8/12/2019 Bath Rick

1/15

http://www.jstor.org

Patricide or Re-Generation?: Brecht's "Baal" and "Roundheads" in the GDRAuthor(s): David BathrickSource: Theatre Journal, Vol. 39, No. 4, Distancing Brecht, (Dec., 1987), pp. 434-447Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208246Accessed: 08/08/2008 23:42

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208246?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3208246?origin=JSTOR-pdf

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

2/15

Patricide or Re-generation?: Brecht's Baaland Roundheads n the GDRDavid Bathrick

The secret is out. The evidence is in. What began a decade ago in West Germantheatre circles as the somewhat heretical assertion that Brecht'splays were nothingmore than a constant, iturgical repetition of what one already knows, ' now standsas common dramaturgicalparlance in the GDR2 as well. Brecht s dead, was theNietzschean pronouncement of Hellmut Karasek in the Spiegel,3 to which thecelebrated Brecht-Killer 4 nd heir apparent Heiner Miiller could only add that itwas, in all due respect,a Vatermord(patricide).5And statisticswould bear all this out.Whereas1967 saw twenty separatenew Brechtproductions in the GDR,6this numberhad dropped to eight in 1985, threeof which were of The Threepenny Opera and twoof TheRifles of FrauCarrar7- not exactly the centerof the classicalBrechtiancanon.If that is not enough, one need only cite the burial of bb as a classicistby the Brechtprogeny in the BerlinerEnsemble. Brecht's heatreworks of the matureperiod, GDRcritic Christoph Funke offers by way of historical explanation, makea tired-out,worn-down impression. The clearer, the more intelligent, the more logical andcoherent the Brechtiantext, the less it seems to offer today in the way of critical in-tellectualchallenge. 8Speakingfrom the towers of academicliterarycriticism,Werer

David Bathrick s Professor f Germanand TheatreArts at Comell Universityand an editorof New GermanCritique. He is authorof The Dialectic and the Early Brecht (1976) and is currentlywritinga bookoncultureandpolitics in the GDR.

1BenjaminHenrichs, Die Zeit (7 May 1976).2 German Democratic Republic, sometimes known as East Germany.3Hellmut Karasek, Der Spiegel 9 (1978): 216 ff.4Theater heute 1 (1984): 61. Caption introducing interview with Heiner Miiller.5 Notate 5: Informations - und Mitteilungsblatt des Brecht-Zentrumsder DDR (1983). Interview withHeiner Miiller. Reprinted in Theater heute 1 (1984): 61-62.6J6rg Mihan, Brechtauf den Biihnen der DDR, in Brecht 73, ed. Werner Hecht (Henschelverlag:Berlin, 1973), 319-25.7Peter Kraft, Brecht auf den Biihnen der DDR 1985, in Notate 3: Informations- und Mitteilungsblattdes Brecht-Zentrumsder DDR (1986), 5-6.8 Christoph Funke, Der allwissende Brecht?- Fragenan die Lebendigkeiteines Klassikers, in Brecht85: Zur Asthetik Brechts. Dokumentation. Protokoll der Brecht-Tage 1985 10.-13. Februar. Schriften-reihe des Brecht-Zentrumsder DDR. Band 5 (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1986), 16.

434

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

3/15

435 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONMittenzwei even goes so far as to call the move away from Brecht a moment in the

emancipationprocess of socialist literature, 9 he initiation of which he ascribed tothe aesthetic dethronement of Brechtby his students. 10While such hyperbolic metaphorsof internmentand regicideserve well as signalsofcrisis, a closer look at the actual function of Brecht in the GDR today reveals a some-what more complicated picture. To be sure, a growing number of artists and criticsalike speak openly and even cantankerously of Brecht atigue ;of the aestheticallyparalyzing impact of the Brecht Modelle rom the 1950s and 1960s on the entirecon-temporary theatrical landscape; of even the irrelevance of the mature, enlightened,finished works for the post1968 generationin the GDR.11 n most cases the venom isdirected as much at the historical canonization of the Stiickeschreiber play-writer,ashe liked to call himself)as an expressionof a prevailingculturalpolitical hegemony as

it is at the author and the works themselves. Once a thorn in the side of theAristotelian-Stanislovsky dominated theatrical status quo, the official image of thecontemporary Brecht now stands for a particular kind of Knowing-it-all Besser-wisserei) and establishment control. Yes indeed, Bertolt Brecht has now become aproblem for anyone who wants to be theatricallyinnovative in the GDR. But, I shallargue, that is one Brecht- the official one. There are others. Moreover, they are atwar with each other.

