Brecht short biography. Berthold Brecht: biography, personal life, family, creativity and the best books

Life story
Berthold Brecht is a German playwright and poet, one of the most influential figures in the theatrical art of the 20th century. Staged John Gay's The Beggar's Opera called The Threepenny Opera (1928). Later, the plays "Mother Courage" (1941) and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" (1948) were created. Being an anti-fascist, he left Germany in 1933, lived in Scandinavia and the USA. After the Second World War, he received Austrian citizenship; in 1949 he founded the Berlin Ensemble theater troupe in the GDR. Among his works: "The Life of Galileo" (1938-1939), "The Kind Man from Cezuan" (1938-1940), "The Career of Arthur Hui" (1941) and others. Winner of the International Lenin Prize (1954).
For thirty years now, Brecht has been ranked among the classics. And even to the revered classics. The convinced Marxist strove to create an "epic drama" free from the "hesitation and unbelief" characteristic of the theater, and to inspire the audience with an active and critical attitude to what is happening on the stage. They put it everywhere. On his behalf, theater critics have formed an epithet - "Brechtian", which means - rational, keeping a distance from reality, brilliantly sarcastic in his analysis of human relations.
The Englishman John Fueji, a tireless researcher of the biography of Bertold Brecht, tried to prove that Brecht was not the only author of his works, that he did not create his best plays on his own, but using a whole "harem of mistresses", which allowed him to finish what he had begun. Back in 1987, the researcher published a documented portrait of the German playwright at the Cambridge University Press. Even then, he cited facts suggesting that, beginning in the 1920s, many of the women who were close to Brecht worked with him and for him at the same time. The Russian writer Yuri Oklyansky, who dedicated the book "Bertold Brecht's Harem", also tried to uncover the secret of Bertold Brecht's personality. He began researching Brecht's personal life back in the 1970s.
“I was probably the only woman with whom he did not have physical intimacy,” Anna Ernestovna (Asya) Latsis, director from Riga, admitted to Yu. Oklyansky. - Although, of course, he made visits ... Yes ... And Brecht, despite his endless adventures and many mistresses, was a man of gentle heart. When he slept with someone, he made a big man out of this woman. "
Wieland Herzfelde, founder of the famous Malik publishing house, once remarked: “Bertold Brecht was a Marcusian, a kind of precursor to the sexual revolution. And even, as you can see now, by one of her prophets. To all the pleasures of life, this seeker of truth preferred two sensibilities - the sensuality of new thought and the sensuality of love ... "
Of the hobbies of Brecht's youth, first of all, mention should be made of the daughter of the Augsburg doctor Paulo Banholzer ("B"), who in 1919 gave birth to his son Frank ... A little later, a dark-skinned student of the medical institute in Augsburg, Heddy Kuhn ("dark-skinned He"), conquers his heart.
In 1920, Brecht's mistress Dora Mannheim (Fraulein Do) introduced him to her friend Elisabeth Hauptmann, half English and half German. At that time, Brecht looked like a young wolf, thin and witty, a Marxist by conviction, with a haircut and posing for photographers in a leather coat. In his teeth is the invariable cigar of the winner, around him is a retinue of fans. He was friends with filmmakers, choreographers, musicians. Elisabeth Hauptmann helped him write Baal, a fiery manifesto that revolutionized the theater at the time. This amazing young woman, a translator from English, shared both the bed and the desk with Brecht. "Sex in exchange for text" - as the researcher summed up, having come up with this very capacious, albeit rough, formula. Fueji claimed that 85 percent of the manuscript of The Threepenny Opera was the work of Brecht's co-author. As for "St. John of the Slaughterhouse", then here and 100 percent belong to the pen of Hauptmann. According to Fueji, those whom the "fanged vampire in the proletarian robe" put to bed wrote his best compositions. Most researchers of the work of the German playwright strongly disagree with this.
In 1922, Brecht married the Munich opera singer Marianne Zoff (after her two pregnancies). True, the marriage was short-lived. Their daughter Hanne Hyob later became a performer of roles in her father's plays. In the same 1922, the playwright met the actress Karola Neer. When Brecht picked up the guitar and sang his ballads in a harsh voice, Marianne Zoff, a tall plump brunette, despite her already rounded belly, showed signs of anxiety and looked for possible rivals. The potential one was Karola Neer ("The Peach Woman"). Their love affair began a few years later ...
In his fantasies, 24-year-old Brecht felt like the "Tiger of the urban jungle." He was accompanied by two close friends - playwright Arnolt Bronnen (Black Panther) and Brecht's oldest and inseparable friend, his classmate at the Augsburg gymnasium named Tiger Kas, who later developed homosexual tendencies. After a joint trip with Tiger Kas to the Alps, Brecht wrote in his diary: "Better with a friend than with a girl." With Black Panther, too, apparently, it was better. All three "tigers" were in a hurry to experience all the temptations of vices. Soon they were joined by the Munich "elder sister", a certain Gerda, who satisfied the sexual appetites of friends. The "Tigers" visited the home of "Uncle Feuchtwanger", a famous writer. Here Brecht conquered the Bavarian writer Marie-Louise Fleiser, who later became his reliable collaborator.
In 1924, Elena Weigel (Ellen the beast) turned out to be out of competition, who gave birth to the playwright's son Stefan, and five years later, in an ultimatum form, demanded (and received!) The status of the main wife. As a result of this marriage, Marie-Louise Fleiser left Berlin, and a member of the German Communist Party, Elisabeth Hauptmann, tried to commit suicide. The return of Carola Neer was marked by a dramatic scene at the train station: after Brecht's message about her marriage, the actress gushed him with gifts of roses ...
In his diary in 1927, Berthold wrote: “Voluptuousness was the only thing that was insatiable in me, but the pauses it required were too long. If only you could absorb the highest takeoff and orgasm almost without interruption! A year to fuck or a year to think! But, perhaps, it is a constructive mistake - to turn thinking into sensuality; perhaps everything is meant for something else. For one strong thought, I am ready to sacrifice any woman, almost any. "
In the late 1920s, Brecht was sympathetic to Soviet art. Sergei Eisenstein came to Germany, whose "best film of all times and peoples" "Battleship Potemkin" was banned by the German censorship. Brecht met the LEF theorist Sergei Tretyakov, who became the translator of his plays into Russian. The German playwright, in turn, took up the processing and staging of the play by the Russian sex revolutionist. In Tretyakov's play I Want a Child, the heroine, a Soviet intellectual and feminist, does not acknowledge love, but expects only fertilization from a man. In 1930, the Meyerhold Theater toured Berlin. Brecht became his own in the communist environment. His friends joined the party - Hauptmann, Weigel, Steffin ... But not Brecht!
Margaret Steffin met Brecht's path in 1930. Steffin, the daughter of a bricklayer from the Berlin suburbs, knew six foreign languages, possessed an innate musicality, undoubted artistic and literary abilities - in other words, she was probably quite capable of translating her talent into something significant, into such a work of either drama or poetry. who would have been destined to live longer than its creator. However, Steffin chose her life and creative path herself, she chose quite deliberately, by her own free will renouncing the share of the creator and choosing for herself the fate of Brecht's co-creator.
She was a stenographer, clerk, referent ... Only two people from his entourage Brecht called his teachers: Feuchtwanger and Steffin. This fragile blonde woman dressed modestly, first participated in the leftist youth movement, then joined the Communist Party. Her collaboration with Bertolt Brecht continued for almost ten years. On the back of the title pages of his six plays, which are part of the collected works of the writer published in our country, in small print is typed: "In collaboration with M. Steffin." These are, first of all, "The Life of Galileo", then "The Career of Arturo Ui", "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire", "Horace and Curiosia", "The Rifles of Teresa Carar", "Interrogation of Lucullus". In addition, according to the German literary critic Hans Bunge, what Margaret Steffin contributed to The Threepenny Opera and The Cases of Mr. Julius Caesar is inseparable from what Brecht wrote.
Her contribution to the creative capital of the famous writer is not limited to this. She participated in the creation of other Brecht's plays, translated with him "Memoirs" by Martin Andersen-Nexe, was an indispensable and zealous assistant in publishing, requiring painstaking and thankless labor. Finally, for more than one year, she was a real link between the two cultures, promoting Brecht in the Soviet Union as a remarkable phenomenon of German revolutionary art.
The same ten years, in terms of the amount of what she did for herself, gave a result that was not comparable to what was done for Brecht. Children's play "Guardian Angel" and maybe one or two more plays for children, a few stories, poetry - that's it! True, it could hardly be otherwise. The enormous burden associated with Brecht's creative concerns, a disease that eats away strength from year to year, extremely difficult personal life circumstances - with all this in mind, one can only marvel at Margaret Steffin's steadfastness, her courage, patience and will.
The mystery and starting point of the relationship between Margaret Steffin and Brecht is contained in the word "love"; Steffin loved Brecht, and her faithful literary service to him literally to the grave, her war for Brecht, her propaganda of Brecht, her disinterested participation in his novels, plays and translations were, presumably, in many ways only a means of expressing her love. She wrote: “I loved love. But love is not like "Will we make a boy soon?" Thinking about it, I hated this mess. When love doesn't bring joy. In four years I only once felt a similar passionate delight, a similar pleasure. But what it was, I did not know. After all, it flashed in a dream and, therefore, never happened to me. And now we are here. I don’t know if I love you. However, I wish you to stay with you every night. As soon as you touch me, I already want to lie down. Neither shame nor glance resists this. Everything obscures the other ... "
Once she found her lover on the couch with Ruth Berlau in an unambiguous pose. Brecht managed to reconcile his two mistresses in a very unusual way: at his request, Steffin began to translate Ruth's novel into German, and Berlau, in turn, began organizing Greta's play "If He Had a Guardian Angel" in local Danish theaters ...
Margaret Steffin died in Moscow in the summer of 1941, eighteen days before the start of the war. She had tuberculosis in the last stage, and the doctors, amazed at the steadfastness of her spirit and the passionate desire to live, could only alleviate her suffering - until the moment when, firmly squeezing the doctor's hand, she stopped breathing. A telegram about her death was sent to Vladivostok: "transit country Brecht." Brecht, who was waiting in Vladivostok for a Swedish steamer to sail to the United States of America, responded with a letter addressed to M.Ya. Apletina. The letter contained the following words: "The loss of Greta is a heavy blow for me, but if I had to leave her, I could not have done it anywhere except in your great country."
"My general fell
My soldier fell
My student is gone
My teacher is gone
My guardian is gone
My pet is gone "...
In these verses from Brecht's collection "After the death of my employee M.Sh." not only the feeling caused by the death of a loved one is expressed; they give an accurate assessment of the place that Margaret Steffin occupied in Brecht's life, her importance in the work of the remarkable German playwright, prose writer and poet. Before the appearance of his "assistants" with Brecht, he was not given female images at all. Perhaps, mother Courage was entirely invented and created by Margaret Steffin ...
In the thirties, arrests began in the USSR. In his diary, Brecht mentioned the arrest of M. Koltsov, whom he knew. Sergei Tretyakov was declared a "Japanese spy." Brecht tries to save Karola Neer, but her husband was considered a Trotskyist ... Meyerhold lost his theater. Then the war, emigration, the new country of the GDR ...
Brecht will meet Ruth Berlau, a very beautiful Scandinavian actress, who also writes for children, during his emigration. With her participation, the "Caucasian Chalk Circle" was created, as well as "Dreams of Simona Machar". She became the founder of Denmark's first workers' theater. Later, Ruth talked about Brecht's relationship with his wife Helena Weigel: “Brecht slept with her only once a year, around Christmas, to strengthen family ties. He brought a young actress straight from the evening performance to his second floor. And in the morning, at half past eight - I heard it myself, because I lived nearby, - Elena Veigel's voice was heard from below. Gulko, as in the forest: “Hey! Hey! Come down, coffee is served! " Following Berlau in Brecht's life, the Finnish landowner Hella Vuolijoki appears, who, in addition to giving Brecht shelter in her house, supplied him with solid documentation and provided assistance. Hella - a writer, literary critic, publicist, whose highly social plays have been staged in theaters in Finland and Europe for decades - was a big capitalist, and she helped Soviet intelligence, according to General Sudoplatov, to "find approaches" to Niels Bohr.
Brecht became a classic of socialist realism, but at the same time did not forget to apply for dual citizenship, taking advantage of the fact that his wife Elena Weigel is an Austrian. Then Brecht transferred all rights for the first edition of his works to the West German publisher Peter Suhrkamp, ​​and receiving the International Stalin Prize, demanded that it be paid in Swiss francs. With the money he received, he built a small house near Copenhagen for Ruth Berlau. But she remained in Berlin, because she still loved this voluptuous ...
In 1955, Brecht went to receive the Stalin Prize, accompanied by his wife and assistant director of the Berliner Ensemble theater (where Brecht's plays were staged) Kate Rühlike-Weiler, who became his lover. Around the same time, the playwright became very interested in the actress Kate Reichel, who by age was suitable for him as a daughter. During one of the rehearsals, Brecht took her aside and asked: "Do you have some fun?" - "If you entertained me ... I would be happy until the end of my days!" - blushing, the girl said to herself. And she muttered something unintelligible out loud. The aging playwright taught the actress a love lesson, as Volker, who published this memoir, wrote. When she presented him with an autumn branch with yellowed foliage, Brecht wrote: “The year is coming to an end. Love has just begun ... "
Kilian worked in 1954-1956 under him as a secretary. Her husband belonged to a group of neo-Marxist intellectuals opposed to the GDR authorities. Brecht bluntly told her husband: "Divorce her now and marry her again in about two years." Soon Brecht had a new rival - a young Polish director. Berthold wrote in his diary: “Entering my study, today I found my beloved with a young man. She sat next to him on the sofa, he lay with a somewhat sleepy look. With a forcedly cheerful exclamation - "True, a very ambiguous situation!" - she jumped up and during all the subsequent work looked rather puzzled, even frightened ... I reproached her that she was flirting at her workplace with the first man she met. She said that without any thought she sat down for a few minutes with the young man, that she had nothing with him ... ”However, Izot Kilian again enchanted her aging lover, and in May 1956 he dictated his will to her. She had to certify the will with a notary. But due to her inherent negligence, she did not. Meanwhile, in the will, Brecht ceded part of the copyright from several plays by Elisabeth Hauptmann and Ruth Berlau and disposed of property interests to Kate Reichel, Isot Kilian and others.
For three months in 1956, he conducted 59 rehearsals of the play "The Life of Galileo" alone - and died. He was buried next to Hegel's grave. Elena Veigel took over the sole possession of her husband's inheritance and refused to recognize the will. However, she gave the failed heirs some of the things of the late playwright.
Berthold Brecht, thanks to his sexual magnetism, intelligence, ability to persuade, thanks to his theatrical and business flair, attracted many women writers. It was also known that he used to turn his fans into personal secretaries - and did not feel remorse either when he bargained for himself favorable terms of the contract, or when he borrowed someone's idea. In relation to literary property, he showed disdain, repeating with sincere innocence that this is "a bourgeois and decadent concept."
So, Brecht had his own "Negroes", more precisely, "Negroes"? Yes, he had many women, but one should not rush to conclusions. Most likely, the truth is different: this versatile person in his work used everything that was written, born and invented next to him - be it letters, poems, scripts, someone's unfinished sketches ... All this fed his greedy and a crafty inspiration capable of providing a solid foundation for what others thought was only a vague sketch. He managed to blow up the old traditions and laws of theater with dynamite, make it reflect the reality around him.

