France from 1938 to 1940; a signatory to the Munich Agreement.
Deinon. “Used in Swedish philosophy. Not found in German. (The realm of terror, hauntingly amplified) Deinosis (from deinos = terrifying, awful, a violent amplification, in rhetoric, exaggeration).” Peter Weiss, Notizbücher: 1971–1980 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982), 705.
Delacroix (Eugène, 1798–1863). French Romantic painter and creator of the work Liberty Leading the People, which hangs in the Louvre.
Douglas (Count Archibald, 1883–1960). Swedish Army lieutenant general and nobleman; served as chief of the Army from 1944 to 1948.
Drögemüller (Alfred, 1913–1988). Hamburg-born, a Communist Party functionary. He went into exile in Denmark in 1934 and returned to Germany in 1945, living initially in the West, where he continued his work for the Party. Arrested and accused of “Trotskyism” in the GDR in 1951, he spent two years in detention without charge before being unofficially rehabilitated. He went on to teach i
n East German institutions and was officially rehabilitated by the Party of Democratic Socialism in 1990.
Engelbrekt (Englebrekt Engelbrektsson, c. 1390s–1436). Swedish mine owner; elected leader of the miner and peasant rebellion in Dalarna in the spring of 1434. After initial military victories, he formed an alliance with the nobility against *Eric of Pomerania, the king of the *Kalmar Union. Engelbrekt was named Rikshövitsman (chief commander) in 1435, and, despite his willingness to negotiate, he was unable to secure a genuine peace and was slain in 1436 in a private feud. During his exile in Sweden, *Brecht began work on a play about the rebel leader but never got further than a dozen or so pages. The manuscript draft ended up in the National Library in Stockholm, where Weiss stumbled across it in 1964. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Ord och Bild from 1977, Weiss explained: “in the second part of the novel, the Pergamum motif corresponds with a very large complex dealing with Engelbrekt. It is based on Brecht’s plans to develop a play about Engelbrekt. I met him while he was living in Sweden, and at the time he was gathering material on Engelbrekt. Brecht then abandoned the idea. His work on Mutter Courage got in the way. I used my memory of that era and studied the literature on Engelbrekt, from Grimberg to Per Nyström. Based on this material, I constructed an imaginary drama developed by Brecht and his circle, which roughly corresponded to the ideas that Brecht had.”
Eric of Pomerania (c. 1381–1459). Ruler of the *Kalmar Union from 1396 to 1439, succeeding his adoptive mother, *Margaret. His power was significantly weakened as a consequence of the popular rebellion led by *Engelbrekt.
Folkhemmet (lit., “the people’s home”). This concept was central to the ideology of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and to the evolution of the Swedish welfare state.
Gallego (Ignacio, 1914–1990). Spanish Communist leader. After the civil war he was sent to a concentration camp in Algeria but made his way to the Soviet Union, where he lived until 1945. He returned to Spain in secret in 1976, became active as a politician in the PCE (Communist Party of Spain), and later founded the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain.
Géricault (Théodore, 1791–1824). French painter and one of the founders of Romantic painting; his most famous work, The Raft of the Medusa, was created in 1819 and now hangs in the Louvre; died from injuries sustained in a riding accident.
Grieg (Nordahl, 1902–1943). Norwegian writer whose play The Defeat (1935) inspired *Brecht’s play The Days of the Commune (1949). He spent 1933–1935 in Moscow, then became a war correspondent in Spain during the civil war; during World War II, he served in Norway’s government-in-exile. He never returned from an Allied bombing mission over Berlin in which he participated as an observer.
Hansson (Per Albin, 1885–1946). Leading Swedish Social Democratic politician; prime minister from 1932 to 1936; introduced the concept of the *Folkhemmet.
Heilmann (Horst, 1923–1942). Anti-Nazi resistance fighter; met Harro Schulze-Boysen, a leading member of the German section of the Red Orchestra resistance group, in 1940 while studying political science in Berlin; volunteered in the German army in August 1941, deciphering Allied documents and secretly passing them on to Schulze-Boysen; arrested with other members of the group on September 9, 1942, and executed in Berlin on December 22.
Hodann (Max, 1894–1946). Physician, psychiatrist, and leading sex reformer of the Weimar Republic; member of the board of directors of the Union of Socialist Doctors; and author of sex education books for the working class. He was incarcerated by the Nazis after the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin in 1933; after his release, he lived in exile in Norway. He served as a physician in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War in 1937–38, and in 1940, in exile in Sweden, he became a friend and mentor for the struggling young refugee painter and writer Peter Weiss. He would eventually commit suicide.
Kalmar Union. A personal union lasting from 1397 to 1523 which joined the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway under a single monarch.
Katz (Otto, also known as André Simone, 1893–1952). Czech journalist and a collaborator of *Münzenberg. He was exiled to Paris, where he continued to work as an editor for Münzenberg’s publishing houses; during the Spanish Civil War, he worked for the press office of the Republican government. He returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II; in 1952 he was indicted in the Slansky trials and executed.