As illustration of the inherently internecine nature of the signifier Brecht in theGDR, I should like to discuss two recent highly controversial GDR Brechtproduc-tions. In so doing, I shall use these events to delineate a number of differentramifica-tions of the contemporary Brechtdiscussion, which I organize around the followingquestions: what do these productions and the response to them tell us about therelevance and/or non-relevance of Brecht'sown works in the GDR today; what istheirsignificancefor the presenttheatrical life in the GDR; and finally, what is the im-portance of the changing reception of Brecht in the GDR historically for questionsconcerningculturalpolitics, and in particularthe continuing reassessment of modern-ism and the avant-garde in that society.

First to the productions. In February of 1982, the director Friedo Solter of theDeutsches Theater in East Berlin left the capital to direct the first GDR production ofBaal at the Stadtischen Biihnen in Erfurth. What was significant about the choice ofBaal was not only its recourseto the early Brecht,which with the exception of A Manis a Man (a transitionalplay anyway) had for the most part remainedunexploredter-ritory in the GDR.12Also important was that Solter turnedaway from Brecht's own

9Werner Mittenzwei, Der Realismus-Streit um Brecht (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1978), 152.10Ibid., 150.11n a discussion in Theater der Zeit (11/85) entitled Wo liegen unsere Masstabe, the director PeterWaschninsky asserted: There is no actor today in the theatre who would presumably put up with anauthority like Brecht. My generation has been marked by the 1968 period (21).12There was one production of In the Jungleof Cities at the BerlinerEnsemble in 1971 and one produc-tion of Edwardthe Second at the Deutsches National Theater in Dresden in 1968 before the Solter produc-tion of Baal and two recent productions of Drums in the Night by Christoph Schroth, one in Schwerin(1982) and one at the BerlinerEnsemble in Berlin (1983).

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

4/15

436 / TL December 1987

The Roundheads and the Pointed Heads. Deutsches Theater, East Berlin. Directed by Alexander Lang.Photo: Willis Saeger.

sanitized version of the text to draw from the 1918/19 versions in which the languagewas considerably more vital, the gesture infinitely more anarchistic. In the 1954 edi-tion of his collected works published two years before his death, Brecht had warnedreadersthat the asocial Baal would cause those who had not learned to think dialec-tically all sorts of problems: theywill find therein little more than the glorificationofego-mania. 13 Clearly the older Marxistwas seekingto prevent in laterreadingsof thisplay any pubescent identification with this Nietzschean Kraftmensch(he-man). Henceit is all the more interesting that Solter's excavation of the earlierversions, togetherwith his whole conception for this first GDR production, was guided by a positive nota negative appropriationof the the Baalic world feeling (das Baalesche Weltgefiihl)for socialism.

What emerges in the Erfurthproduction is a Baal whose destructive energies andsexualvitality, while still seen as nihilisticallyshocking and hence asocial, nevertheless

13Bertolt Brecht, Bei Durchsicht meiner ersten Stiicke, Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main,1967), 17:947.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

5/15

437 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONoffer preferable behavioral alternatives to a stagnated status quo. Klaus Schieff'scharacterizationgives us an older, balding, mustached, and basically lovable figure(the resemblance to Wolf Biermann was unmistakable), whose antics clearly evolveout of rebellion against rather than merely narcissistic isolation from. Aren'tyouafraid of the power of society, which you have as your enemy? Baal is asked. Ithrive on animosity, is the reply.14

The targets of this animosity range from hypocritical bourgeois morality to misuseof the environment. In a dispute with Ekartover the instrumentalizationof the land-scape, Baal almost sounds like a Green: In49 years you can eliminate the term forestfrom your vocabulary. And human beings will be gone too. 15Baal'swomen are nolonger merely victims, but take part actively and aggressively in the general uproarand prevailing sensuality. His lover Ekart is an avuncular, grey-bearded vagabondphilosopher (the homo-erotic dimension is eviscerated), who like Baal forms a part ofa somewhat aging late sixties counter-culture. Thus in Solter's production, Baal'sasocial behavior is socially motivated, takes on the contours of a coherent, acceptableattack upon the establishment.In the final scene the recalcitranthero is swept from thestage by his fellow-actors dressedlike street cleaners. A disturbance actor has beeneliminated, the society stands accused.

