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Weimar Republic Berlin (1924-1933)

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In 1924 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1926). Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel.[1] Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October of that year.

In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own.[2] Reinhardt staged Shaw's Saint Joan, Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters (with the improvisational approach of the commedia dell'arte in which the actors chatted with the prompter about their roles), and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in his group of Berlin theatres.[3] A new version of Brecht's third play, now entitled Jungle: Decline of a Family, opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.[4]

In the asphalt city I'm at home. From the very start
Provided with every last sacrament:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy
To the end mistrustful, lazy and content.
Bertolt Brecht, "Of Poor BB".

At this time Brecht revised his important 'transitional poem' "Of Poor BB".[5] In 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as an assistant for the completion of his collection of poems, Devotions for the Home (Hauspostille, eventually published in January 1927). She continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.[6]

In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ('new sobriety' or 'new objectivity') had given its name to the new post-Expressionist movement in the German arts. With little to do at the Deutsches Theater, Brecht began to develop his Man Equals Man project, which was to become the first product of "the 'Brecht collective' — that shifting group of friends and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended."[7] This collaborative approach to artistic production, together with aspects of Brecht's writing and style of theatrical production, mark Brecht's work from this period as part of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement.[8] The collective's work "mirrored the artistic climate of the middle 1920s," Willett and Manheim argue:

with their attitude of 'Neue Sachlichkeit' (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and downplaying of the individual, and their new cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport. Together the 'collective' would go to fights, not only absorbing their terminology and ethos (which permeates Man Equals Man) but also drawing those conclusions for the theatre as a whole which Brecht set down in his theoretical essay 'Emphasis on Sport' and tried to realise by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring stage and other anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his own productions.[9]

Chaplin's silent comedy The Gold Rush (1925).

In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.[10] Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man.[11] Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements."[12] They met several times during Brecht's time in the United States, and discussed Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux project, which it is possible Brecht influenced.[13]

In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them.[14] Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann.[15] "When I read Marx's Capital", a note by Brecht reveals, "I understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across."[16]

For us, man portrayed on the stage is significant as a social function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to God, but his relationship to society which is central. Whenever he appears, his class or social stratum appears with him. His moral, spiritual or sexual conflicts are conflicts with society.
Erwin Piscator, 1929.[17]

In 1927 Brecht became part of the 'dramaturgical collective' of Erwin Piscator's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of finding new plays for its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary theatre".[18] Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the period of the latter's landmark productions, Hoppla, We're Alive! by Toller, Rasputin, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, and Konjunktur by Lania.[19] Brecht's most significant contribution was to the adaptation of the unfinished episodic comic novel Schweik, which he later described as a "montage from the novel".[20] The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's ideas about staging and design, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to the 'epic' playwright by the development of stage technology (particularly projections).[21] What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly plain, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:

The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new subject matter demanded a new dramatic form, the use of songs to interrupt and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays of the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Piscatorial examples as the step-by-step narrative technique of Schweik and the oil interests handled in Konjunktur ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').[22]

Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of how to dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism in his unfinished project Joe P. Fleischhacker (which Piscator's theatre announced in its programme for the 1927-28 season). It wasn't until his Saint Joan of the Stockyards (written between 1929-1931) that Brecht solved it.[23] In 1928 he discussed with Piscator plans to stage Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Brecht's own Drums in the Night, but the productions did not materialize.[24]

1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill.[25] Together they began to develop Brecht's Mahagonny project, along thematic lines of the biblical Cities of the Plain but rendered in terms of the Neue Sachlichkeit's Amerikanismus, which had informed Brecht's previous work.[26] They produced The Little Mahagonny for a music festival in July, as what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in preparation for the large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher became an integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music and visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start.[27] The model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's newly-formulated principle of the 'separation of the elements', which he first outlined in "The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a variety of montage, proposed by-passing the "great struggle for supremacy between words, music and production" as Brecht put it, by showing each as self-contained, independent works of art that adopt attitudes towards one another.[28]

