The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA)(1947–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975,^[1] its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

The committee's anti-Communist investigations are often confused with those of Senator Joseph McCarthy.^[2] McCarthy, as a U.S. Senator, had no direct involvement with this House committee.^[3] McCarthy was the Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. Senate, not the House.

Precursors to the permanent committee[link]

Overman Committee (1918)[link]

The Overman Committee was a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary chaired by Democratic Senator from North Carolina Lee Slater Overman that operated from September 1918 to June 1919. The subcommittee investigated German as well as Bolshevik elements in the United States.^[4]

The Committee was originally concerned with investigating pro-German sentiments in the American liquor industry. After World War I ended in November 1918 and the German threat lessened, the Committee began investigating communist Bolshevism. Bolshevism had appeared as a threat during the First Red Scare after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Committee's hearing into Bolshevik propaganda, conducted February 11 to March 10 of 1919, had a decisive role in constructing an image of a radical threat to the United States during the First Red Scare.^[5]

Fish Committee (1930)[link]

Congressman Hamilton Fish III, who was a fervent anti-communist, introduced on May 5, 1930, House Resolution 180, which proposed to establish a committee to investigate communist activities in the United States. The resulting committee, commonly known as the Fish Committee, undertook extensive investigations of people and organizations suspected of being involved with or supporting communist activities in the United States. Among the committee's targets were the American Civil Liberties Union and communist presidential candidate William Z. Foster.^[6] The committee recommended granting the United States Department of Justice more authority to investigate communists, and strengthening of immigration and deportation laws to keep communists out of the United States.^[7]

McCormack-Dickstein Committee (1934–1937)[link]

From 1934 to 1937, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities, chaired by John W. McCormack (D-MA) and Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), held public and private hearings and collected testimony filling 4,300 pages. Its mandate was to get "information on how foreign subversive propaganda entered the U.S. and the organizations that were spreading it." The committee was widely known as the McCormack-Dickstein committee.

The committee investigated and supported allegations of a fascist plot to seize the White House, known as the Business Plot. It was replaced with a similar committee that focused on pursuing communists. Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC.

It has been reported that while Dickstein served on this committee and the subsequent Special investigation committee he was paid $1250 a month by the Soviet NKVD, which hoped to get secret Congressional information on anti-Communist and pro-fascist; it is unclear whether he actually passed on any information.^[8]

Dies Committee (1938–1944)[link]

On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee, reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties.^[9][10] It was chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-TX), and therefore known as the Dies Committee.

In 1946, the committee considered opening investigations into the Ku Klux Klan but decided against doing so, prompting known anti-black committee member John E. Rankin (D-MS) to remark, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."^[11] Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project and the Federal Writers' Project. In 1965–1966, however, the Committee did conduct an investigation into Klan activities under chairman Edwin Willis (D-LA).^[12]

The Committee also carried out a brief investigation into the wartime internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The investigation primarily concerned security at the camps, youth gangs allegedly operating in the camps, food supply questions, and releases of internees. With the exception of Rep. Herman Eberharter (D-PA), the members of the committee seemed to support internment.

In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to answer the charge the project was overrun with communists. Flanagan was called to testify for only a part of one day, while a clerk from the project was called in for two entire days. It was during this investigation that one of the committee members, Joe Starnes (D-AL), famously asked Flanagan whether the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was a member of the Communist Party, and mused "Mr. Euripides" preached class warfare.^[13]

In 1939, the committee investigated leaders of the American Youth Congress, a Comintern affiliate organization.

Standing committee (1945–1975)[link]

The House Committee on Un-American Activities became a standing (permanent) committee in 1945. Representative Edward J. Hart of New Jersey became the committee's first chairman.^[14] Under the mandate of Public Law 601, passed by the 79th Congress, the committee of nine representatives investigated suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government guaranteed by our Constitution."

Under this mandate, the committee focused its investigations on real and suspected communists in positions of actual or supposed influence in the United States society. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.^[15]

Hollywood blacklist[link]

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, the "Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists—including directors, radio commentators, actors and particularly screenwriters—were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, left the U.S. to find work. Others wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry.^{[citation needed]}

In 1947, studio executives told the committee that wartime films—such as Mission to Moscow, The North Star, and Song of Russia—could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but claimed that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort, and that they were made (in the case of Mission to Moscow) at the request of White House officials. In response to the House investigations, most studios produced a number of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda films such as John Wayne's Big Jim McLain, Guilty of Treason (about the ordeal and trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty), The Red Menace, The Red Danube, I Married a Communist, Red Planet Mars, and I Was a Communist for the FBI, which was nominated for an Academy Award for the best documentary in 1951 and also serialized for radio.^[16] Universal-International Pictures was the only major studio that did not produce such a film.

Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss[link]

In 1948, the committee heard testimony from former spy, and then foreign desk editor of Time magazine, Whittaker Chambers, that numerous figures working for the federal government were in fact, communist agents. Some of the people Chambers named had already died or left the country. Some refused to answer committee questions, citing the Fifth Amendment, and one, Alger Hiss, denied all the charges. In his testimony before the commission, Hiss made a number of false statements for which he was later convicted of perjury and imprisoned.^[17]

Decline[link]

In the wake of Senator McCarthy's downfall, the prestige of HUAC began a gradual decline beginning in the late 1950s. By 1959, the committee was being denounced by former President Harry S. Truman as the "most un-American thing in the country today."^[18]

In May 1960, the committee held hearings in San Francisco City Hall that led to the infamous "riot" on May 13, when city police officers fire-hosed protesting students from UC Berkeley, Stanford, and other local colleges and dragged them down the marble steps beneath the rotunda, leaving some seriously injured.^[19][20] Soviet affairs expert William Mandel, who had been subpoenaed to testify, angrily denounced the committee and the police in a blistering statement which was aired repeatedly for years thereafter on Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley. An anti-communist propaganda film, Operation Abolition,^[21] was produced by the committee from subpoenaed local news reports, and shown around the country during 1960 and 1961. In response, the Northern California ACLU produced a film called Operation Correction, which discussed falsehoods in the first film. Scenes from the hearings and protest were later featured in the award-winning 1990 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties.

The committee lost considerable prestige as the 1960s progressed, increasingly becoming the target of political satirists and the defiance of a new generation of political activists. HUAC subpoenaed Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies in 1967, and again in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Yippies used the media attention to make a mockery of the proceedings. Rubin came to one session dressed as a United States Revolutionary War soldier and passed out copies of the United States Declaration of Independence to people in attendance. Rubin then "blew giant gum bubbles while his co-witnesses taunted the committee with Nazi salutes."^[22] Hoffman attended a session dressed as Santa Claus. On another occasion, police stopped Hoffman at the building entrance and arrested him for wearing the United States flag. Hoffman quipped to the press, "I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country," paraphrasing the last words of revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale; Rubin, who was wearing a matching Viet Cong flag, shouted that the police were communists for not arresting him also.^[23]

According to The Harvard Crimson:^[24]

In the fifties, the most effective sanction was terror. Almost any publicity from HUAC meant the 'blacklist.' Without a chance to clear his name, a witness would suddenly find himself without friends and without a job. But it is not easy to see how in 1969 a HUAC blacklist could terrorize an SDS activist. Witnesses like Jerry Rubin have openly boasted of their contempt for American institutions. A subpoena from HUAC would be unlikely to scandalize Abbie Hoffman or his friends.

In an attempt to reinvent itself, the committee was renamed to the Internal Security Committee in 1969.^[25]

The House of Representatives abolished the committee in 1975, transferring its functions to the House Judiciary Committee.

Chairmen[link]

During the various phases of its existence, the committee was chaired by:

Special Investigation Committee[link]

• Martin Dies Jr., 1938–1944

House Committee on Un-American Activities: chairmen[link]

House Committee on Internal Security[link]

• Richard Howard Ichord Jr., chairman 1969–1975

Among the notable members were:

The members during the 1947 Hollywood Ten hearings were Reps. Parnell (New Jersey), Nixon (California), Vail (Illinois), John McDowell (Pennsylvania), and John S Wood (Georgia).^[26] Robert E Stripling was the Chief Investigator^[27] and appears on many recordings and transcripts of those hearings.

See also[link]

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Schmidt, Regin (2000). Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919–1943. Museum Tusculanum Press. ISBN 87-7289-581-0, 9788772895819. http://books.google.com/?id=Fo1jblFR3BcC&pg=PP1. 
• Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. Random House. ISBN 0-89526-571-0. 
• Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: a history. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4653-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=YSLCS7hg-DEC. 