Asked in an interview as to his interestin doing Baal in the GDR, Solter stressedtheimportance of the early Brecht as source of revitalization at a time of cultural stagna-tion. We n this society have outdone ourselves in termsof enlightenment, in termsofdogma, in terms of reducing everything to one simple message, Solter says withremarkablecandor, Brecht's ater plays were written at a time ... when one neededa few solid slogans and dogmas ... but when you've done that sort of thing yearafter year the way we have, then you need a new lever. 16 Solter's detailed praise ofthe potentials of Baal and the pre-Marxist Brecht implicitly constructs a Brechtmodel in direct and obvious critical contrast to the establishment one. There issomething wild, uncomplicated, un-premeditated, nd refreshingly unorthodoxin this Brecht, Solter says: no firm structures ... no logical, inexorableunfolding ofplot . . . no grand thought scheme (Schematades Denkens).... What we find is reallife (es ist Lebenshaltungdrin)I '7

The ironies here are legion. In word if not exactly in letter, Solter's formulations re-enact Brecht's own revolt against the theatrical status quo of the Weimar Republicfifty years before. In Solter's scheme, the closed, narrative-centered,overly didacticqualitiesof the older Brecht have become in the GDR what once were the attributesofAristotelian theatre to the playwright himself.

What emergeswith clarity in both the production and the discussions around it isthe extent to which the recourse to the early Brechtin the GDR entails at once an at-tack on the GDR Brechtindustry as well as a repudiationof those later works which

14 Cited by Otto Riewalt, Eingriiner Baal, Theater heute 7 (1982): 22.15Ibid.16FriedoSolter, Regisseureiiber Umgang mit Brecht, Theater der Zeit 2 (1983): 14.17 Ibid.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

6/15

438 / TJ,December 987have become encased in classicism. The problem, in otherwords, lies with the maturetexts qua texts, as well as the way that they have lent themselves to appropriationasforms of official legitimation. Solter'sproduction of Baalbringsout both these dimen-sions that are importantfor the Brechttug of war and its impact on theatre life at thepresent time.

At the political level, the message seems to be that Brecht'stheatre was appropriatefor a postwar period in which there was a need for enlightenment with aestheticmeans. Where the classical Brechtianmodel once was a challenge to the entrenchedpolitical and ideological left-overs from the previous historical period, where thegrand cheme was once necessaryfor a broader picture, such answers can now havean inhibitingeffect. Refreshingabout the early plays is preciselya life attitude wherequestions rather than answers, where creative destruction are the call of the day.Again Solter: There are gradesnow for Marxist-Leninism, or the study of the state.This thinking in grades (Zensuren),has something very narrow and inhibiting aboutit. 8 In the GDR, Brechtwittingly or unwittingly had become associated with an en-trenchedworld view in which the predictableoutcome of the socialist revolution pro-vides a catechism of pre-structuredknowledge in a world now demandinga new set ofanswers- and questions.

Which bringsus to the second point, namely the problemof the Brechtianaesthetic.Solter's stress upon the early Brechtbeing rich in textual fragmentation, unexpectedleaps, logical contradictions, and openness is intended to provide avenues for creativeexplorationwhich the more rounded, rational, classical exts simply denied. In placeof a historicalemplotment, which despite its claim to epic contradiction and audienceinvolvement would still resolve its questions harmoniously, Solter emphasizes thepolitical effectiveness of an aesthetics grounded in improvisation, play, and fantasy.The very fragmented,unresolved natureof the text itself underminesthe hegemony ofcentralconcepts and engages the audience and the actors in the process of experimen-tation and resolution.

The emphasis upon improvisation and play is certainly what links Solter's inter-pretation to the work of his renowned younger colleague at the Deutsches Theater,Alexander Lang, whose 1983 production of The Round Heads and the Pointed Heads(only the thirdpostwar production in German)caused an even greatersensation thandid Solter's Baal. A former actor at the Berliner Ensemble before going to theDeutsches Theater, Lang has rapidly built a name for himself through a number ofhighly innovative productions of such works as Biichner's Danton's Death,Shakespeare'sMid-SummerNights Dream, ErnstToller's Das entfesselte Wotan andmore recently, GDR playwright Christoph Hein's Die Geschichte des Ah Q. Whatmarked Lang's style in all of these works and earned him the epithet Regiein-dividualist19was a notable disdain for textual integrity;an emphasis upon the comic,

18Ibid., 15.19Werner Hecht, Die Innenseite der Elefantenhaut- Wirkungsmoglichkeiten von Brecht-Stiickenheute, in Brecht 85, 40.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

7/15

439 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONthe playful, upon fantasy as the seat of realism;togetherwith a strongbelief in the ac-tive, autonomous role of the actor in the collective construction of a dramaticproduc-tion. None of these qualities have been particularlya mainstay of the realist or eventhe Brechtian theatre tradition in the GDR, and so it was a source of some surprisethat the keepers of the grail at the BrechtCenter even granted him the rights to pro-duce the play in the first place.20And needless to say, Langrealized their worst fears.