German playwright, theater director, poet, one of the most prominent theatrical figures of the 20th century.

Eugen Bertolt Frederik Brecht/ Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in the Bavarian city of Augsburg in the family of a paper mill employee. His father was Catholic, his mother was Protestant.

At school, Bertholt met Kaspar Neer/ Caspar Neher, with whom he was friends and worked together all his life.

In 1916 Bertolt Brecht started writing articles for newspapers. In 1917, he enrolled in a medical course at the University of Munich, but was more interested in studying drama. In the fall of 1918, he was drafted into the army and, a month before the end of the war, he was sent as an orderly to a clinic in his hometown.

In 1918 Brecht wrote his first play " Baal", In 1919 the second was ready -" Drums in the night". It was staged in Munich in 1922.

With the support of renowned critic Herbert Ihering, the Bavarian public discovered the work of the young playwright, who received the prestigious Kleist Prize for Literature.

In 1923 Bertolt Brecht tried his hand at cinematography, writing a script for a short film " The secrets of the hairdresser". The experimental tape did not find an audience and received cult status much later. In the same year, Brecht's third play was staged in Munich - “ In more often cities».

In 1924, Brecht worked with Lyon Feuchtwanger/ Lion Feuchtwanger over adaptation " Edward II» Christopher Marlowe/ Christopher Marlowe. The play formed the basis for the first experience of "epic theater" - Brecht's debut directorial production.

In the same year Bertolt Brecht moved to Berlin, where he was appointed assistant playwright at the German Theater, and where, without much success, staged a new version of his third play.

In the mid 20s Brecht published a collection of stories and became interested in Marxism. In 1926, the play “ Man is man". In 1927 he became part of the theater company Erwin Piscator/ Erwin Piscator. Then he staged a performance based on his play "" with the participation of the composer Kurt Weil/ Kurt Weill and Kaspar Neer responsible for the visual part. The same team worked on Brecht's first high-profile success - the musical performance “ Threepenny Opera", Which has firmly entered the repertoire of world theaters.

In 1931, Brecht wrote the play “ Saint john's slaughterhouse", Which was never staged during the life of the author. But this year “ The rise and fall of the city of Mahagoni”Was a success in Berlin.

In 1932, with the rise to power of the Nazis Brecht left Germany, going first to Vienna, then to Switzerland, then to Denmark. There he spent 6 years, wrote “ Threepenny romance», « Fear and Despair in the Third Empire», « Galileo's life», « Mother Courage and her children».

With the outbreak of World War II Bertolt Brecht, whose name was blacklisted by the Nazis, without obtaining a residence permit in Sweden, moved first to Finland, and from there to the United States. In Hollywood, he wrote the screenplay for the anti-war film The executioners die too!", Which was put by his compatriot Fritz Lang/ Fritz Lang. At the same time, the play “ Dreams of Simone Machar».

In 1947 Brecht, whom the American authorities suspected of having links with the communists, returned to Europe - to Zurich. In 1948, Brecht was offered to open his own theater in East Berlin - this is how “ Berliner ensemble". The very first performance, " Mother Courage and her children", Brought the theater success - Brecht constantly invited to tour throughout Europe.

Personal life of Berthold Brecht / Berthold Brecht

In 1917, Brecht began dating Paula Banholser/ Paula Banholzer, in 1919 their son Frank was born. He died in Germany in 1943.

In 1922 Bertolt Brecht married a Viennese opera singer Marianne Zoff/ Marianne Zoff. In 1923, their daughter Hannah was born, she became famous as an actress under the name Hannah Hyob/ Hanne Hiob.

In 1927, the couple divorced due to Bertolt's connections with his assistant. Elizabeth Hauptmann/ Elisabeth Hauptmann and actress Helena Weigel/ Helene Weigel, who in 1924 gave birth to his son Stephen.

In 1930, Brecht and Weigel got married, in the same year they had a daughter, Barbara, who also became an actress.

Key pieces by Berthold Brecht

• Turandot oder Der Kongreß der Weißwäscher (1954)
• Arturo Ui's Career That Could Not Be / Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1941)
• Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1940)
• Leben des Galilei (1939)
• Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939)
• Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches (1938)
• Saint John of the Slaughterhouse / Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe (1931)
• Die Dreigroschenoper (1928)
• Man is Man (1926)
• Drums in the Night / Trommeln in der Nacht (1920)
• Baal (1918)

Every person who is even a little interested in theater, even if he is not yet an experienced theatergoer, knows the name Berthold Brecht... He holds a place of honor among the leading theatrical figures, and his influence on European theater can be compared to that of K. Stanislavsky and V. Nemirovich-Danchenko into Russian. Plays Bertolt Brecht are posed everywhere, and Russia is no exception.

Berthold Brecht. Source: http://www.lifo.gr/team/selides/55321

What is epic theater?

Bertolt Brecht- not just a playwright, writer, poet, but also the founder of theatrical theory - "Epic theater"... Myself Brecht opposed it to the system " psychological»Theater, the founder of which is K. Stanislavsky... The basic principle "Epic theater" was a combination of drama and epic, which contradicted the generally accepted understanding of theatrical action, based, in the opinion of Brecht, only on the ideas of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the two were incompatible on the same stage; the drama was supposed to completely immerse the viewer in the reality of the play, evoke strong emotions and make them acutely experience events together with the actors who were supposed to get used to the role and, in order to achieve psychological certainty, isolate themselves on the stage from the audience (in what way, by Stanislavsky, they were helped by the conditional "fourth wall" separating the actors from the auditorium). Finally, psychological theater required a complete, detailed restoration of the entourage.