Further reading[link]

• Gladchuk, John Joseph (2006). Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace, 1935-1950. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-95568-8. 
• Bentley, Eric; Rich, Frank (2002). Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968. Nation Books. ISBN 1-56025-368-1. 
• O'Reilly, Kenneth (1983). Hoover and the Unamericans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace. Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-301-7. 
• Goodman, Walter (1968). The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12688-7. 
• Donner, Frank J. (1967). The Un-Americans. Ballantine Books. 
• Buckley, William F. (1962). The Committee and Its Critics; a Calm Review of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Putnam Books. 

External links[link]

• House.gov HUAC - permanent standing House Committee on Un-American Activities
• House.gov HUAC - 1948 Alger Hiss–Whittaker Chambers hearing before HUAC
• The National Laboratories and the Atomic Energy Commission in the Early Cold War
• Political Counterintelligence Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB)
• "Operation Abolition", 17 Mar 1961 Time Magazine
• Bogart, Humphrey. "I'm no communist" Photoplay Magazine, March

Bertolt Brecht
Born	(1898-02-10)10 February 1898 Augsburg, German Empire
Died	14 August 1956(1956-08-14) (aged 58) Mitte, East Berlin, East Germany
Occupation	Playwright, theatre director, poet
Genres	Non-Aristotelian drama · Epic theatre · Dialectical theatre
Notable work(s)	The Threepenny Opera Life of Galileo Mother Courage and Her Children The Good Person of Szechwan The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Spouse(s)	Marianne Zoff (1922–1927)[1] Helene Weigel (1930–1956)
Children	Frank Banholzer (1919–1943), Hanne Hiob (1923–2009), Stefan Brecht (1924–2009), Barbara Brecht-Schall (born 1930)
Influences This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. Georg Büchner · Alfred Döblin[2] · Frank Wedekind · Karl Valentin · Erwin Piscator · Vsevolod Meyerhold · Méi Lánfāng · Karl Marx · Karl Korsch · Bible
Influenced This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. Walter Benjamin · Louis Althusser · Roland Barthes · Dario Fo · Augusto Boal · Joan Littlewood · W. H. Auden · Peter Brook · Peter Weiss · Heiner Müller · Pina Bausch · Peter Hacks · Tony Kushner · Caryl Churchill · John Arden · Howard Brenton · Edward Bond · David Hare · Armand Gatti · San Francisco Mime Troupe · Teatro Campesino · The Wooster Group · The Living Theatre · Josef Szeiler · Jean-Luc Godard · Glauber Rocha · Manoel de Oliveira · Lindsay Anderson · Rainer Werner Fassbinder · Joseph Losey · Nagisa Oshima · Ritwik Ghatak · Lars von Trier · Jan Bucquoy · Hal Hartley
Signature

Bertolt Brecht (German: [ˈbɛɐ̯tɔlt ˈbʁɛçt] ( listen); born  Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.

An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.^[3]

Life and career[link]

Bavaria (1898–1924)[link]

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, (about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914.^[4] Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama.^[5] Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied.^[6] At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.

When he was 16, the First World War broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army".^[4] On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought a loophole by registering for an additional medical course at Munich University, where he enrolled in 1917.^[7] There he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Wedekind.^[8]

From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the new name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the Augsburger Volkswille appeared in October 1919).^[9] Brecht was drafted into military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic; the war ended a month later.^[4]

In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died.^[10]

Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin.^[11] Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform.^[12] Brecht compared Valentin to Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology". ^[13] Writing in his Messingkauf Dialogues years later, Brecht identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time:

But the man he [Brecht writes of himself in the third person] learnt most from was the clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall. He did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers and made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice.^[14]

Brecht's first full-length play, Baal (written 1918), arose in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity that was generated by a desire to counter another work (both others' and his own, as his many adaptations and re-writes attest). "Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge."^[15] Brecht completed his second major play, Drums in the Night, in February 1919.

