8/3/2019 Brecht & Marxism
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Brecht Marxism& After World War II, he chosethe German
DemocraticRepublic (GDR) as home.
He and actress wife HeleneWeigel formed the famedBerliner
Ensemble, and wereeventually given a state theaterto run.
Strongly anti-bourgeois in hisyouth, the young Brecht was
also initially repelled byBolshevism. He experiencedthe German
revolution of 1918with some ambivalence anddedicated himself to
literaryand not political activity duringthe early years of the
Weimarrepublic. He indicated anegative impression ofBolshevism: Id
rather have anew car than socialism!
While in Berlin in the mid-1920s, Brecht began to showan
interest in Marxism. He
entered Marxist study groups,including one run by Marxistheretic
Karl Korsch. The manwho he later referred to as "MyMarxist
Teacher". Korschdeveloped a strong earlycritique of Leninism and
thenStalinism and was one of thefirst Marxist intellectuals to
bethrown out of the CommunistParty for "deviationism."
For Korsch, the Marxiandialectic sees reality as aprocess of
continual changeand is interested in thosecontradictions
andantagonisms that make radicaltransformation possible. Aboveall,
Marxian dialectic integratescritical theory withrevolutionary
practice whichwould emancipate the workingclass and construct
socialism.
From the 1920s until his deathin 1956, Brecht identifiedhimself
as a Marxist.
KarlKorsch
BerlinerEnsemble
Brecht's epic theater was built on the Marxian principles of
historical specification and critique thathe learned from Korsch.
In his epic theater, Brecht sought to illuminate the historically
specific
features of an environment in order to show how that environment
influenced, shaped, and oftenbattered and destroyed the characters.
Unlike dramatists who focused on the universal elementsof the human
situation and fate, Brecht was interested in the attitudes and
behavior people adoptedtoward each other in specific historical
situations.
Thus, in Mahagonny and The Threepenny Opera Brecht was
interested in how people related to eachother in capitalist
society; in Mother Courage, how tradespeople related to soldiers
and civilians duringwar in an emerging market society; in The
Measures Taken, Brecht depicted revolutionary relationshipsin the
struggle in China. He called this practice "historicization" and
believed that one could bestadopt a critical attitude towardone's
society if the present social
arrangements and institutionswere viewed as
historical,transitory, and subject to change.Brecht intended that
epic theatershow emotions, ideas, andbehaviour as products of,
orresponses to, specific socialsituations and not as the
unfoldingof the human essence.
The primary theatrical device ofepic theater,
theVerfremdungseffekt , wasintended to "estrange" or"distance" the
spectator and thusprevent empathy and identification
with the situation and charactersand allow the adoption of a
critical attitude toward the actions in the play. By preventing
empatheticillusion or a mimicry of reality, epic theatre would
expose the workings of societal processes and humanbehaviour, and
would thus show the audience how and why people behaved a certain
way in theirsociety. For example, the greed in Mahagonny and The
Threepenny Opera, Mother Courage'ssufferings, or Galileo's
persecution, were to be understood as historically specific
constituents of asocial environment and the theatre was to induce
the spectator to reflect on why these events happened,thus
providing the audience with better historical understanding and
knowledge.
Brec
ht
Brec
ht
Brecht is often criticised for returning to East Germany after
exile during the war and working under the wings of the
Stalinistregime there. In fact, exile gave Brecht first hand
experience of the alleged freedom of the West.He was effectively
blacklisted- out of over 40 scripts he wrote, only one was accepted
for filming - and even this was cut so severely by Hollywood
thatBrecht withdrew it. Shortly after the war, Brecht was put
before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He took a
planeback to Europe the day after his hearing.
In 1949 Brecht opened the Berliner Ensemble. But he soon came
into conflict with the Stalinist cultural bureaucracy. Theyforced
him to make changes in several productions and even stopped two of
them. The editor of East Germanys most influentialtheatre magazine
led a campaign against Brecht. Clinging to the artistic
conservatism of Stalinist socialist realism, theyaccused Brechts
epic theatre of being nothing more than formalist
experimentation.
Brechts relation to the East German regime always remained
contradictory. On the one hand, he said it would be better tohave a
bad socialism than to have none. On the other hand, he severely
disliked the dictatorship. When the Berlin workersuprising of 17
June 1953 was brutally repressed, he wrote a letter to the general
secretary of the Communist Party in whichhe called for dialogue.
Only his last sentence - backing the government - got
published.
THE CONTROVERSIAL SOCIALIST