Brecht on the contrary, he believed that such an approach switches attention to a greater extent only to action, distracting from the essence. Target " epic theater"- make the viewer abstract and start critically assessing and analyzing what is happening on the stage. Lyon Feuchtwanger wrote:

“According to Brecht, the whole point is that the viewer no longer pays attention to the“ what ”, but only to the“ how ”... According to Brecht, the whole point is that the person in the audience only contemplates the events on the stage, trying learn more and hear. The viewer must observe the course of life, draw appropriate conclusions from observation, reject them or agree - he must be interested, but, God forbid, just not get emotional. He must view the mechanism of events in the same way as the mechanism of a motor vehicle. "

Alienation effect

For "Epic theater" was important “ alienation effect". Myself Berthold Brecht said it was necessary “Just to deprive an event or character of everything that goes without saying, is familiar, obviously, and to cause surprise and curiosity about this event”, which should form the viewer's ability to critically perceive the action.

Actors

Brecht abandoned the principle that the actor should get used to the role as much as possible, moreover, the actor was required to express his own position in relation to his character. In his report (1939) Brecht argued this position as follows:

“If contact was established between the stage and the audience on the basis of getting used to it, the viewer was able to see exactly as much as the hero in whom he got used to. And in relation to certain situations on the stage, he could experience such feelings that the “mood” on the stage allowed "

Scene

Accordingly, the stage design had to work for the idea; Brecht refused to reliably recreate the surroundings, perceiving the scene as an instrument. The artist was now required minimalist rationalism, the scenery had to be conditional and present the depicted reality to the viewer only in general terms. The screens on which the credits and newsreels were running were used, which also prevented "immersion" in the performance; sometimes the scenery was changed right in front of the audience, without lowering the curtain, deliberately destroying the stage illusion.

Music

To realize the "alienation effect" Brecht used musical numbers in his performances - in the "epic theater" music complemented the acting and performed the same function - expressing a critical attitude to what is happening on the stage. First of all, for these purposes were used zongs... These musical inserts seemed to fall out of the action on purpose, were used out of place, but this technique emphasized the inconsistency only with the form, and not with the content.

Influence on Russian theater today

As already noted, the plays Bertolt Brecht are still popular with directors of all stripes, and Moscow theaters today provide a large selection and allow you to observe the full spectrum of the playwright's talent.

So, in May 2016, the premiere of the play "Mother Courage" in the theatre Workshop of Peter Fomenko... The play is based on the play "Mother Courage and her children", which Brecht began to write on the eve of World War II, intending to thus issue a warning. However, the playwright finished work in the fall of 1939 when the war had already begun. Later Brecht will write:

"Writers cannot write as fast as governments unleash wars: after all, to compose, you have to think ..." Mother Courage and her children "- was late"

When writing a play, sources of inspiration Brecht served two works - the story " A detailed and amazing biography of the notorious deceiver and vagabond Courage", Written in 1670 G. von Grimmelshausen, a participant in the Thirty Years War, and " Legends of Ensign Stol» J.L. Runeberg... The heroine of the play, a canteen, uses war as a way to enrich herself and has no feelings about this event. Courage takes care of his children, who, on the contrary, represent the best human qualities, which are modified in the conditions of war and doom all three to death. " Milf Courage"Not only embodied the ideas of the" epic theater ", but also became the first production of the theater" Berliner ensemble"(1949), created Brecht.

Staging of the play "Mother Courage" at the Fomenko Theater. Photo source: http://fomenko.theatre.ru/performance/courage/

V theater named after Mayakovsky the premiere of the play took place in April 2016 "Caucasian chalk circle" based on the play of the same name Brecht... The play was written in America in 1945. Ernst Schumacher, biographer Bertolt Brecht, suggested that by choosing Georgia as the scene of action, the playwright paid tribute to the role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. In the epigraph of the performance, there is a quote:

"Bad times make humanity dangerous to humans"

The play is based on the biblical parable of the king Solomon and two mothers arguing over whose child (also, according to biographers, Brecht influenced by the play " Chalk circle» Klabunda, which, in turn, was based on a Chinese legend). The action takes place against the backdrop of the Second World War. In this piece Brecht asks the question, what is a good deed worth?

As the researchers note, this play is an example of the “correct” combination of epic and drama for an “epic theater”.

Staging of the play "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" at the Mayakovsky Theater. Photo source: http://www.wingwave.ru/theatre/theaterphoto.html

Perhaps the most famous in Russia production of "The Kind Man from Cezuan"(« A kind man from Sichuan") - setting Yuri Lyubimov in 1964 in Taganka Theater, with which the heyday began for the theater. Today, the interest of directors and viewers to the play has not disappeared, the performance Lyubimova still on stage, in Theater named after Pushkin you can see the version Yuri Butusov... This play is considered one of the most striking examples of " epic theater". Like Georgia in " Caucasian chalk circle", China here is a kind, very distant conditional fairy-tale country. And in this conditional world, the action unfolds - the gods descend from heaven in search of a kind person. This is a play about kindness. Brecht believed that this is an innate quality and that it refers to a specific set of qualities that can only be expressed symbolically. This play is a parable, and here the author poses questions to the viewer, what is kindness in life, how is it embodied and can it be absolute, or is there a duality of human nature?

Staging of the play "The Kind Man from Sichuan" by Brecht in 1964 at the Taganka Theater. Photo source: http://tagankateatr.ru/repertuar/sezuan64

One of the most famous plays Brecht, « Three penny opera", Delivered in 2009 Kirill Serebrennikov at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. The director emphasized that he was staging a zong - opera and had been preparing the performance for two years. This is a story about a gangster nicknamed Mackie- a knife, the action takes place in Victorian England. Beggars, policemen, bandits and prostitutes take part in the action. In the words of himself Brecht, in the play he portrayed a bourgeois society. It is based on the ballad opera “ Beggar's opera» John Gay. Brecht also said that the composer participated in writing his play Kurt Weill... Researcher V. Hecht comparing these two works, he wrote:

“Gay directed the disguised criticism to the obvious outrages, Brecht explicitly criticized the disguised outrages. Gay explained the ugliness by human vices, Brecht, on the contrary, vices - by social conditions "

Peculiarity " The Threepenny Opera"In her musicality. The Zongs from the play became incredibly popular, and in 1929 a collection was even published in Berlin, and later were performed by many world stars of the music industry.

Staging of the play "Tehgrosova Opera" at the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov. Photo source: https://m.lenta.ru/photo/2009/06/12/opera

Berthold Brecht stood at the origins of a completely new theater, where the main goal of the author and the actors is not to influence the emotions of the viewer, but to his mind: to force the viewer to be not a participant, empathizing with what is happening, sincerely believing in the reality of the stage performance, but a calm contemplator who clearly understands the difference between reality and illusion of reality. The spectator of the drama theater cries with the crying one and laughs with the laughing one, while the spectator of the epic theater Brecht

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born into a family of a manufacturer on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg. He graduated from a public school and a real gymnasium in his hometown, and was among the most successful, but unreliable students. In 1914, Brecht published his first poem in a local newspaper, which did not delight his father at all. But the younger brother Walter always admired Berthold and imitated him in many ways.

In 1917, Brecht became a student at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Munich. However, he was much more interested in theater than medicine. He was especially delighted with the plays of the 19th century German playwright Georg Buchner and the contemporary playwright Wedekind.

In 1918, Brecht was drafted into military service, but was not sent to the front because of his kidney problems, but was left to work as an orderly in Augsburg. He lived out of wedlock with his girlfriend Bee, who bore him a son, Frank. At this time, Berthold wrote his first play "Baal", and after it the second - "Drums in the Night". In parallel, he worked as a theater reviewer.

Brother Walter introduced him to the director of the Wild Theater, Truda Gerstenberg. The Wild Theater was a variety show in which most of the actors were young, who loved to shock the audience on stage and in life. Brecht sang his songs with a guitar in a harsh, harsh, raspy voice, clearly pronouncing every word - in essence, it was medeclamation. The plots of Brecht's songs shocked listeners much more than the behavior of his colleagues in the "Cruel Theater" - they were stories about infanticides, children killing their parents, about moral decay and death. Brecht did not castigate vices, he simply stated facts, described the everyday life of contemporary German society.

Brecht went to theaters, to the circus, to the cinema, listened to pop concerts. I met with artists, directors, playwrights, listened attentively to their stories and disputes. Having met the old clown Valentin, Brecht wrote short farces for him and even performed with him on the stage.

“Many leave us, and we do not hold them back,
We told them everything, and there was nothing left between them and us, and our faces were hard in the moment of separation.
But we didn’t say the most important thing; we missed what was needed.
Oh, why don't we say the most important thing, because it would be so easy, because without speaking, we doom ourselves to a curse!
These words were so light, they were hiding there, close behind our teeth, they fell with laughter, and therefore we choke with an intercepted throat.
My mother died yesterday, on the evening of May 1st!
Now you can't scrape it out with your nails ... "

Father was increasingly irritated by Berthold's creativity, but he tried to restrain himself and not sort things out. His only requirement was to print Baal under a pseudonym so that Brecht's name would not be tainted. The connection between Berthold and his next passion, Marianne Zof, did not cause enthusiasm for his father - young people lived without getting married.

Feuchtwanger, with whom Brecht had friendly relations, characterized him as "a somewhat gloomy, casually dressed man with a pronounced inclination to politics and art, a man of indomitable will, a fanatic." Brecht became the prototype for the communist engineer Kaspar Pröckl in Feuchtwanger's Success.

In January 1921, the Augsburg newspaper published for the last time a review by Brecht, who soon finally moved to Munich and regularly visited Berlin, trying to publish Baal and Drumming. It was at this time, on the advice of his friend Bronnen, Berthold changed the last letter of his name, after which his name sounded like Bertholt.

On September 29, 1922, the premiere of "Drums" took place at the Chamber Theater in Munich. In the hall were hung posters: "Everyone is better for himself", "His own skin is the most precious", "There is no need to stare so romantic!" The moon hanging over the stage turned purple each time before the appearance of the main character. In general, the presentation was successful, reviews were also positive.