In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, Drums in the Night—"[he] has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision. [...] It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column."^[16] In November it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize (intended for unestablished writers and probably Germany's most significant literary award, until it was abolished in 1932) for his first three plays (Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle, although at that point only Drums had been produced).^[17] The citation for the award insisted that:

"[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language is felt physically and in the round."^[18]

That year he married the Viennese opera-singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter—Hanne Hiob (1923–2009)—was a successful German actress.^[4]

In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short slapstick film, Mysteries of a Barbershop, directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin.^[19] Despite a lack of success at the time, its experimental inventiveness and the subsequent success of many of its contributors have meant that it is now considered one of the most important films in German film history.^[20] In May of that year, Brecht's In the Jungle premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening night proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize many of his later productions during the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.^[12]

In 1924 Brecht worked with the novelist and playwright Lion Feuchtwanger (whom he had met in 1919) on an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development.^[21] Brecht's Edward II constituted his first attempt at collaborative writing and was the first of many classic texts he was to adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he later credited it as the germ of his conception of "epic theatre".^[22] That September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater—at the time one of the leading three or four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.^[23]

Weimar Republic Berlin (1925–33)[link]

In 1923 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1927).^[24] Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel.^[25] Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October 1924.^[26]

In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own.^[27] 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.^[28] 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.^[29]

At this time Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB".^[30] 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.^[31]

In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit ("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."^[32] 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.^[33] 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.^[34]

In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.^[35] Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in Man Equals Man.^[36] Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements."^[37] 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.^[38]

In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them.^[39] Following the production of Man Equals Man in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann.^[40] "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."^[41]

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".^[43] 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.^[44] 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".^[45] 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).^[46] 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').^[47]

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.^[48] 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.^[49]

1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill.^[50] 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.^[51] 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.^[52] 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.^[53]

Stamp from the former East Germany depicting Brecht and a scene from his Life of Galileo.

In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon after the wedding.^[54] She also became an actress and currently holds the copyrights to all of Brecht's work.

Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and others worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. So did Brecht's first great play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, which attempted to portray the drama in financial transactions.

This collective adapted John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with Brecht's lyrics set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) it was the biggest hit in Berlin of the 1920s and a renewing influence on the musical worldwide. One of its most famous lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional morality imposed by the Church, working in conjunction with the established order, in the face of working-class hunger and deprivation:

The success of The Threepenny Opera was followed by the quickly thrown together Happy End. It was a personal and a commercial failure. At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane (now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close collaborator). Brecht only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht would later use elements of Happy End as the germ for his Saint Joan of the Stockyards, a play that would never see the stage in Brecht's lifetime. Happy End's score by Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".

The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), caused an uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in the audience protesting. The Mahagonny opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as a triumphant sensation.

Brecht spent his last years in the Weimar-era Berlin (1930–1933) working with his "collective" on the Lehrstücke. These were a group of plays driven by morals, music and Brecht's budding epic theatre. The Lehrstücke often aimed at educating workers on Socialist issues. The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) was scored by Hanns Eisler. In addition, Brecht worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the human impact of mass unemployment, Kuhle Wampe (1932), which was directed by Slatan Dudow. This striking film is notable for its subversive humour, outstanding cinematography by Günther Krampf, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution. It still provides a vivid insight into Berlin during the last years of the Weimar Republic. The so-called "Westend Berlin Scene" in the 1930 was an important influencing factor on Brecht, playing in a milieu around Ulmenallee in Westend with artists like Richard Strauss, Marlene Dietrich and Herbert Ihering.^{[citation needed]}

By February 1933, Brecht’s work was eclipsed by the rise of Nazi rule in Germany. (Brecht would also have his work challenged again in later life by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which believed he was under the influence of communism.^[55])

Nazi Germany and World War II (1933–1945)[link]

Fearing persecution, Brecht left Germany in February 1933, when Hitler took power. After brief spells in Prague, Zurich and Paris he and Weigel accepted an invitation from journalist and author Karin Michaelis to move to Denmark where they settled in a house in Svendborg on the island of Funen. This became the residence of the Brecht family for the next six years, where they often received guests including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ruth Berlau. During this period Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, New York and London for various projects and collaborations.

When war seemed imminent in April 1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he remained for a year.^[1] Then Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, and Brecht was forced to leave Sweden for Helsinki in Finland where he waited for his visa for the United States until 3 May 1941.^[1]

During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur.^[56][56] He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, and many others.

Brecht also wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed film Hangmen Also Die! which was loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Prague, number-two man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust, who was known as "The Hangman of Prague."^[1] It was Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film: the money he earned from the project enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War and an adaptation of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Hanns Eisler was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany –Lang, Brecht and Eisler – is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had in American culture.