Kilbom (Karl, 1885–1961). Swedish metalworker; a founder of the Communist Party of Sweden in 1921; member of the ECCI (Executive Committee of the Communist International); and editor of the Party paper. In 1929 he was expelled from the Communist International, which would lead to his growing estrangement from the Swedish Party.
Krupskaya (Nadezhda, 1869–1939). Bolshevik revolutionary and deputy minister of education in the Soviet Union from 1929; married to Vladimir Lenin from 1898 until his death in 1924.
La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, 1895–1989). Daughter of a Basque miner and Spanish mother; Communist functionary, organizer, and propagandist. A member of the Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party from 1930, she became vice president of the congress of the Second Republic in 1936. She is responsible for the famous antifascist slogan ¡No pasarán!, which she used in a speech during the battle for Madrid in 1936. She moved to the USSR after the civil war, only returning to Madrid in 1977 and living there until her death.
Marat (Jean-Paul, 1743–1793). French political theorist during the French Revolution; murdered by Charlotte Corday; the subject of Weiss’s best-known play, Marat/Sade.
Margaret (Margaret I of Denmark, 1387–1412). Queen consort of Norway and later ruler in her own right of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; founder of the *Kalmar Union.
Meryon (Charles, 1821–1868). French painter and engraver.
Mewis (Karl, also known as Karl Arndt, 1907–1987). Communist politician and member of the anti-Nazi resistance. He initially trained as a locksmith and in 1924 joined the Communist Party of Germany. He would become a leading figure in the Party in exile after 1933; during the civil war, he represented the German Communist Party in Spain; and was later exiled in Sweden. After World War II, he went on to hold high offices in the German Democratic Republic.
Moscow trials. Public trials held in Moscow in the 1930s, at the height of the Stalinist terror, and covered extensively in the international press; refers specifically to the three trials of old Bolsheviks held in August 1936 (among the accused: *Zinoviev and Kamenev), January 1937 (Pyatakov, *Radek, and others), and March 1938 (*Bukharin, Rykov, and others). Most defendants were sentenced to death and executed.
Münzenberg (Willi, 1889–1940). Proletarian youth, and member of the *Spartacus League and the Communist Party of Germany; befriended Lenin in 1916 and would go on to run a Communist publishing empire in Weimar Germany which included newspapers, journals, books, and films. After 1933, he continued his publishing activities in exile in Paris; during the Stalinist terror of the late 1930s he distanced himself from the Soviet Union. Ultimately expelled from the Party, he was found dead in eastern France under unexplained circumstances.
Nerval (Gérard de, pseudonym of Gérard Labrunie, 1808–1855). French Romantic poet. Nerval hanged himself from the bars on a window in Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne in Paris, a street that was destroyed shortly afterwards. In this volume, Weiss writes that Nerval “hanged himself from a streetlamp.” This is a common misconception—possibly derived from the name of the street—and appears in Baudelaire’s poem “Le guignon.” In Weiss’s case, it can be traced back to a note in one of his notebooks.
October. Refers to the Russian Revolution of October 1917, which brought the Bolsheviks, under Lenin’s leadership, to power.
Ossietzky-Palm (Rosalinde von, 1919–2000). Daughter of German antiwar activist Carl von Ossietzky; attended the Odenwaldschule before moving to England in 1933 and attending Dartington Hall and receiving support from *Ernst Toller and Bertrand Russell. In late 1935 she relocated to Sweden, where she was active in the efforts to save he
r father. She was denied permits to study or to work and was forced to labor as a helper in a school laundry. She remained in Sweden after the war.
Palmstierna (Erik, 1877–1959). Swedish Social Democratic politician and diplomat; grandfather of the artist and writer Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, who was married to Weiss from 1964 until his death.
Radek (Karl, 1885–1939). Polish revolutionary and intellectual, member of the Bolsheviks, and a collaborator of Lenin; a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany after World War I; held high positions in the *Comintern in the Soviet Union after 1921. He at times took Trotskyite, anti-Stalinist positions and spoke out in support of the *Moscow trials in 1936, before being sentenced to ten years in prison during the second trial in 1937; he died while incarcerated.
Rogeby (Sixten, 1910–1976). Swedish Communist and writer; fought in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades before returning to Sweden.
Rosner (Jakob, 1890–1970). Austrian journalist who joined the Communist Party of Austria in 1919; a collaborator of Dimitrov, first in Vienna and then in Berlin. After a stay in Moscow, he traveled to Sweden illegally in 1943 as the editor of the newspaper of the Communist International Die Welt [The World]. He returned to Austria in 1945, where he worked for the paper Volksstimme [The Voice of the People].
Sandler (Rickard, 1884–1964). Swedish Social Democratic politician; served as prime minister from 1925 to 1926 following the death of *Hjalmar Branting.
Second International. Formed in Paris in 1889, a federation of socialist parties and trade unions. Unlike the centralized organization of the First International, the Second International was a loose federation of national groups. In 1896 it expelled the anarchists from its ranks. As a consequence of the conflicting positions of the various national groups, the Second International ceased to function during World War I. Attempts to revive it after the war failed but eventually led to the formation of the Labor and Socialist International, which opposed the Communist-led Third International (*Comintern).