In November 1922, Brecht and Marianne were married. In March 1923, a daughter, Hannah, was born to Brecht.

Premieres followed one after another. In December, "Drums" was shown at the German Theater in Berlin. Reviews of newspapers were contradictory, but the young playwright was awarded the Kleist Prize.

The young director Erich Engel staged Brecht's new play In the More often at the Residence Theater in Munich, and Kaspar Neer designed the stage. Bertolt later worked with both of them more than once.

The Munich Chamber Theater invited Brecht to direct for the 1923/24 season. At first he intended to stage a modern version of Macbeth, but then settled on Marlowe's historical drama The Life of Edward II, King of England. Together with Feuchtwanger, they revised the text. It was at this time that the "Brecht" style of work in the theater developed. He is almost despotic, but at the same time he demands independence from each performer, he listens attentively to the most harsh objections and remarks, if only they are sensible. In Leipzig, meanwhile, "Baal" was staged.

The famous director Max Reinhardt invited Brecht to the position of staff playwright, and in 1924 he finally moved to Berlin. He has a new girlfriend - a young artist from Reinhardt Lena Weigel. In 1925, she gave birth to Brecht's son Stephen.

Kipenhauer's publishing house signed an agreement with him for a collection of ballads and songs "Pocket Collection", which was released in 1926 in a circulation of 25 copies.

Developing a military theme, Brecht created the comedy "That the soldier is that." Its main character, the loader Galy Gay, left the house for ten minutes to buy fish for dinner, but ended up in the company of soldiers and within a day he became a different person, a super-soldier - an insatiable glutton and stupidly fearless warrior. The theater of emotions was not close to Brecht, and he continued his line: he needed a clear, rational view of the world, and, as a result, a theater of ideas, a rational theater.

Brecht was very fascinated by the principles of mounting Segrei Eisenstein. Several times he watched "Battleship Potemkin", comprehending the peculiarities of its composition.

The prologue to the Viennese production of Baal was written by the living classic Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. Brecht, meanwhile, became interested in America and conceived a cycle of plays "Humanity enters the big cities", which was supposed to show the rise of capitalism. It was at this time that he formulated the basic principles of the "epic theater".

Brecht was the first of all his friends to buy a car. At this time, he helped another famous director - Piscator - to stage Hasek's novel The Adventures of the Gallant Soldier Schweik, one of his favorite works.

Brecht continued to write songs, often composing the melodies himself. His tastes were peculiar, for example, he did not like violins and Beethoven's symphonies. Composer Kurt Weill, nicknamed "Verdi for the Poor", became interested in Brecht's zongs. Together they composed the Songspiel Mahagoni. In the summer of 1927, the opera was presented at the festival in Baden-Baden, directed by Brecht. The success of the opera was largely facilitated by the brilliant performance of the role by Weill's wife Lotte Leni, after which she was considered an exemplary performer of Weil-Brecht's works. "Mahagoni" in the same year was broadcast by radio stations in Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main.

In 1928, "What is this soldier, what is this" was published. Brecht divorced and married again - to Lena Weigel. Brecht believed that Weigel was the ideal actress of the theater he was creating - critical, mobile, efficient, although she herself liked to say about herself that she was a simple woman, an uneducated comedian from the Vienna suburbs.

In 1922, Bracht was admitted to the Berlin Charite hospital with a diagnosis of "extreme malnutrition", where he was treated and fed free of charge. Having recovered a little, the young playwright tried to stage Bronnen's play Parricide at the Young Theater by Moritz Zeler. Already on the first day, he presented to the actors not only a general plan, but also the most detailed development of each role. First of all, he demanded meaningfulness from them. But Brecht was too harsh and uncompromising in his work. As a result, the release of the already announced performance was canceled.

In early 1928, London celebrated the bicentennial of John Gay's Beggar's Opera, a hilarious and evil parody play loved by the great satirist Swift. Based on its motives, Brecht created the Threepenny Opera (the name was suggested by Feuchtwanger), and Kurt Weil wrote the music. The dress rehearsal lasted until five in the morning, everyone was nervous, almost no one believed in the success of the event, the linings followed the linings, but the premiere was brilliant, and a week later Macky's verses were sung all over Berlin, Brecht and Weil became celebrities. In Berlin, the "Threepenny Cafe" was opened - only melodies from the opera were constantly played there.

The history of the staging of the "Threepenny Opera" in Russia is curious. The famous director Alexander Tairov, while in Berlin, saw the "Threepenny Opera" and agreed with Brecht about a Russian production. However, it turned out that the Moscow Satire Theater would also like to stage it. A litigation began. As a result, Tairov won and staged a performance in 1930 called "The Beggars' Opera". Criticism crushed the performance, Lunacharsky was also dissatisfied with it.

Brecht was convinced that hungry, impoverished geniuses are as much a myth as noble bandits. He worked hard and wanted to earn a lot, but at the same time refused to sacrifice principles. When the Nero film company signed an agreement with Brecht and Weil to film the opera, Brecht presented a script in which socio-political motives were reinforced and the ending changed: Mackey became the director of the bank, and his entire gang became members of the board. The firm canceled the contract and made a film based on a script close to the text of the opera. Brecht filed a lawsuit, refused a lucrative peace agreement, lost a ruinous lawsuit, and the film "Threepenny Opera" was released on the screen against his will.

In 1929, at a festival in Baden-Baden, they performed Brecht and Weil's "educational radio play" Lindbergh's Flight. After that, it was broadcast several more times on the radio, and the leading German conductor Otto Klemperer performed it in concerts. At the same festival, a dramatic oratorio by Brecht-Hindemith - "The Baden Educational Play about Consent" was performed. Four pilots crashed, they are in danger
deadly danger. Do they need help? The pilots and the choir, in recitative and singing, pondered this aloud.

Brecht did not believe in creativity and inspiration. He was convinced that art is reasonable perseverance, work, will, knowledge, skill and experience.

On March 9, 1930, the Leipzig Opera hosted the premiere of Brecht's opera to music by Weill, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany. At the performances, delighted and indignant cries were heard, sometimes the audience would grapple hand-to-hand. The Nazis in Oldenburg, where they were going to put the "Mahogany", officially demanded to prohibit the "base immoral spectacle." However, the German communists also believed that Brecht's plays were too grotesque.

Brecht read books by Marx and Lenin, attended classes at MARCH, a Marxist workers' school. However, answering a question from Die Dame magazine which book made the strongest and lasting impression on him, Brecht wrote shortly: "You will laugh - the Bible."

In 1931, France celebrated the 500th anniversary of Jeanne d'Arc. Brecht writes the answer - "St. John of the slaughterhouse." John Dark in the drama of Brecht - a lieutenant of the Salvation Army in Chicago, an honest, kind girl, reasonable, but simple-minded, dies, realizing the futility of peaceful protest and calling on the masses to revolt. Again Brecht was criticized by both the left and the right, accusing him of outright propaganda.

Brecht prepared a staging of Gorky's "Mother" for the Comedy Theater. He significantly reworked the content of the play, bringing it closer to the modern situation. Vlasov was played by Elena Weigel, Brecht's wife.
The downtrodden Russian woman appeared to be businesslike, witty, shrewd and daringly courageous. Police banned the play at a large clubhouse in the working-class district of Moabit, citing "poor stage conditions," but the actors secured permission to simply read the play without costumes. The reading was interrupted several times by the police, and the performance was never finished.

In the summer of 1932, at the invitation of the Society for Cultural Relations with Abroad, Brecht arrived in Moscow, where he was taken to factories, theaters, and meetings. It was supervised by playwright Sergei Tretyakov, a member of the Left Front literary community. A little later, Brecht received a return visit: Lunacharsky and his wife visited him in Berlin.

On February 28, 1933, Brecht with his wife and son left light, so as not to arouse suspicion, to Prague, their two-year-old daughter Barbara was sent to her grandfather in Augsburg. Lilya Brik and her husband, a Soviet diplomat, Primakov, settled in Brecht's apartment. From Prague, the Brechts crossed over to Switzerland on Lake Lugano, where they secretly managed to ferry Barbara.

On May 10, Brecht's books, along with the books of other "underminers of the German spirit" - Marx, Kautsky, Heinrich Mann, Kestner, Freud, Remarque - were publicly put on fire.

Living in Switzerland was too expensive, and Brecht did not have a steady source of income. The Danish writer Karin Michaelis, a friend of Brecht and Weigel, invited them to her place. At this time in Paris, Kurt Weil met the choreographer Georges Balanchine, and he proposed to create a ballet based on Brecht's songs “The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeois”. Brecht traveled to Paris, attended rehearsals, but the production and the London tour went without much success.

Brecht returned to his favorite subject and wrote The Threepenny Novel. The image of the bandit Macky in the novel was solved much more harshly than in the play, where he is not devoid of a peculiar charm. For émigré and underground publications, Brecht wrote poetry and prose.

In the spring of 1935, Brecht came to Moscow again. At an evening held in his honor, the hall was packed. Brecht read poetry. His friends sang zongs from The Threepenny Opera, showed scenes from plays. In Moscow, the playwright saw the Chinese theater of Mei Lan-fang, which made a strong impression on him.

In June, Brecht was accused of anti-state activities and stripped of his citizenship.

Civic Repertory Theater in New York staged Mother. Brecht made a special trip to New York: this is the first professional production in three years. Alas, the director rejected Brecht's "new theater" and staged a traditional realistic performance.

Brecht wrote the keynote article "The Alien Effect in Chinese Performing Arts." He searched for the foundations of a new epic, "non-Aristotelian" theater, drawing on the experience of ancient Chinese art and his personal observations of everyday life and fairground clowns. Then, inspired by the war in Spain, the playwright composed a short play The Rifles of Teresa Carrar. Its content was simple and relevant: the widow of an Andalusian fisherman does not want her two sons to take part in the civil war, but when the eldest son, who was peacefully fishing in the bay, is shot by machine gunners from a fascist ship, she, together with her brother and youngest son, goes into battle. The play was staged in Paris by expatriate actors, and in Copenhagen by a working amateur troupe. In both productions, Teresa Carrar was played by Elena Weigel.

Since July 1936, the monthly German magazine "Das Wort" has been published in Moscow. The editorial staff included Bredel, Brecht and Feuchtwanger. In this magazine, Brecht published poems, articles, excerpts from plays. In Copenhagen, meanwhile, they staged Brecht's play Round-headed and Sharp-headed in Danish and the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeois. The king himself was at the premiere of the ballet, but after the very first scenes he came out loudly indignant. The Threepenny Opera was staged in Prague, New York and Paris.