Cold War and final years in East Germany (1945–1956)[link]

Brecht and Weigel on the roof of the Berliner Ensemble during the International Workers' Day demonstrations in 1954.

In the years of the Cold War and "Red Scare", Brecht was blacklisted by movie studio bosses and interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, he was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in September 1947. Although he was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to appear, Brecht eventually decided to testify. He later explained that he had followed the advice of attorneys and had not wanted to delay a planned trip to Europe. Dressed in overalls and smoking an acrid cigar that made some of the committee members feel slightly ill, on 30 October 1947 Brecht testified that he had never been a member of the Communist Party.^[55] He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the translators present, who transformed his German statements into English ones unintelligible to himself. HUAC Vice Chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for his co-operation. The remaining witnesses, the so called Hollywood Ten, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. Brecht's decision to appear before the committee led to criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht returned to Europe.

In Chur in Switzerland, Brecht staged an adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone, based on a translation by Hölderlin. It was published under the title Antigonemodell 1948, accompanied by an essay on the importance of creating a "non-Aristotelian" form of theatre. An offer of his own theatre (completed in 1954) and theatre company (the Berliner Ensemble) encouraged Brecht to return to Berlin in 1949. He retained his Austrian nationality (granted in 1950) and overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.^[57] At the time he drove a pre-war DKW car—a rare luxury in the austere divided capital.

Though he was never a member of the Communist Party, Brecht had been deeply schooled in Marxism by the dissident communist Karl Korsch. Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic influenced Brecht greatly, both his aesthetic theory and theatrical practice. Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954.

Brecht wrote very few plays in his final years in East Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works. He dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturgs, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Weber. Some of his most famous poems, including the "Buckow Elegies", were written at this time.

At first Brecht supported the measures taken by the East German government against the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, which included the use of Soviet military force. In a letter from the day of the uprising to SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, Brecht wrote that: "History will pay its respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with the masses about the speed of socialist construction will lead to a viewing and safeguarding of the socialist achievements. At this moment I must assure you of my allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany."^[58]

Brecht's subsequent commentary on those events, however, offered a different assessment—in one of the poems in the Elegies, "Die Lösung" (The Solution), Brecht writes:

<poem> After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee 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?[59]</poem>

Death[link]

Brecht died on 14 August 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58. He is buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery on Chausseestraße in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence he shared with Helene Weigel.

Theory and practice of theatre[link]

From his late twenties Brecht remained a lifelong committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his "epic theatre", synthesized and extended the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.

Statue of Brecht outside the Berliner Ensemble's theatre in Berlin.

Epic Theatre proposed that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and exploitation and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside. For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed and, as such, was changeable.

Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the "epic form" of the drama. This dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in other arts, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist "montage" in the cinema, and Picasso's introduction of cubist "collage" in the visual arts.^[60]

One of Brecht's most important principles was what he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").^[61] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them".^[62] To this end, Brecht employed techniques such as the actor's direct address to the audience, harsh and bright stage lighting, the use of songs to interrupt the action, explanatory placards, and, in rehearsals, the transposition of text to the third person or past tense, and speaking the stage directions out loud.^[63]

In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to "re-function" the theatre to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the "high art/popular culture" dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger dubs him "the most important materialist writer of our time."^[64]

Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre, and used its aesthetic as an argument for Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht believed, "Traditional Chinese acting also knows the alienation effect, and applies it most subtly.^[65]... The [Chinese] performer portrays incidents of utmost passion, but without his delivery becoming heated." ^[66] Brecht attended a Chinese opera performance and was introduced to the famous Chinese opera performer Mei LanFang in 1935.^[67] However, Brecht was sure to distinguish between Epic and Chinese theatre. He recognized that the Chinese style was not a "transportable piece of technique," ^[68] and that Epic theatre sought to historicize and address social and political issues.^[69]

Impact[link]

Brecht left the Berliner Ensemble to his wife, the actress Helene Weigel, which she ran until her death in 1971. Perhaps the most famous German touring theatre of the postwar era, it was primarily devoted to performing Brecht's plays. His son, Stefan Brecht, became a poet and theatre critic interested in New York's avant-garde theatre. Brecht has been a controversial figure in Germany, and in his native city of Augsburg there were objections to creating a birthplace museum. By the 1970s, however, Brecht's plays had surpassed Shakespeare's in the number of annual performances in Germany.

