["A rich man and a poor man, there they stood, And judged each
other as best they could. The poor man said, his voice at low pitch,
If I were not poor you’d not be rich." -- Brecht]
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BERTOLT BRECHT (AND ME)  
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Victor Grossman
February 10, 2023
CounterPunch
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_ "A rich man and a poor man, there they stood, And judged each other
as best they could. The poor man said, his voice at low pitch, If I
were not poor you’d not be rich." -- Brecht _

Sketch of Bertold Brecht by Georg Groz. (Detail.),

 

For me, Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann were the two greatest German
authors of the 20th century, and Brecht, a believer in socialism –
and a fighter for it  – is admittedly closer to my heart than Mann.

In my three different US high schools or first three years at Harvard
I had never even heard the name of Bertolt Brecht. A highly-literate
comrade in our Communist group at Harvard first told me of this
“leading German author,” in 1948, but I did not get to reading 
any of his writings until after I had landed in the German Democratic
Republic (in 1952).

After becoming a student here, however, at the Karl Marx University in
Leipzig, I heard a great deal about Brecht! He was the great favorite
of many or most young intellectuals at the time, even to the point of
copying his short forward-combed hair, his buttoned up, tie-less shirt
or even his love for cigars. The ones who admired and sometimes copied
him tended to be critical intellectuals – not those
pro-Adenauer-West German types who were hardly likely to read him (or
perhaps read any books at all) – but those who were more or less
critical of the GDR leadership but not of the GDR in general. For
Brecht was decidedly opposed to USA-led western capitalism and
anti-Sovietism!

Brecht in exile had never happily integrated into the southern
California scene as smoothly as Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann or his
frequent composer and close friend Hanns Eisler. Like so many, he was
moved or forced to return to Europe when the  hysterical
anti-Communist McCarthy era and its House Unamerican Activities
Committee tried to browbeat him. He found no  welcome – nor theater
opportunities – in Zürich (where his plays were known), or in
Vienna, the homeland of his actress wife Helene Weigel – and least
of all in West Germany, riddled in the cultural (and almost every
other) field with ex-Nazis. But the writer-poet Johannes R. Becher,
returned from exile in Moscow and head of the new Kulturbund (Culture
Association), and later the first GDR Minister of Culture, was able to
attract him to East Berlin, like other prominent exiles such as Anna
Seghers, Arnold Zweig, John Heartfield and Heinrich Mann (who died
before he could leave California). In 1949 Brecht was abled to form
the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin, soon a magnet for wonderful
actors, to produce his plays, and after some energetic maneuvering, to
obtain in 1954 his own wonderful theater, the scene of his great
triumph with “Three-Penny Opera” in 1928, and now, like all
theaters in the GDR, financially well-supported by the city
government.

In 1956 a fellow-student of mine and ardent Brecht admirer, who had
worked as a summer volunteer with his theater, organized a special
student excursion to Berlin to see a Brecht play and then meet the
master. But alas, the project was suddenly canceled; we believed
because of the sometimes strained official relationship with Brecht,
who was rarely if ever praised in the official press, though not too
sharply criticized either, perhaps because of his growing renown in
world-wide literary and theater circles, including the “Three Penny
Opera” performed in New York in 1954 with great success (especially
the song “Mack the Knife”). Unfortunately, the great sold-out
triumph of the Berliner Ensemble  in London came after Brecht’s
early death in 1956 at the age of 58.

But the productions, just as he staged them, continued to thrill many,
many theater-goers in East Berlin, and as long as this was possible,
West Berlin visitors as well. I was lucky enough to see most of them:
the old favorite “Three-Penny Opera,” Helene Weigel starring in
lead roles in “Mother Courage” and “The Mother” (based on
Maxim Gorky’s book),  the great singer-actor Ernst Busch –
magnificently – in his leading roles in “Galilei” and “The
Caucasian Chalk Circle”, “Schweyk in the Second World War” with
the fine singer and actress Gisela May, “Arturo Ui” on the rise of
fascism, caricatured in the gangster milieu of Chicago – all of them
geared to both laughing and thinking as well – against fascism, war,
exploitation. Always sold out, even a back seat in the upper balcony
was worth it! Those performances were highpoints in my and East
Berlin’s rich cultural life – recollections which I still cherish!

Brecht, though grateful for finally getting the fine theater for his
plays, with his trained ensemble,  was anything but a yes-man.
Never  a member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party, but vocal as an
honored member of the GDR Academy of Arts, he was often critical of
narrow-minded dogmatism (or plain stupidity), above all in the field
of culture. Obviously, such criticism was not always welcome –
especially by those affected; he was therefore looked upon  with a
degree of suspicion  by some leading official lights – probably
explaining why that Berlin student excursion had been canceled.

Anti-Communist media repeatedly quotes his very clever words, written
after a stupid statement by a second-rate writer shortly after the
angry uprising in the GDR in 1953.

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalin Allee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people  and elect another?

Those who today recall only this quotation in their attempts to misuse
Brecht – as another brick in their denigration of the GDR and
socialism in general – fail to recall the boycott of his plays in
West Germany and Austria and the (vain) attempts to prevent Berliner
Ensemble tours to London and Paris. They conveniently forget who
helped Brecht and who tried to hurt him – and why!

They hardly recall that, regardless of his sometimes sharp but always
constructive criticism, Brecht supported the GDR attempt to build a
socialist state in Germany with all his heart. During that same
uprising in 1953 he offered his services – to speak in radio and
tell people that their grievances were often understandable, often
justified, and their participation in redressing them necessary, but
warning them not to fall into the trap of supporting  “the other
side,” that of “western”, and especially West German capitalism
and imperialism. He was, indeed, a dedicated Communist.

A few quotations, better-known to old-timers in East Germany, are as
relevant today as they ever were. (Please excuse my clumsy or partial
translations. )

A rich man and a poor man, there they stood,
And judged each other as best they could.
The poor man said, his voice at low pitch,
If I were not poor you’d not be rich.

+++

There are men who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men
who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who
struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those
who struggle all their lives: These are the indispensable ones.

+++

— From “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”, a parable about
Hitler’s rise and defeat, in the final lines addressed to the
audience:

The peoples broke him, yet
                                                                                                                
                  

Let none of us triumph too
soon,                                                                                                                  
       

The womb is fertile still from which that crept!

+++

The great Carthage waged three wars. It was still powerful after the
first, still habitable after the second. It was untraceable after the
third.

_VICTOR GROSSMAN writes the Berlin Bulletin, which you can subscribe
to for free by sending an email to: [email protected]._

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* German Democratic Republic
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* socialism
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* theater
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