Fascinated by China, Brecht wrote the novel "TUI", the book of short stories and essays "The Book of Changes", poems about Lao Tzu, the first version of the play "The Kind Man from Sesuan". After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia and the signing of a peace treaty with Denmark, the prudent Brecht moved to Sweden. There he was forced to write short plays under the pseudonym John Kent for workers' theaters in Sweden and Denmark.

In the fall of 1939, Brecht quickly, in a few weeks, created the famous "Mother Courage" for the Stockholm Theater and its prima Naima Wifstrand. Brecht made the main character's daughter mute so that she could be played by Weigel, who did not speak Swedish. But the production never took place.

Brecht's wanderings in Europe continued. In April 1940, when Sweden became unsafe, he and his family moved to Finland. There he compiled the "Reader of War": he picked up photographs from newspapers and magazines and wrote a poetic commentary to each one.

Together with his old friend Hela Vuolioki, Bertolt created the comedy "Mr. Puntila and His Servant Matti" for the Finnish play competition. The main character is a landowner who becomes kind and conscientious only when he gets drunk. Brecht's friends were delighted, but the jury ignored the play. Then Brecht reworked "Mamasha Courage" for the Swedish theater in Helsinki and wrote "The Career of Arturo Ui" - he was waiting for an American visa and did not want to go to the States empty-handed. The play metaphorically reproduced the events taking place in Germany, and its characters spoke in verses that parodied Schiller's The Robbers, Goethe's Faust, Richard III, Julius Caesar and Macbeth by Shakespeare. As usual, in parallel, he created commentaries on the play.

In May, Brecht received a visa, but refused to go. The Americans did not issue a visa to his employee, Margaret Steffin, on the grounds that she was ill. Brecht's friends were in a panic. Finally, Steffin managed to obtain a visitor visa, and she, along with the Brecht family, left for the United States through the Soviet Union.

News of the beginning of the war between Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union found Brecht on the road, in the ocean. He arrived in California and settled closer to Hollywood, in the resort village of Santa Monica, talked with Feuchtwanger and Heinrich Mann, followed the course of hostilities. In America, Brecht did not like it, he felt like a stranger, no one was in a hurry to stage his plays. Together with the French writer Vladimir Pozner and his friend Brecht, he wrote a script about the French Resistance "Silent Witness", then another script "And the executioners die" - about how Czech anti-fascists destroyed Hitler's governor in the Czech Republic, Gestapo Heydrich. The first scenario was rejected, the second was substantially revised. Only student theaters agreed to play Brecht's plays.

In 1942, in one of the large concert halls in New York, friends hosted a Brecht evening. While preparing for this evening, Brecht met the composer Paul Dessau. Later Dessau wrote music for "Mother Courage" and several songs. He and Brecht conceived the operas The Wanderings of the God of Luck and The Interrogation of Lucullus.

Brecht worked in parallel on two plays: the comedy "Schweik in World War II" and the drama "Dreams of Simone Machar", written with Feuchtwanger. In the fall of 1943, he began negotiations with Broadway theaters about the play "The Chalk Circle." It was based on the biblical parable of how King Solomon dealt with the litigation of two women, each of whom claimed that she was the mother of the child standing in front of him. The play was written by Brecht ("The Caucasian Chalk Circle"), but the theaters did not like it.

Theatrical producer Lozi invited Brecht to stage Galilee with renowned artist Charles Lafton. From December 1944 until the end of 1945, Brecht and Loughton worked on the play. After the explosion of the atomic bomb, it became especially relevant, because it was about the responsibility of the scientist. The play took place at a small theater in Beverly Hills on July 31, 1947, but was unsuccessful.

McCarthyism flourished in America. In September 1947, Brecht was summoned for questioning by the Congressional Commission of Inquiry on Anti-American Activities. Brecht made microfilms of his manuscripts and left his son Stephen as the archivist. Stephen by that time was an American citizen, served in the American army and was demobilized. But, fearing prosecution, Brecht nevertheless appeared for interrogation, behaved emphatically politely and seriously, brought the commission with his tediousness to white heat, and was recognized as an eccentric. A few days later, Brecht flew to Paris with his wife and daughter.

From Paris he went to Switzerland, to the town of Herrliberg. The city theater in Kure invited Brecht to stage his adaptation of Antigone; the main role was invited to Helena Weigel. As always, life was in full swing in the Brechts' house: friends and acquaintances gathered, discussed the latest cultural events. The greatest Swiss playwright Max Frisch, who ironically called Brecht a Marxist pastor, was a frequent visitor. The Zurich Theater staged "Puntila and Matti", Brecht was one of the directors.

Brecht dreamed of returning to Germany, but it was not so easy to do this: the country, like Berlin, was divided into zones and no one really wanted to see him there. Brecht and Weigel (born in Vienna) have submitted a formal application for Austrian citizenship. The petition was granted only after a year and a half, but they quickly issued a pass to travel to Germany through Austrian territory: the Soviet administration invited Brecht to stage Mamasha Courage in Berlin.

A few days after his arrival, Brecht was solemnly honored at the Kulturbund club. At the banquet table, he sat between the President of the Republic, Wilhelm Pieck, and the representative of the Soviet command, Colonel Tyulpanov. Brecht commented on what was happening:

- I did not think that I would have to listen to obituaries to myself and speeches over my coffin.

On January 11, 1949, the premiere of "Mother Courage" took place at the State Theater. And already on November 12, 1949, the Berliner Ensemble - Brecht Theater was opened with the production of "Mister Puntila and His Servant Matti". Actors from both eastern and western parts of Berlin worked there. In the summer of 1950, the Berliner ensemble toured the west: in Braunschweig, Dortmund, Dusseldorf. Brecht has released several performances in a row: "Home Teacher" by Jacob Lenz, "Mother" based on his play, "Beaver Fur Coat" by Gerhart Hauptmann. Gradually, the Berliner Ensemble became the leading German-speaking theater. Brecht was invited to Munich to stage "Mother Courage".

Brecht and Dessau worked on the opera Interrogation of Lucullus, which was slated to premiere in April 1951. One of the last rehearsals was attended by members of the Commission for the Arts and the Ministry of Education and gave Brecht a scolding. There were accusations of pacifism, decadence, formalism, disrespect for the national classical heritage. Brecht was forced to change the title of the play - not "Interrogation", but "Condemnation of Lucullus", change the genre to "musical drama", introduce new characters and partially change the text.

On October 7, 1951, the second anniversary of the GDR was marked by the awarding of National State Prizes to honored workers of science and culture. Among the awardees was Bertolt Brecht. They began to publish his books again, and books about his work appeared. Plays by Brecht are staged in Berlin, in Leipzig, in Rostock, in Dresden, his songs were sung everywhere.

Life and work in the GDR did not prevent Brecht from having a Swiss bank account and a long-term contract with a publishing house in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1952, the Berliner Ensemble entered The Trial of Joan of Arc in Rouen in 1431 by Anna Segers, Prafaust by Goethe, The Broken Jug by Kleist and The Kremlin Chimes by Pogodin. Young directors were staged, Brecht directed their work. In May 1953, Brecht was elected chairman of the united Pen-Club - a common organization of writers from the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany; by many he was already perceived as a major writer.

In March 1954, the Berliner Ensemble moved to a new building, Moliere's Don Juan came out, Brecht enlarged the troupe, invited a number of actors from other theaters and cities. In July, the theater went on its first foreign tours. In Paris, at the International Theater Festival, he showed "Mother Courage" and won the First Prize.

"Mother Courage" was staged in France, Italy, England and the USA; "Threepenny Opera" - in France and Italy; Teresa Carrar's Rifles - in Poland and Czechoslovakia; Galileo's Life - in Canada, USA, Italy; "Interrogation of Lucullus" - in Italy; "Kind Man" - in Austria, France, Poland, Sweden, England; "Puntilu" - in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland. Brecht became an internationally renowned playwright.

But Brecht himself felt worse and worse, he was admitted to the hospital with acute angina pectoris, and serious heart problems were discovered. The condition was grave. Brecht wrote a will, designated the burial place, abandoned the magnificent ceremony and determined the heirs - his children. The eldest daughter Hannah lived in West Berlin, the youngest played in the Berliner ensemble, her son Stefan stayed in America and studied philosophy. The eldest son died during the war.

In May 1955, Brecht flew to Moscow, where he was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize in the Kremlin. He watched several performances in Moscow theaters, learned that a collection of his poems and prose was put in print at the Foreign Literature Publishing House, and a one-volume collection of selected dramas is being prepared at Iskusstvo.

At the end of 1955, Brecht again turned to Galileo. He rehearsed earnestly, doing fifty-nine rehearsals in less than three months. But the flu, which developed into pneumonia, interrupted work. Doctors did not allow him to go on tour to London.

I don't need gravestones, but
If you need it for me,
I want the inscription on it:
“He gave suggestions. We
They accepted them. "
And I would honor such an inscription
All of us.

A television program from the cycle "Geniuses and Villains" was filmed about Bertolt Brecht.

Your browser does not support the video / audio tag.

Text prepared by Inna Rozova

Berthold Brecht- German writer, playwright, a prominent figure in European theater, founder of a new trend called "political theater". Born in Augsburg on February 10, 1898; his father was the director of a paper mill. While studying at the city real school (1908-1917) he began to write poetry, stories that were published in the newspaper "Augsburg News" (1914-1915). Already in his school writings, a sharply negative attitude towards the war was traced.

Young Brecht was attracted not only by literary creativity, but also by the theater. However, the family insisted that Berthold acquire the profession of a doctor. Therefore, after graduating from high school, in 1917 he became a student at the University of Munich, where, however, he did not have a chance to study for long, since he was drafted into the army. For health reasons, he served not at the front, but in a hospital, where real life was revealed to him, which contradicted propaganda speeches about great Germany.

Perhaps Brecht's biography could have been completely different if not for his acquaintance in 1919 with Feuchtwanger, a famous writer who, seeing the young man's talent, advised him to continue his studies in literature. In the same year, the first plays by the novice playwright appeared: "Baal" and "Drumming in the Night", which were staged on the stage of the Kammerspiele Theater in 1922.