There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner, Robert Bolt and Caryl Churchill.

In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Joseph Losey, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.^[70][71]

Brecht in fiction[link]

• In the 1930 novel Success, Brecht's mentor Lion Feuchtwanger immortalized Brecht as the character Kaspar Pröckl.
• In the 2006 film The Lives of Others, a Stasi agent is partially inspired to save a playwright he has been spying on by reading a book of Brecht poetry that he had stolen from the artist's apartment.
• Brecht at Night by Mati Unt, transl. Eric Dickens (Dalkey Archive Press, 2009)

Collaborators and associates[link]

Collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to Brecht's approach, as Fredric Jameson (among others) stresses. Jameson describes the creator of the work not as Brecht the individual, but rather as 'Brecht': a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, Carola Neher and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."^[72]

List of collaborators and associates[link]

Works[link]

Plays[link]

Entries show: English-language translation of title (German-language title) [year written] / [year first produced]^[73]

• Baal 1918/1923
• Drums in the Night (Trommeln in der Nacht) 1918–20/1922
• The Beggar (Der Bettler oder Der tote Hund) 1919/?
• A Respectable Wedding (Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit) 1919/1926
• Driving Out a Devil (Er treibt einen Teufel aus) 1919/?
• Lux in Tenebris 1919/?
• The Catch (Der Fischzug) 1919?/?
• Mysteries of a Barbershop (Mysterien eines Friseursalons) (screenplay) 1923
• In the Jungle of Cities (Im Dickicht der Städte) 1921–24/1923
• The Life of Edward II of England (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England) 1924/1924
• Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer (Der Untergang des Egoisten Johnann Fatzer) (fragments) 1926–30/1974
• Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann) 1924–26/1926
• The Elephant Calf (Das Elefantenkalb) 1924–26/1926
• Little Mahagonny (Mahagonny-Songspiel) 1927/1927
• The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) 1928/1928
• The Flight across the Ocean (Der Ozeanflug); originally Lindbergh's Flight (Lindberghflug) 1928–29/1929
• The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent (Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis) 1929/1929
• Happy End (Happy End) 1929/1929
• The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) 1927–29/1930
• He Said Yes / He Said No (Der Jasager; Der Neinsager) 1929–30/1930–?
• The Decision (Die Maßnahme) 1930/1930
• Saint Joan of the Stockyards (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe) 1929–31/1959
• The Exception and the Rule (Die Ausnahme und die Regel) 1930/1938
• The Mother (Die Mutter) 1930–31/1932
• Kuhle Wampe (screenplay) 1931/1932
• The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger) 1933/1933
• Round Heads and Pointed Heads (Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe) 1931–34/1936
• The Horatians and the Curiatians (Die Horatier und die Kuriatier) 1933–34/1958
• Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches) 1935–38/1938
• Señora Carrar's Rifles (Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar) 1937/1937
• Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei) 1937–39/1943
• How Much Is Your Iron? (Was kostet das Eisen?) 1939/1939
• Dansen (Dansen) 1939/?
• Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) 1938–39/1941
• The Trial of Lucullus (Das Verhör des Lukullus) 1938–39/1940
• Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) 1940/1948
• The Good Person of Szechwan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) 1939–42/1943
• The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) 1941/1958
• Hangmen Also Die! (screenplay) 1942/1943
• The Visions of Simone Machard (Die Gesichte der Simone Machard ) 1942–43/1957
• The Duchess of Malfi 1943/1943
• Schweik in the Second World War (Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg) 1941–43/1957
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) 1943–45/1948
• Antigone (Die Antigone des Sophokles) 1947/1948
• The Days of the Commune (Die Tage der Commune) 1948–49/1956
• The Tutor (Der Hofmeister) 1950/1950
• The Condemnation of Lucullus (Die Verurteilung des Lukullus) 1938–39/1951
• Report from Herrnburg (Herrnburger Bericht) 1951/1951
• Coriolanus (Coriolan) 1951–53/1962
• The Trial of Joan of Arc of Proven, 1431 (Der Prozess der Jeanne D'Arc zu Rouen, 1431) 1952/1952
• Turandot (Turandot oder Der Kongreß der Weißwäscher) 1953–54/1969
• Don Juan (Don Juan) 1952/1954
• Trumpets and Drums (Pauken und Trompeten) 1955/1955