Notes

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  1. ^ Thomson (1994, 28).
  2. ^ According to Willett, Brecht was disgruntled with the Deutsches Theater at not being given a Shakespeare production to direct. At the end of the 1924-1925 season, both his and Carl Zuckmayer's (his fellow dramaturg) contracts were not renewed. (Willett 1967, 145). Zuckmayer relates how: "Brecht seldom turned up there; with his flapping leather jacket he looked like a cross between a lorry driver and a Jesuit seminarist. Roughly speaking, what he wanted was to take over complete control; the season's programme must be regulated entirely according to his theories, and the stage be rechristened 'epic smoke theatre', it being his view that people might actually be disposed to think if they were allowed to smoke at the same time. As this was refused him he confined himself to coming and drawing his pay." (Quoted by Willett 1967, 145).
  3. ^ Willett (1967, 145).
  4. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii).
  5. ^ Willett and Manheim point to the significance of this poem as a marker of the shift in Brecht's work towards "a much more urban, industrialized flavour" (1979, viii).
  6. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii, x).
  7. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii); Joel Schechter writes: "The subjugation of an individual to that of a collective was endorsed by the affirmations of comedy, and by the decision of the coauthors of Man is Man (Emil Burri, Slatan Dudow, Caspar Neher, Bernhard Reich, Elisabeth Hauptmann) to call themselves 'The Brecht Collective'." (1994, 74).
  8. ^ Willett (1978).
  9. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, viii-ix).
  10. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, xxxiii).
  11. ^ Schechter (1994, 68).
  12. ^ Brecht (1964, 56).
  13. ^ Schechter (1994, 72).
  14. ^ Sacks (1994, xviii).
  15. ^ Thomson (1994, 28-29).
  16. ^ Brecht (1964, 23-24).
  17. ^ Erwin Piscator, "Basic Principles of a Sociological Drama" in Kolocotroni, Goldman and Taxidou (1998, 243).
  18. ^ Willett (1998, 103) and (1978, 72). In his book The Political Theatre, Piscator wrote: "Perhaps my whole style of directing is a direct result of the total lack of suitable plays. It would certainly not have taken so dominant form if adequate plays had been on hand when I started" (1929, 185).
  19. ^ Willett (1978, 74).
  20. ^ See Brecht's Journal entry for 24th June, 1943. Brecht claimed to have written the adaptation (in his Journal entry), but Piscator contested that; the manuscript bears the names "Brecht, Gasbarra, Piscator, G. Grosz" in Brecht's handwriting (Willett 1978, 110). See also Willett (1978, 90-95). Brecht wrote a sequel to the novel in 1943, Schweik in the Second World War.
  21. ^ Willett (1998, 104). In relation to his innovations in the use of theatre technology, Piscator wrote: "technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery. This elevation, which was inextricably bound up with the use of Marxist dialectics in the theatre, had not been achieved by the plays themselves. My technical devices had been developed to cover up the deficiencies of the dramatists' products" ("Basic Principles of a Sociological Drama" [1929]; in Kolocotroni, Goldman and Taxidou [1998, 243]).
  22. ^ Willett (1978, 109-110). The similarities between Brecht's and Piscator's theoretical formulations from the time indicate that the two agreed on fundamentals; compare Piscator's summation of the achievements of his first company (1929), which follows, with Brecht's Mahagonny Notes (1930): "In lieu of private themes we had generalisation, in lieu of what was special the typical, in lieu of accident causality. Decorativeness gave way to constructedness, Reason was put on a par with Emotion, while sensuality was replaced by didacticism and fantasy by documentary reality." From a speech given by Piscator on 25th March, 1929, and reproduced in Schriften 2 p.50; Quoted by Willett (1978, 107). See also Willett (1998, 104-105).
  23. ^ Willett (1998, 104-105).
  24. ^ Willett (1978, 76).
  25. ^ The two first met in March 1927, after Weill had written a critical introduction to the broadcast on Berlin Radio of an adaptation of Brecht's Man Equals Man. When they met, Brecht was 29 years old and Weill was 27. Brecht had experience of writing songs and had performed his own with tunes he had composed; at the time he was also married to an opera singer (Zoff). Weill had collaborated with Georg Kaiser, one of the few Expressionist playwrights that Brecht admired; he was married to the actress Lotte Lenya. Willett and Manheim (1979, xv).
  26. ^ Willet and Manheim (1979, xv-xviii). In Munich in 1924 Brecht had begun referring to some of the stranger aspects of life in post-putsch Bavaria under the codename 'Mahagonny'. The Amerikanismus imagery appears in his first three 'Mahagonny Songs', with their Wild West references. With that, however, the project stalled for two and a half years. With Hauptmann, who wrote the two English-language 'Mahagonny Songs', Brecht had begun work on an opera to be called Sodom and Gomorrah or The Man from Manhattan and a radio play called The Flood or 'The Collapse of Miami, the Paradise City', both of which came to underlie the new scheme with Weill. See Willett and Manheim (1979, xv-xvi). The influence of Amerikanismus is most clearly discernible in Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities.
  27. ^ In this respect, the creative process for Mahagonny was quite different from The Threepenny Opera, with the former being durchkomponiert or set to music right through, whereas on the latter Weill was brought at a late stage to set the songs. See Willett and Manheim (1979, xv).
  28. ^ Willett and Manheim (1979, xvii) and Brecht (1964, 37-38).
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