The world of theater becomes even closer to Brecht after graduating from the university in 1924 and moving to Berlin, where he met many artists and joined the Deutsches Theater. Together with the famous director Erwin Piscator, in 1925 he created the Proletarian Theater, for the performances of which it was decided to write plays on their own due to the lack of financial ability to order them from established playwrights. Brecht took famous literary works and staged them. The first swallows were Hasek's The Adventures of the Gallant Soldier Schweik (1927) and The Threepenny Opera (1928), based on J. Gay's Opera of the Beggars. He also staged Gorky's "Mother" (1932), since Brecht was close to the ideas of socialism.

Hitler's coming to power in 1933, the closure of all workers' theaters in Germany forced Brecht and his wife Helena Weigel to leave the country, move to Austria, and then, after its occupation, to Sweden and Finland. The Nazis officially deprived Bertold Brecht of his citizenship in 1935. When Finland also entered the war, the writer's family moved to the United States for 6 and a half years. It was in exile that he wrote his most famous plays - "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1938), "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire" (1939), The Life of Galileo (1943), "The Good Man from Cezuan" (1943), "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" (1944), in which the idea of ​​the need to fight a person with an outdated world order ran through them.

After the end of the war, he had to leave the United States due to the emerging threat of persecution. In 1947, Brecht went to live in Switzerland, the only country that issued him a visa. The western zone of his native country refused to allow him to return, so Brecht settled in East Berlin a year later. The last stage of his biography is associated with this city. In the capital, he created a theater called "Berliner Ensemble", on the stage of which the best plays of the playwright were staged. Brecht's brainchild has toured a large number of countries, including the Soviet Union.

In addition to plays, Brecht's creative legacy includes the novels The Threepenny Novel (1934), The Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar (1949), a fairly large number of stories and poems. Brecht was not only a writer, but also an active public, political figure, took part in the work of the left international congresses (1935, 1937, 1956). In 1950, he was appointed vice-president of the GDR Academy of Arts, in 1951 he was elected a member of the World Peace Council, in 1953 he headed the All-German PEN Club, in 1954 he received the International Lenin Peace Prize. A heart attack interrupted the life of the classic playwright on August 14, 1956.

Biography from Wikipedia

Creativity Brecht - a poet and playwright - has always been controversial, as well as his theory of "epic theater" and his political views. Nevertheless, already in the 50s, Brecht's plays became firmly established in the European theatrical repertoire; his ideas in one form or another were perceived by many contemporary playwrights, including Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Arthur Adamov, Max Frisch, Heiner Müller.

The theory of "epic theater", put into practice in the post-war years by the director Brecht, opened up fundamentally new possibilities for the performing arts and had a significant impact on the development of theater in the 20th century.

Augsburg years

Eugen Berthold Brecht, who later changed his name to Bertholt, was born in Augsburg, Bavaria. Father, Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869-1939), originally from Achern, moved to Augsburg in 1893 and, entering as a sales agent at the Heindl paper mill, made a career: in 1901 he became a procurator (confidant), in 1917- m - the commercial director of the company. In 1897 he married Sophia Brezing (1871-1920), daughter of the stationmaster in Bad Waldsee, and Eugen (as Brecht was called in the family) became their first child.

In 1904-1908, Brecht studied at the folk school of the Franciscan monastic order, then entered the Bavarian Royal Real Gymnasium, an educational institution of the humanitarian profile. “During my nine-year stay ... in the Augsburg real gymnasium,” wrote Brecht in his short autobiography in 1922, “I did not manage to significantly contribute to the mental development of my teachers. They tirelessly strengthened in me the will to freedom and independence. " Brecht's relationship with the conservative family, from which he moved away shortly after graduating from high school, was no less difficult.

"House of Brecht" in Augsburg; currently a museum

In August 1914, when Germany entered the war, chauvinist propaganda also captured Brecht; he made his contribution to this propaganda - he published in the "Augsburg Latest News" "Notes on our time", in which he proved the inevitability of war. But the numbers of losses very soon sobered him: at the end of the same year, Brecht wrote an anti-war poem "Modern Legend" ( Moderne legende) - about the soldiers, whose death only mothers mourn. In 1916, in an essay on a given topic: "It is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland" (the saying of Horace) - Brecht already qualified this statement as a form of purposeful propaganda, easily given to "empty-headed" ones who are sure that their last hour is still far away.

Brecht's first literary experiments date back to 1913; from the end of 1914, his poems regularly appeared in the local press, and then stories, essays and theatrical reviews. The idol of his youth was Frank Wedekind, the predecessor of German Expressionism: it was through Wedekind, according to E. Schumacher, that Brecht mastered the songs of street singers, booth couplets, chanson and even traditional forms - ballad and folk song. However, even in his gymnasium years, Brecht, according to his own testimony, "all kinds of sports excesses" brought himself to a heart spasm, which also influenced the initial choice of profession: after graduating from high school in 1917, he entered the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied medicine and natural science. However, as Brecht himself wrote, at the university he "attended lectures on medicine, and studied to play the guitar."

War and revolution

Brecht's studies did not last long: from January 1918 he was drafted into the army, his father sought postponements, and in the end, so as not to be at the front, Brecht entered service in one of the Augsburg military hospitals on October 1 as a medical orderly. His impressions in the same year were embodied in the first "classic" poem - "The Legend of the Dead Soldier" ( Legende vom toten Soldaten), whose nameless hero, tired of fighting, died the death of a hero, but upset the Kaiser's calculations with his death, was removed from the grave by the medical commission, declared fit for military service and returned to duty. Brecht himself set his ballad to music - in the style of an organ-grinder's song - and performed it publicly with a guitar; It was this poem, widely known and often sounded in literary cabarets performed by Ernst Busch in the 1920s, that the National Socialists pointed to as the reason for the deprivation of the author of German citizenship in June 1935.

In November 1918, Brecht took part in revolutionary events in Germany; from the hospital in which he served, he was elected to the Augsburg Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, but very soon retired. At the same time, he took part in the memorial service for Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and in the funeral of Kurt Eisner; hid the persecuted Spartacist Georg Prem; he collaborated in the Volkswille newspaper, the organ of the Independent Social Democratic Party (K. Kautsky and R. Hilferding), even joined the NSDP, but not for long: at that time, Brecht, by his own admission, "suffered from a lack of political convictions." The Volkswille newspaper became the organ of the United Communist Party of Germany (section of the Third International) in December 1920, but for Brecht, then far from the Communist Party, this did not matter: he continued to publish his reviews until the newspaper itself was banned.

Demobilized, Brecht returned to the university, but his interests changed: in Munich, which at the turn of the century, at the time of the Prince Regent, turned into the cultural capital of Germany, he became interested in theater - now, while studying at the Faculty of Philosophy, he attended the theater studies seminar Artur Kucher and became a regular at literary and artistic cafes. To all the theaters in Munich, Brecht preferred a fairground booth, with its barkers, street singers, under a hurdy-gurdy, explaining a series of pictures with the help of a pointer (such a singer in the Threepenny Opera will tell about the adventures of Mackheath), freak show and crooked mirrors - the city drama theater seemed to him mannered and sterile. During this period, Brecht himself performed on the stage of the small "Wilde bune". After graduating from the university for two full courses, in the summer semester of 1921 he did not register at any of the faculties and in November was excluded from the list of students.

In the early 1920s, in Munich pubs, Brecht watched Hitler's first steps in the political arena, but at that time the supporters of the obscure "Fuhrer" were for him nothing more than "a bunch of miserable misbehaves." In 1923, during the "beer putsch", his name was included in the "black list" of persons subject to destruction, although he himself had long since retired from politics and was completely immersed in his creative problems. Twenty years later, comparing himself to Erwin Piscator, the creator of the political theater, Brecht wrote: “The turbulent events of 1918, in which both took part, disappointed the Author, while Piscator was made a politician. Only much later, the Author, under the influence of his scientific studies, also came to politics. "

Munich period. First plays

Literary affairs of Brecht at that time did not develop in the best way: "I run like a stupid dog," he wrote in his diary, "and nothing works for me." Back in 1919, he brought his first plays, Baal and Drums in the Night, to the literary part of the Munich Kammerspiele, but they were not accepted for staging. Five one-act plays, including "The Bourgeois Wedding", did not find their director either. “What melancholy,” Brecht wrote in 1920, “Germany is giving me! The peasantry is completely impoverished, but its rudeness does not give rise to fabulous monsters, but to unrepentant brutality, the bourgeoisie is swollen with fat, and the intelligentsia is weak-willed! It remains - America! ". But without a name, he had nothing to do in America either. In 1920, Brecht visited Berlin for the first time; his second visit to the capital lasted from November 1921 to April 1922, but he did not succeed in conquering Berlin: “a young man of twenty-four years old, dry, skinny, with a pale ironic face, prickly eyes, with short cropped, sticking out in different directions dark hair ”, as Arnolt Bronnen described him, was greeted coolly in the capital's literary circles.

Brecht made friends with Bronnen, just as he had come to conquer the capital, back in 1920; aspiring playwrights, according to Bronnen's testimony, were brought together by the "complete denial" of everything that had been composed, written and published by others so far. Unable to interest Berlin theaters with his own compositions, Brecht tried to stage Bronnen's expressionist drama Parricide in Jung Bune; however, he failed here too: at one of the rehearsals, he quarreled with the leading actor Heinrich Gheorghe and was replaced by another director. Even Bronnen's feasible financial support could not save Brecht from physical exhaustion, with which he ended up in the Berlin Charite hospital in the spring of 1922.

In the early 1920s, in Munich, Brecht tried to master filmmaking as well, wrote several scripts, according to one of them, together with the young director Erich Engel and comedian Karl Valentin, in 1923 he shot a short film - "The Mysteries of a Barber Shop"; but even in this field he did not acquire laurels: the audience saw the film only a few decades later.

In 1954, in preparation for the publication of a collection of plays, Brecht himself did not appreciate his early experiments; nevertheless, success came in September 1922 when the Munich Kammerspiele staged Drums in the Night. The authoritative Berlin critic Herbert Iering more than favorably responded to the performance, and it is to him that the honor of the "discovery" of Brecht the playwright belongs. Thanks to Iering, "Drums in the Night" was awarded the Prize to them. G. Kleist, however, the play did not become a repertoire and did not bring wide popularity to the author; in December 1922, it was staged at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and was severely criticized by another influential specialist, Alfred Kerr. But from that time on, Brecht's plays, including "Baal" (the third, most "smoothed" edition), and "In the thicket of cities" written in 1921, were staged in different cities of Germany; although the performances were often accompanied by scandals and obstruction, even by the attack of the Nazis and the throwing of rotten eggs. After the premiere of the play "In the thicket of cities" at the Munich Residence Theater in May 1923, the head of the literary department was simply fired.