Fiction[link]

• Stories of Mr. Keuner (Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner)

Theoretical works[link]

• The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre (1930)
• The Threepenny Lawsuit (Der Dreigroschenprozess) (written 1931; published 1932)
• The Book of Changes (fragment also known as Me-Ti; written 1935–1939)
• The Street Scene (written 1938; published 1950)
• The Popular and the Realistic (written 1938; published 1958)
• Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces an Alienation Effect (written 1940; published 1951)
• A Short Organum for the Theatre ("Kleines Organon für das Theater", written 1948; published 1949)
• The Messingkauf Dialogues (Dialogue aus dem Messingkauf, published 1963)

Notes[link]

Primary sources[link]

Essays, diaries and journals[link]

• Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-38800-X. USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0-8090-3100-0.
• 2000a. Brecht on Film and Radio. Ed. and trans. Marc Silberman. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-72500-6.
• 2003a. Brecht on Art and Politics. Ed. and trans. Thomas Kuhn and Steve Giles. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-75890-7.
• 1965. The Messingkauf Dialogues. Trans. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0-413-38890-5.
• 1990. Letters 1913–1956. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-51050-6.
• 1993. Journals 1934–1955. Trans. Hugh Rorrison. Ed. John Willett. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-91282-2.

Drama, poetry and prose[link]

• Brecht, Bertolt. 1994a. Collected Plays: One. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68570-5.
• 1994b. Collected Plays: Two. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68560-8.
• 1997. Collected Plays: Three. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-70460-2.
• 2003b. Collected Plays: Four. Ed. Tom Kuhn and John Willett. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-70470-X.
• 1995. Collected Plays: Five. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-69970-6.
• 1994c. Collected Plays: Six. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68580-2.
• 1994d. Collected Plays: Seven. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68590-X.
• 2004. Collected Plays: Eight. Ed. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77352-3.
• 1972. Collected Plays: Nine. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71819-4.
• 2000b. Poems: 1913–1956. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-15210-3.
• 1983. Short Stories: 1921–1946. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Trans. Yvonne Kapp, Hugh Rorrison and Antony Tatlow. London and New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52890-1.
• 2001. Stories of Mr. Keuner. Trans. Martin Chalmers. San Francisco: City Lights. ISBN 0-87286-383-2.

Secondary sources[link]

See also[link]

• Brecht Forum
• Weimar culture

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bertolt Brecht

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bertolt Brecht

• Brecht's works in English: A bibliography: The bibliography of Bertolt Brecht's works in English translation aims to present a comprehensive listing of Brecht's works published in English translation.
• The Brecht Yearbook
• The International Brecht Society
• FBI files on Bertolt Brecht
• Brechts Werke, Bibliography
• A history of Mack the Knife by Joseph Mach at Brechthall

v t e The Plays of Bertolt Brecht Baal Drums in the Night The Beggar A Wedding Driving Out a Devil Lux in Tenebris The Catch Mysteries of a Barbershop In the Jungle of Cities Edward II Man Equals Man Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer The Elephant Calf Little Mahagonny The Threepenny Opera The Flight across the Ocean The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent Happy End Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Der Jasager / Der Neinsager The Decision Saint Joan of the Stockyards The Exception and the Rule The Mother Kuhle Wampe The Seven Deadly Sins Round Heads and Pointed Heads The Horatians and the Curiatians Fear and Misery of the Third Reich Señora Carrar's Rifles Life of Galileo How Much Is Your Iron? Mother Courage and Her Children The Trial of Lucullus Mr Puntila and his Man Matti The Good Person of Szechwan The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Hangmen Also Die! The Visions of Simone Machard The Duchess of Malfi Schweyk in the Second World War The Caucasian Chalk Circle Antigone The Days of the Commune The Tutor Die Verurteilung des Lukullus Report from Herrnburg Coriolanus Joan of Arc Turandot Don Juan Trumpets and Drums

v t e Theories and techniques of Bertolt Brecht Epic theatre Non-Aristotelian drama Lehrstücke Dialectical theatre Fabel Gestus Defamiliarization Demonstration Not / But Historicization Refunctioning Separation of the elements Interruptions Complex seeing Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre Street Scene A Short Organum Messingkauf Dialogues