For what more incongruous combination than the architect of what is now calledcomedic theatre (kom6diantisches Theater)21 in the GDR and Brecht's ratherweighty allegory about fascism, racism, and class struggle written just as Hitler wascoming to power (1932-34). Lang'sfirst step was radicaltextual incision, which, whilesolving a lot of dramaturgicalproblems, earnedhim the enmity of those who stand forintegrityof the text : he repressedand even eliminated the racist and class conflictelementsof the play. The de Guzmannplotline about the rich jew who is momentarilypersecuted on the basis of race, but at a moment of crisis is able to re-join hiscapitalistic class brothers and continue his life as exploiter is pushed into the

Baal. Wolf-Dietrich V6llner as Ekart (foreground) and Klaus Schleiff as Baal (background). StadtischeBiihnen, Erfurt. Photo: Barbara Berthold.

20 In his interview in Theater der Zeit 2 (1983): 15, Alexander Lang pointedly expresses his gratitude forpermission to do the play.2 See the interview entitled, Furein kom6diantisches Theater: Gesprach mit Alexander Lang, inTheater der Zeit 5 (1983): 21-25.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

8/15

440 / TI,December 987background; the historical alternative to the present social order in the form of therevolutionary sickle movement (i.e. the one day triumphantcommunist party) iseliminatedcompletely. Where once a study of how Hitler uses ace to blind momen-tarily theproletariatto its truerevolutionary interestsin order that thebourgeois classcan maintain its power, Lang'srevisionssuppresswhat history has revealed as Marxistmyth anyway in orderto explore the problem of manipulationin mass society.22In sodoing he strips the play of its limited historical context as a crude socio-economicallegory of the rise of Hitler a la the Dimitroff theory23and places it squarely into theprocess of political power relations in the contemporary world- East and West.

Lang's underlying dramatic conception for this play was as radical as his textualemendations. The entire production takes place in a grey, walled-in arena, whichresembles at once a bull ring, a circus, a theatre,a market-place in any case, an openlocus of mass gathering, where individuals lose their identity and where the seductiveformation of public taste and behavior prevails. The dictator Iberin is dressed in astriped shirt and jogging pants and perched on a bike. His speeches to the Volk,delivered in lilting saxon accent, (the allusion to Walter Ulbrichtwas not missed byanyone) resemblemore the exhortationsof an exerciseleaderin a sport camp than thedemagoguery of Adolf Hitler. The Chaplinesque tenant farmer Callas, with whiteclown face and red nose, gallops around the ring ike a circus horse in chase of hiswhip: a petit-bourgeois run amok, brought now under control, not through anyideology of volk or race relations, but simply by the binding formations inherent tothe collective activities and institutional life in an advanced industrial society. Whatmarks the performanceof all these charactersand the production as a whole is a senseof physical activity, slapstick, constant movement- but above all play.

A number of things emerge from Alexander Lang's staging of the Roundheadswhich suggest potentially new avenues of access to Brechtin the GDR. First is the im-portance of confronting the power of the existing Brechtimage by making changes inthe text. Lang, like Brechthimself in both his adaptations (Bearbeitungen)and in pro-ductions, is audacious enough to revise or even remove dimensions of a thematicplotline in orderto bringinto the foregrounddimensionsof a play which for historicalreasons have become relevant topics of the day.24His focus upon the seductivenessof

22For a discussion of Brecht'splays about fascism from a perspective critical of Brecht see my A One-Sided History: Brecht's Hitler Plays, in Literatureand History (Lanham, New York, London, 1983),181-96.23According to the theory of A. Dimitroff as defined at the 13th Plenum of the executive committee ofthe Communist International, fascism was merely the open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reac-

tionary, the most chauvinist, the most imperialist elements of finance capitalism. Cf. Arthur P. Mendel,ed., Essential Works of Marxism (New York: Bantam Books, 1961), 412.24Brecht'smost famous and controversial adaptations at the Berliner Ensemble in the early 1950s in-cluded Goethe's Urfaust, Lenz'sDer Hofmeister, Shakespeare's Coriolanus, and George Farquhar'sTheRecruitingOfficer. In each case Brechtwas attacked for his sacrilegious treatmentof the classical heritageand disdain for textual ntegrity because of his efforts to bring out elements of these works which wouldreflect a more contemporary view. It is ironic that virtually the same criticisms were hurled at AlexanderLangat the BrechtSymposium of 1985 in which a session was devoted to the Roundheads production. SeeBrecht 85, 77-104.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