And nevertheless, in the capital of Bavaria, unlike Berlin, Brecht was able to complete his directorial experiment: in March 1924, he staged Life of Edward II of England in Kammerspiel - his own adaptation of Marlo's play Edward II ... This was the first experience of creating an "epic theater", but only Iering understood and appreciated it - having thus exhausted the possibilities of Munich, Brecht in the same year, following his friend Engel, finally moved to Berlin.

In Berlin. 1924-1933

Me-ti said: my deeds are bad. Rumors are spreading everywhere that I said the most absurd things. The trouble is that, absolutely between us, I really spoke most of them.

B. Brecht

Berlin during these years turned into the theatrical capital of Europe, with which only Moscow could compete; here was his "Stanislavsky" - Max Reinhardt and his "Meyerhold" - Erwin Piscator, who taught the metropolitan public not to be surprised at anything. In Berlin, Brecht already had a like-minded director - Erich Engel, who worked at the German Reinhardt Theater, another like-minded person followed him to the capital - school friend Kaspar Neer, at that time already a talented theater artist. Here Brecht was provided in advance with the support of the authoritative critic Herbert Iering, and the sharp condemnation from his counterpart - the no less authoritative Alfred Kerr, an adherent of the Reinhardt theater. For the play "In the thicket of cities", staged by Engel in 1924 in Berlin, Kerr called Brecht "an epigone of the epigones, exploiting the brand name of Grabbe and Büchner in a modern way"; his criticism became tougher as Brecht's positions were consolidated, and for the "epic drama" Kerr could not find a better definition than "the play of an idiot." However, Brecht did not remain in debt: from the pages of "Berliner Bersen-Kurir", in which Iering was in charge of the feuilleton department, until 1933 he could preach his theatrical ideas and share his thoughts about Kerr.

Brecht found himself a job in the literary section of the German Theater, where, however, he rarely appeared; at the University of Berlin, he continued his study of philosophy; the poet Klabund introduced him to the capital's publishing circles - an agreement with one of the publishing houses for several years provided the still unrecognized playwright with a living wage. He was accepted into the circle of writers, most of whom had just recently settled in Berlin and formed the "Group-1925"; among them were Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, Egon Erwin Kish, Ernst Toller and Erich Muzam. In those first Berlin years, Brecht did not consider it shameful for himself to write advertising texts for companies in the capital, and for the poem "Singing Cars of the Steyr Company" he received a car as a gift.

In 1926, from the Reinhardt Theater, Brecht moved to the Piscator Theater, for which he worked on plays and staged The Adventures of the Gallant Soldier Schweik by J. Hasek. The Piscator's experience opened up to him the previously unknown possibilities of the theater; Subsequently, Brecht called the director's main merit the "turn of the theater to politics", without which his "epic theater" could not have taken place. The innovative stage solutions of Piscator, who found his own means of epizing the drama, made it possible, in Brecht's words, to "embrace new themes" that were inaccessible to naturalistic theater. Here, in the process of transforming the biography of the American entrepreneur Daniel Drew into a drama, Brecht discovered that his knowledge of economics was insufficient - he began to study stock speculation, and then Capital by Karl Marx. Here he became close with composers Edmund Meisel and Hans Eisler, and in the actor and singer Ernst Busch he found the ideal performer for his songs and poems in Berlin literary cabarets.

Brecht's plays attracted the attention of director Alfred Braun, who, starting in 1927, staged them on Berlin radio with varying success. In the same year, 1927, a collection of poems "Home Sermons" was published; some called him "the new Revelation", others "the devil's psalter" - one way or another, Brecht became famous. His fame spread beyond Germany when Erich Engel staged The Threepenny Opera with music by Kurt Weill at the Schiffbauerdamm Theater in August 1928. This was the first unconditional success about which a critic could write: "Brecht finally won."

By this time, his theatrical theory had developed in general terms; it was obvious to Brecht that a new, "epic" drama needed a new theater - a new theory of acting and directing. The testing ground was the Theater on Schiffbauerdamm, where Engel, with the active participation of the author, staged Brecht's plays and where together, at first not very successfully, they tried to develop a new, "epic" style of performance - with young actors and amateurs from proletarian amateur troupes. In 1931, Brecht made his debut on the metropolitan stage as a director - he staged his play "Man is a Man" at the State Theater, which Engel had staged at Volksbühn three years earlier. The director's experience of the playwright was not highly appreciated by specialists - Engel's performance was more successful, and the "epic" style of performance, first tested in this production, did not find understanding either among critics or the public. Brecht's failure did not discourage him - as early as 1927, he swung into reform of the musical theater, composing, together with Weil, a small zong-opera "Mahogany", two years later reworked into a full-fledged opera - "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagoni"; in 1931 Brecht staged it himself at the Berlin Theater on the Kurfürstendamm, and this time with greater success.

On the left flank

Since 1926, Brecht intensively studied the classics of Marxism; later he wrote that Marx would be the best spectator for his plays: “... A person with such interests should have been interested in these plays not because of my mind, but because of his own; they were illustrative material for him. " In the late 1920s, Brecht became close to the communists, to which he, like many in Germany, was prompted by the strengthening of the National Socialists. In the field of philosophy, one of the mentors was Karl Korsch, with his rather original interpretation of Marxism, which was reflected later in Brecht's philosophical work “Met. Book of Changes ". Korsh himself was expelled from the KKE in 1926 as an "ultra-left", where in the second half of the 1920s one purge followed another, and Brecht never joined the party; but during this period he wrote together with Eisler "The Song of Solidarity" and a number of other songs that Ernst Busch successfully performed - in the early 30s they were sold on gramophone records throughout Europe.

During the same period, he staged, quite freely, the novel by A. M. Gorky "Mother", bringing the events to 1917 in his play, and although Russian names and names of cities were preserved in it, many problems were relevant specifically for Germany at that time. He wrote didactic plays in which he sought to teach German proletarians "correct behavior" in the class struggle. The script of Zlatan Dudov's film "Kule Vampa, or Who Owns the World?"

In the early 1930s, in his poem "When Fascism Gained Strength", Brecht called on the Social Democrats to create a "united red front" with the Communists, but the differences between the parties turned out to be stronger than his calls.

Emigration. 1933-1948

Years of wandering

... Remember
speaking about our weaknesses,
and those dark times
which you have avoided.
After all, we walked, changing countries
more often than shoes ...
and despair choked us,
when we only saw
injustice
and saw no outrage.
But at the same time we knew:
hatred of meanness
also distorts features.

- B. Brecht, "To descendants"

Back in August 1932, the NSDAP organ "Völkischer Beobachter" published a book index, in which Brecht found his surname among "Germans with a tarnished reputation," and on January 30, 1933, when Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor, and columns of supporters of the new head of government organized a triumphal procession through the Brandenburg Gate, Brecht realized that it was time to leave the country. He left Germany on February 28, the day after the burning of the Reichstag, still confident that it would not be long.

With his wife, actress Elena Weigel, and children, Brecht arrived in Vienna, where Weigel's relatives lived and where the poet Karl Kraus greeted him with the phrase: "Rats are running to a sinking ship." From Vienna he very soon moved to Zurich, where a colony of German émigrés had already formed, but there, too, he felt uncomfortable; later Brecht put into the mouth of one of the characters in Refugee Conversations the words: "Switzerland is a country famous for the fact that you can be free in it, but for that you have to be a tourist." In Germany, meanwhile, fascisation was carried out at an accelerated pace; On May 10, 1933, the "educational campaign of the German students against the anti-German spirit" took place, culminating in the first public burning of books. Together with the works of K. Marx and K. Kautsky, G. Mann and E. M. Remarque, everything that Brecht managed to publish in his homeland flew into the fire.

Already in the summer of 1933, at the invitation of the writer Karin Macaelis Brecht with his family moved to Denmark; his new home was a fishing hut in the village of Skovsbostrand, not far from Svendborg; an abandoned barn next to it had to be converted into an office. In this shed, where Chinese theatrical masks hung on the walls, and Lenin's words were inscribed on the ceiling: "Truth is concrete," Brecht, in addition to numerous articles and open letters on current events in Germany, wrote The Threepenny Novel and a number of plays, one way or another responded to events in the world, including "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire" and "The Rifles of Teresa Carrar" - about the civil war in Spain. Here was written "The Life of Galileo" and began "Mother Courage"; here, divorced from theatrical practice, Brecht seriously engaged in the development of the theory of "epic theater", which in the second half of the 1920s acquired the features of a political theater and now seemed to him as relevant as never before.

In the mid-1930s, local National Socialists intensified in Denmark, constant pressure was also exerted on the Danish embassy in Berlin, and if the production of the play "Roundheads and Sharpheads" in Copenhagen, with a completely frank parody of Hitler, was not banned, the ballet " The Seven Deadly Sins ", written by Weill on Brecht's libretto, was removed from the repertoire in 1936 after King Christian X expressed his indignation. family left Denmark.

Ever since the end of 1938, Brecht sought an American visa and, while awaiting her, settled in Stockholm, formally at the invitation of the Swedish Union of Amateur Theaters. His circle of contacts consisted mainly of German immigrants, including Willy Brandt, who represented the Socialist Workers' Party; in Sweden, as before in Denmark, Brecht witnessed the extradition of anti-fascists to the German authorities; he himself was under constant surveillance by the secret security service. The anti-war Mother Courage, conceived back in Denmark as a warning, was completed in Stockholm only in the fall of 1939, when World War II was already underway: “Writers,” Brecht said, “cannot write as quickly as governments unleash wars: you have to think to compose ”.

The German attack on Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940 and the refusal to extend the residence permit in Sweden forced Brecht to seek a new refuge, and on April 17, without receiving an American visa, at the invitation of the famous Finnish writer Hella Vuoljoki, he left for Finland ...

The Life of Galileo and The Book of Changes

In the second half of the 1930s, Brecht was not only worried about the events in Germany. The Executive Committee of the Comintern, and after it the KKE, proclaimed the Soviet Union a decisive historical force in opposing fascism - in the spring of 1935, Brecht spent more than a month in the USSR and, although neither himself nor Elena Weigel found application and did not share the theses about "socialist realism" , adopted by the First Congress of Soviet Writers, on the whole, he was satisfied with what he was shown.

