Editorial: Bertolt Brecht
We celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth
of Bertolt Brecht-German dramatist, poet and communist-this
Feb. 10. Best known here for his text and lyrics to "The
Threepenny Opera," written in collaboration with composer Kurt
Weill, Brecht brought a whole new approach to theater that left
its mark on the century.
Rather than aiming at having the audience identify or
empathize with the characters, Brecht's goal was to keep them
at a distance so that they actively participated in the
development of the play's ideas. These were revolutionary
Marxist ideas. They savaged the exploiters and led toward
working-class struggle.
There are reports that even 42 years after his death the
German capitalists are having a hard time celebrating him. The
ruling class would like to co-opt him, as they do with almost
everything they lay their paws on. But Brecht is a big bite
even for the bankers and burghers of Europe's major imperialist
power to swallow.
Brecht spent some years in the United States, settling here
as an émigré after the Nazi takeover made it
impossible for him to remain in Germany. The House Un-American
Activities Committee grilled him in the McCarthyite Cold War
days. They found his anti-fascism "premature." He told them
off, then finally went back to Germany. He settled not in
capitalist West Germany but in the socialist German Democratic
Republic. There he stayed directing the Berliner Ensemble until
he died in 1956.
Though Brecht remained a Marxist throughout his life, he was
not himself a party organizer. But he appreciated those who
were. In a poem he dedicated to the Russian Revolution's
leader, V.I. Lenin, Brecht wrote:
"The weak ones don't struggle. The stronger ones struggle
for perhaps an hour's length. Those still stronger ones
struggle for many years. But the strongest struggle their life
long.
These are indispensable."
You can see how the German ruling class would be unhappy
about taking credit for his genius. Had he lived long enough
they would be putting him on trial.
And Brecht wouldn't let U.S. imperialism, that center of
world hypocrisy, off the hook. One can just imagine him
describing the U.S. war on Iraq:
When generals deploy troops for "defense," you know they're
tired of waiting for the other side to starve. When politicians
denounce weapons of mass destruction, you know they're
preparing to drop their nukes.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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