9/15

441 / PATRICIDE RRE-GENERATIONthe little person through mechanisms of mass manipulation highlights an element inthis and other plays from Brecht's mature period which still speak directly to au-diences in socialist and capitalist societies alike. More importantly, by eliminating thesomewhat heavy-handed reference to the sickle movement as the alternative lying inthe historicalwings, Langcuts away a ballast from the work which has come to iden-tify Brechtin the eyes of GDR viewers with what FriedoSolter calls a kind of Ican-go-home-rest-assured attitude. In 1931, mention of the sickle movement meant a uto-pian glimmer toward the future at a moment when all progressive forces were beingswept aside by the brown hordes. In 1983, in a state in which questions of class strug-gle under capitalism and their eventual resolution inevitably serve as ideologicaljustification for the status quo, the allegorical sickle movement suggests, rightly orwrongly, the easy answer. Lang's position is that unless they are cracked open andshaken up and revamped and attacked anew, Brecht'sepic plays from the matureperiod inevitably become, again in the words of ChristophFunke,a confirmationofcertifiedknowledge (Bestiitigungeines gesicherten Wissens).25Thus it is no accidentthat Langhas looked to a little known play (no Modelle) and to differingversions ofthat play to constructa text which would bring a breath of fresh air and even sacrilegeinto the Brecht aura. And it is equally unsurprisingthat such behavior should havehim called to task for a lack of fidelityto the work and for what a number of GDRcritics have referred to pejoratively as Regietheater(Director's theatre).26

Which brings us to a second point, namely the reconceptualizationof the heavypolitical Brecht as commedia dell'arte.Lang's refreshingscenery along with his use ofmasks and employment of circus motifs brings an aspect of the visual and a sense oflightness and play to a Brechtian text which, in the mixed metaphor of one critic,couldwell send the signal that breaks the camel's back, particularlyin that it takesplace only a 100 meters from the stuffy museum of the Berliner Ensemble. 27Circuselements and slapstick theatreor an emphasis upon sport or even the gest of CharlieChaplin'slittle trampwere, of course, not foreign to Brechthimself. Inplays such as AMan is a Man, Mahagonny, The Threepenny Opera, or In the Jungleof Cities, bbhas employed a semiotics drawn from the domain of mass culturewhich were at oncea parody and incorporationof that genrefor his own epic work. But this again is morethe early Brecht.The prevailing image of the later Brecht in the GDR is imprinteddif-ferently, emerging from the struggles of exile and with a visage and rigor of that ex-perience. The grey austerity of Mother Courage pulling her Planwagen across thestage of Europe bespeaks a message of dark times with relevance for the constructionyears, not the 1980s. Lang's production of Roundheads makes the play's sub-title, afairy tale of horror ein Greuelmiirchen),the dominant conceptual metaphor of a re-interpretationin which the central conflict is no longer labor vs. capital, or even ra-tionalism vs. irrationalism,but rather the free play of fantasy as a liberatingforce and

25 Funke, Der allwissende Brecht?, 17.26Hecht, Die Innenseite, 40. See also Jirgen Schebera, Zum Beispiel Rundkbpfe- Brecht auf demRegietheaterder 80er Jahre- Gewinn oder Verlust, in Brecht85, 24-32, which offers a slightly more dif-

ferentiated critique of Lang's production as an example of the new Regietheater.27Deutschlandarchiv 12 (1982): 1261.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

10/15

442 / TJ,December 1987

Baal. Stadtische Biihen, Erfurt. Photo: Gtinter Dietel.

its subversion at the hands of collective culture industries. What he also communi-cates, above all by giving the actor free reign in physically countering and subvertingthe Brechtian text, is a certain fearless audacity vis-a-vis the official Brecht image.Lang: The basic motivation for me and the actors is curiosity. Curiosity about theplaywright, his text, and its translationinto a comic mode. If I know everything in ad-vance, it all gets boring. 28

The productions by Solter and Lang do not stand in a vacuum, but emerge out ofmore generaldevelopments within the area of theatre and culturalpolitics. In drawingconclusions about the meaning of the present controversy around Brecht it is impor-tant to situate them within such a largerframework.Startingwith the contemporarytheatrescene, let it be said that the rebellionagainstBrecht is very much a part of a rebellion against what theatre critic JoachimFiebachhas called a kind of closed socialist model for art which prevailed in the 1950s and1960s.29Centralto this model was a belief that one could use theatre as a means for theformation of political consciousness; but even more importantly, that there was aclear and direct translatablerelationshipbetween scientific and aestheticcognition. As

progenitor of a theatreof the scientific Age, Brecht'sepic drama as a total system

28 Interview with Lang in Theater der Zeit 2 (1983): 16.29JoachirnFieback, Wo liegen die Masstabe? Theater der Zeit 11 (1985): 24.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

11/15

443 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONbecame synonymous with a notion of art in which grand philosophical andsociological questions could be posed and answered within the medium of aestheticrepresentation.Regardlessof the extent to which Brecht himself had once challengedconventional models of socialist realism or was rooted in a tradition of aestheticmodernism, his dialectical theatre was nevertheless seen as an aesthetic analogue tothe totality hinking at the heart of Marxist-Leninism,where answers are pre-givenby the very questions asked. In repudiating such all encompassing models(iibergreifendeModelle),30it should come as no surprisethat one would re-discoverthe early Brecht. Rather than a progressive notion of history grounded in theteachingsof the Marxist classicsand propelledforwardby the actions of a social class,we find the naked, anarchistic individual whose destructiveenergiesdisrupthistoricalcontinuity and explode into the open new possibilities. Inplace of dramaticstructures,which both mirror and call forth intervention into the social conditions of a worldwhich can be rationally grasped and politically resolved, we are offered fragmentedimages whose inner relationshipis symbolic and lyrical ratherthan cognitive. Insteadof an epic episteme, which despite the existence of dark times will still promise us aperfect world (eine heile Welt) we find only Searching,not yet knowing (Solter),and negation as life giving principle. Regardlessof the extent to which the binary op-position of the early vs. the late Brecht is itself a construction which sublimates thevery real contradictions and inconsistencies of even the later Brecht, it is thissublimatedimage which nevertheless has taken on the meaning it has in the GDR andagainst which battle is being fought.

The assertion of internecine struggles being waged within the signifier of BertoltBrechtand the recourse now to the early Brecht as a source of aesthetic renewal bringsus finally to the role of bb n the largerdiscussions of modernism and the develop-ment of avant-garde theatre in the GDR since the very outset of cultural life in thepostwar period. His early productions of Mother Couragein 1949 and The Mother in1951 were points of controversy because of their challenge to established notions ofsocialist realism;just as his and Paul Dessau's pacifist twelve tone opera The TrialofLukullesin 1951 had set the framework for a whole new direction in modernistmusicand musical theatre in that society. Moreover, when in the late 1950s a group ofyounger playwrights (Heiner Miiller, Peter Hacks, and subsequently Volker Braun)turned to the agit-prop theatre tradition of the Soviet and Weimar avant-gardesas asource of political and aesthetic renewal, it was Brecht's own earlierpublic pleas forsmall, flexible forms of struggle... as we once had in the agit-prop movementwhich had helped legitimate and pave the way for that kind of experimentaltheatre:If we want to appropriate the new world in an artistic and practical way, Brechtannounced at the Fourth Writers'Conference in 1956, wemust create new means ofartistic expression and reconstruct the old ones. 31

Thus our look back at the history of Brecht in the GDR reveals a figure on bothsides of the struggle for avant-garde theatre. While the epic models of the 1950s of-

30Ibid.31Speech held by Brecht at the Fourth Writers'Congress in 1956, reprintedin: WernerHecht, Brecht imGesprich (Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp, 1975), 169, 172.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

12/15

444 / TJ,December 987fered the first alternatives to the hegemony of socialist realist theatre, it was preciselythis model which in turn became the brunt of attack as writers sought a slightlyearlier or less orthodox version to fuel their efforts for theatrical change. Andwhich of these configurations constitutes, finally, the real Brecht?The answer, ofcourse, as more recent theoretical debates have taught us, is that there is none. Orrather, that any real Brechtmust emanate precisely in the process of slippageso cen-tral to the evolution of his work; in that inevitably contradictory authorial personawho would seem to invite canonization at the very moment he would offer themeans for its de-canonization. Certainlysuch a process has been Brecht'smost impor-tant legacy historically within the development of avant-garde theatre and theory inthe GDR.

Viewed from such a perspective, it is possible to locate two significant re-evaluations and re-appropriations of Brecht which have had an impact on newtheatricaldirections in the GDR. The first important shift in the signifier entailed amove away from the classical bb of the exile plays (Galileo, The Good Woman ofSetzuan, Mother Courage, etc.) to the discovery of the Lehrstiick(learning play) fromBrecht'sagit-proptheatredays of the late Weimarperiod. While the firstefforts in thisregardwere initiatedby dramatistsin the late 1950s and early 1960s as a part of whathas been called the didactic theatre movement,32 it was not until WernerMittenzwei'sarticles entitled TheBrecht-LukacsDebate (1968)33and Brechtand theDestinies of an Aesthetic of Materials (1975),34 hat the fruits of Brecht'sagit-proplegacy would be formulated into a more general theory of avant-gardism capable ofconfronting the anti-modernist predilections of the prevailing Lukacsian aesthetic.Two emphases emerge in Mittenzwei'sexplicationwhich become central tenets for theembryonic avant-garde debate of that time. At the most general level, BrechtianLehrstiicktheory, in conjunction with Walter Benjamin'sessay The Author as Pro-ducer, and Hanns Eisler's and Ernst Bloch's writings on avant-garde from the exileperiod, provide the theoreticalunderpinningsfor an aestheticsof materials oundedupon an analogue between material and aesthetic production in which the newmedia such as film, radio, and television represent progressive, more collective,and industrially produced forms of experimental art. More relevant for theatre,Brecht'sagit-prop legacy was seen as encouraginga theatricalpracticein which short,formally experimental works would evoke active, critical audience participation;works whose operative naturewas designed to challengeboth the more traditionallystructuredforms of classical socialist dramaas well as the character and plot centeredstructuresof even Brecht'sown epic plays.

32See Gudrun Klatt, Erfahrungendes 'didaktischen' Theaters der fiinfziger Jahre in der DDR,WeimarerBeitriage7 (1977): 34-69; David Bathrick, Agitproptheater n der DDR: Auseinandersetzungmit einer Tradition, in Dramatik der DDR, ed. Ulrich Profitlitch (Frankfurtam Main: SuhrkampVerlag,1987), 130-51.33Werner Mittenzwei, Die Brecht-LukacsDebatte, Sinn und Form 19:1 (1967): 235-69.34WernerMittenzwei, Brechtund die Schicksale der Materialasthetik, in Dialog 75. Positionen undTendenzen (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1975), 9-44.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

13/15

445 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONWhat is ironic, but also paradigmatic,about Mittenzwei'suse of Brechtto elaboratea theory of the avant-garde heretofore unacceptable within the realm of socialist

theory is precisely the inverted time lag it reveals between practiceand theory. Forinpoint of fact, by the time of its tentative articulation (1968-75), a number of theleading playwrights in the GDR had already pointedly distanced themselves fromeven the agit-prop Brecht in their search for theatrical models less overtly didacticand rational n their orientation. For example, Peter Hacks's call for a postrevolu-tionary dramaturgy n 196535spoke for a number of playwrights who would turn toaesthetically centered, poetic models of expression no longer grounded insociological explication and scientific premise. Sciencedoes not know everything,wrote Hacks ten years later in an even more direct attack upon Brecht'snotion ofscientific heatre, and where it does know something, it is not worth much forart. 36But it is the playwright HeinerMiillerwho has most pointedly articulatedthe evolv-ing second shift within the Brechtsignifierin his attempted recovery of Brecht'searly,pre-Marxist writings, and in particular through his discussion of bb's ittle knowndramatic fragmentcalled Fatzer.37Between 1927 and 1932 Brecht had worked on theFallof the egoist Johann Fatzer which deals with four soldiers in WWI who desertbattle, hole up in a little room and wait for the revolution. Fatzerends with the execu-tion of the central characterby the other three soldiers- yes,you ought / at least tochange yourself / by no longer being / here at all 38- and finally the discovery andshooting of the others. The profound pessimism concerning any resolution to thehistoricalsituation, combined with the assertion of ego as the materialwellspringfor a

viable social struggleare the reasons for Miiller that Brecht was never able to finish thework: Fatzerhad to remain a fragment, Miiller writes programmatically, because, fhe had not broken it off he would never have written again. Forthe final insight of theplay - that for a long time to come there will be no victors in this world, only van-quished-well, one simply cannot keep writing with this kind of an insight....Fatzer is the best thing that has ever been written for the twentieth-century stage, andthe best by Brecht. 9ForHeiner Miiller of the 1970s, Brecht'sturnto Marxismin the late 1920s and to an

agit-prop dramaturgy founded upon the securities of the teachingsof the classicsabout the outcome of class strugglerepressedthe insights of his pre-Marxist,more in-tuitive, more experimentaland fragmentedaesthetic stance. While historically under-standablegiven the growing onset of fascism, threethingsget lost in the processwhichMiiller hopes to see reclaimedfor contemporary GDR theatre. Not surprisingly, they

35See Peter Hacks, Das Poetische. Ansiitze zu einer postrevolutioniren Dramaturgie (FrankfurtamMain: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972).36Peter Hacks, Uber Adam und Eva, in Programmheft Adam und Eva, StaatstheaterDresden / Kleines Haus. Quoted in Mittenzwei, Der Realismus-Streit um Brecht, 157.37Published for the first time in Theater heute 4 (1976): 48-57.3 Ibid., 56.39Theater heute 1 (1984): 61-62.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

14/15

446 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONare qualitieswhich also form the foundation for both the Solter and Langproductionsdiscussed above.

The first concerns the way that certainthings seem to dropout of sight or Brechtin terms of what he perceives of social reality. For instance, the concept of the in-dividual in a mass society - clearly not a constituent dimension of orthodox Marx-ism is neverthelessvery much a central theme throughout the early Brecht(A Manis a Man, Fatzer, etc.). It is Miiller'sview that theplaywright'slaterinvocation of classcategoriesled to the abandonment of such a perspective, and hence to an impoverish-ment of detail, to a removal of the self and subjectivityfrom the centerof concern, toa standing above the material that he was treating. As soon as Marxism is bound tothe existence of the state, Miller argues, it goes through a process of reduction.Brecht'sbinding of his Marxist theatre to official socialist history (Marxisttheoriesoffascism, etc.) resultedin a similar kind of reduction, which in turn obscuredhis viewof social phenomena which lay outside those paradigms. CertainlyAlexander Lang'sproduction of Roundheads implicitly takes part in such a critiqueof Brecht,preciselyby abandoning the models of class and socialist history in the original version of theplay to focus on the hopeless fate of thelittle person in mass society.

A second blind spot to emerge from the more enlightened, Marxist Brecht, inMiiller'sview, can be tracedin his increasingfocus upon the positive at the expenseofthe negative. Centralto Brecht'searlyplays (Baal, Drums in the Night, In the JungleofCities) as well as Fatzer was a sense of destruction, of evil and the asocial as thepotential for something new (Das Neue ist das B6se). Again Miiller: Societycan get agreat deal of good from the presentationof asocial behavior patterns. The representa-tion of the asocial releases more impulses than any kind of good example. 40FriedoSolter's production of Baal was clearly conceived to tap the nihilism of the earlyBrecht which HeinerMiillerhas theorizedinto a new, morevital avant-gardetraditionfor contemporary socialist theatre.

Finally, what is most important for Miiller about Fatzeris precisely its tentative,fragmented, experimental character. Closed theatre with closed answers, even ifMarxistanswers, he argued, prohibit the audiencefrom critical involvement, preventone from seeing reality as an ongoing process. The unfinished, unrhymed nature ofBrecht'searly work stands for Miilleras a critiqueof the more facile solutions offeredby both the agit-prop as well as classical, epic plays which were to succeed it.The very existence of such lively interchangewithin the dramatic and theoreticalheritageof Bertolt Brechtspeaks to his continued life and not his complete demise inthe GDR. Whether one looks to the younger Brechtto counter the old, as do Solterand Miiller, or urges more playful, less text centeredapproaches to the classical epicworks a la Alexander Lang, it is clear that bb remains a part of avant-gardetheatricaldevelopments- even as an object of assault. Forwhat transcendsthe valid-

40 Es ilt, eine neue Dramaturgie zu entwickeln, interview with Heiner Muller by Wend Kassens andMichael T6tteberg in Heiner Miiller, Gesammelte Irrtiimer: Interviews und Gespriiche (FrankfurtamMain: Verlag der Autoren, 1986), 51.

8/12/2019 Bath Rick

15/15

447 / PATRICIDE R RE-GENERATIONity of the textual canon or established production models is the critical spirit of theBrechtianmethod, a method which is aimed not only at the social conditions of an un-just world, but at those very forms of representationwhich would claim to confrontthem. That GDR playwrights and theatre directors have directedthis method againstthe figureof Brecht himself seems a fitting tributeto theiracknowledged teacher. Andafter all, isn't that what patricide is really all about?