However, already in 1936, German emigrants, whom Brecht knew well, began to disappear in the USSR, including Bernhard Reich, the former chief director of Munich's Kammerspiele, actress Karola Neer, who played Polly Peach in The Threepenny Opera on stage and on screen, and Ernst Otwalt, with whom he wrote the script for Kule Wampa; Erwin Piscator, who has lived in Moscow since 1931 and headed the International Association of Revolutionary Theaters, even earlier considered it a blessing to leave the Land of the Soviets. The infamous Moscow open trials split the hard-fought “united front”: the Social Democrats called for the isolation of the communist parties.

The perpetrator keeps proof of his innocence ready.
The innocent often has no proof.
But is it really best to be silent in such a situation?
What if he's innocent?

B. Brecht

Brecht during these years with all decisiveness opposed the isolation of the Communists: "... What is important," he wrote, "is only a tireless, weighty, carried out by all means and on the broadest basis, the struggle against fascism." He captured his doubts in the philosophical composition “Me-ti. Book of Changes ”, which he wrote both before and after World War II, but never finished. In this essay, written as if on behalf of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu, Brecht shared his thoughts on Marxism and the theory of revolution and tried to understand what was happening in the USSR; in Met, with impartial assessments of Stalin's activities, arguments in his defense borrowed from the Soviet and other Comintern press were also adjacent.

In 1937, Sergei Tretyakov, a friend of Brecht and one of the first translators of his works into Russian, was shot in Moscow. Brecht found out about this in 1938 - the fate of one person who was well known to him made him think about many others who were shot; He called the poem dedicated to the memory of Tretyakov "Are the people infallible?" Each stanza of the poem ends with the question: "What if he is innocent?"

In this context, the Life of Galileo, one of Brecht's best plays, was born. In a note accompanying the first German edition in 1955, Brecht pointed out that the play was written at a time when newspapers "published a report on the fission of the uranium atom by German physicists," thus, as Ilya Fradkin noted, hinting at the connection the idea of ​​a play with problems of atomic physics. However, there is no evidence that Brecht foresaw the creation of the atomic bomb in the late 1930s; Having learned from Danish physicists about the fission of the uranium atom carried out in Berlin, Brecht in the first ("Danish") edition of "The Life of Galileo" gave this discovery a positive interpretation. The play's conflict had nothing to do with the problem of the creators of the atomic bomb, but it clearly echoed the Moscow open trials, about which Brecht wrote at that time in the Met: “... something provable, it's like asking me to believe in something unprovable. I will not do this ... With an unsubstantiated trial, he caused damage to the people. "

At the same time, Brecht's theses "Preconditions for the successful leadership of the movement for the social transformation of society" belong, the first point of which called for the "abolition and overcoming of leaderism within the party", and the sixth point - for "the elimination of all demagogy, all scholasticism, all esotericism, intrigue, arrogance that does not correspond to the real state of affairs of arrogance "; it also contained a very naive call to abandon the "requirement of blind 'faith' in the name of convincing evidence." The theses were not in demand, but Brecht himself, faith in the mission of the USSR forced one way or another to justify Stalin's entire foreign policy.

In the United States

Finland was not the most secure refuge: Risto Ryti, then prime minister, was in secret negotiations with Germany; and yet, at Vuolijoki's request, he granted Brecht a residence permit - only because he once enjoyed the Threepenny Opera. Here Brecht managed to write a pamphlet play "The Career of Arturo Ui" - about the ascent of Hitler and his party to the heights of power. In May 1941, against the backdrop of undisguised deployment of German troops and clear preparations for war, he finally received an American visa; but sailing to the USA from the northern port of Finland proved to be impossible: the port was already controlled by the Germans. I had to go to the Far East - through Moscow, where Brecht, with the help of the surviving German emigrants, unsuccessfully tried to find out the fate of his disappeared friends.

In July, he arrived in Los Angeles and settled in Hollywood, where by that time, according to the actor Alexander Granach, “all of Berlin” had already appeared. But, unlike Thomas Mann, E. M. Remarque, E. Ludwig or B. Frank, Brecht was little known to the American public - his name was well known only to the FBI, which, as it turned out later, collected more than 1000 pages of “inquest” about him. ”- and they had to make a living mainly with plot projects of screenplays. Feeling in Hollywood as if he was “torn out of his century” or moved to Tahiti, Brecht could not write what was in demand on the American stage or in cinema, for a long time he could not fully work at all, and in 1942 he wrote his many years employee: “What we need is a person who would lend me several thousand dollars for two years, with a return from my post-war fees ...” The plays written in 1943 “Dreams of Simone Machar” and “Schweik in World War II »Failed to deliver in the USA; but old friend Lyon Feuchtwanger, attracted by Brecht to work on "Simone Machar", wrote a novel based on the play and from the received fee gave Brecht 20 thousand dollars, which was enough for several years of comfortable existence.

After the end of World War II, Brecht created a new ("American") version of Galileo's Life; staged in July 1947 in Los Angeles, in the small Coronet Theater, with Charles Lawton in the title role, the play was very coolly received by the Los Angeles "film colony" - according to Charles Chaplin, with whom Brecht became close in Hollywood, the play staged in the style of "epic theater" seemed too little theatrical.

Return to Germany

Even the flood
It didn't last forever.
Once dried up
Black abysses.
But only a few
We have experienced it.

At the end of the war, Brecht, like many emigrants, was in no hurry to return to Germany. According to the memoirs of Schumacher, Ernst Bush, when asked where is Brecht, answered: "He must finally understand that his house is here!" - while Bush himself spoke to his friends about how difficult it is for an anti-fascist to live among people for whom Hitler is only to blame for losing the war.

Brecht's return to Europe was accelerated in 1947 by the Commission of Inquiry on Anti-American Activities, which became interested in him as a "communist". When in early November the plane delivered him to the capital of France, many large cities were still in ruins, Paris appeared before him "a shabby, impoverished, solid black market" - in Central Europe, Switzerland, where Brecht was heading, turned out to be the only country that the war did not devastated; son Stefan, who served in the American army in 1944-1945, chose to stay in the United States.

"A stateless person, always with only a temporary residence permit, always ready to go further, a wanderer of our time ... a poet who does not burn incense", as Max Frisch described him, Brecht settled in Zurich, where even during the war years German and Austrian emigrants staged his plays. With these like-minded people and with his long-time colleague Kaspar Neer, he created his theater - first in the city "Schauspielhaus", where he failed with the adaptation of "Antigone" by Sophocles, and a few months later he experienced his first success after returning to Europe with the production of "Mister Puntila". performance, which has become a theatrical event with international resonance.

At the end of 1946, Herbert Iering from Berlin urged Brecht to "use the Theater on Schiffbauerdam for a well-known cause." When Brecht and Weigel with a group of emigrant actors arrived in the eastern sector of Berlin, in October 1948, the theater, which had been inhabited in the late 1920s, was busy, the Berliner Ensemble, which soon gained worldwide fame, had to create theater. Brecht arrived in Berlin when the editor-in-chief of the Theater der Zeit magazine F. Erpenbeck hailed the production of his play Fear and Despair in the Third Empire at the German Theater as a stage overcoming of the “false theory of epic theater”. But the very first play staged by the new team - "Mother Courage and Her Children", with Elena Veigel in the title role, entered the "golden fund" of the world theatrical art. Although he provoked a discussion in East Berlin: Erpenbek even now predicted an unenviable fate for the "epic theater" - in the end he would get lost in the "decadence alien to the people."

Later, in Tales of Herr Koine, Brecht explained why he chose the eastern sector of the capital: “In city A ... they love me, but in city B they treated me friendly. In city A they are ready to help me, but in city B they needed me. In city A I was invited to the table, and in city B I was invited to the kitchen. "

There was no shortage of official honors: in 1950, Brecht became a full member, and in 1954 - vice-president of the Academy of Arts of the GDR, in 1951 he was awarded the National Prize of the first degree, since 1953 he headed the German PEN-club "East and West ”- meanwhile, relations with the leadership of the GDR were not easy.

Relationship with the leadership of the GDR

After settling in East Germany, Brecht was in no hurry to join the SED; in 1950, the Stalinization of the GDR began, complicating its relationship with the party leadership. First, problems arose with his beloved actor Ernst Bush, who in 1951 moved to East Berlin from the American sector: during the party purge of those who had been in Western emigration, some were expelled from the SED, including some of Brecht's friends, others were subjected to additional verification, - Bush in not the most sophisticated terms refused to pass the verification, considering it humiliating, and was also expelled. In the summer of the same year, Brecht, together with Paul Dessau, composed the Hernburg Report cantata, timed to coincide with the opening of the III World Festival of Youth and Students; Two weeks before the scheduled premiere, E. Honecker (who at that time was in charge of youth affairs in the Central Committee of the SED) urged Brecht to remove Bush's name from the song included in the cantata "so as not to popularize him beyond measure." Brecht's argument surprised, but Honecker did not consider it necessary to explain to him the reasons for his discontent with Bush; instead, an even stranger argument from Brecht's point of view was put forward: the youth have no idea of ​​Bush. Brecht objected: if this is indeed the case, which he personally doubted, then Bush deserved to be known about him with his entire biography. Faced with the need to choose between loyalty to the leadership of the SED and elementary decency towards an old friend: in the current situation, deleting Bush's name could no longer cause moral damage to the actor, Brecht turned to another high-ranking functionary for help; and they helped him: without his knowledge, the song was completely removed from the show.

In the same year, a discussion about "formalism" began in the GDR, which, along with the main composers of the Berliner Ensemble theater - Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau - touched upon Brecht himself. At the plenum of the Central Committee of the SED, specially devoted to the struggle against formalism, to the surprise of many, the production of Brecht's play "Mother" was presented as an example of this pernicious tendency; at the same time, I especially did not like its didactic nature - whether the party leadership feared that East German dissidents would learn from the play, but many scenes of the play were declared "historically false and politically harmful."

Later, Brecht was subjected to elaborations for “pacifism”, “national nihilism”, “belittling the classical heritage” and for “humor alien to the people”. The planting of KS Stanislavsky's “system”, which began in the GDR in the spring of 1953, in the spirit of the then Moscow Art Theater, turned into another accusation of “formalism” and, at the same time, “cosmopolitanism” for Brecht. If the first performance "Berliner Ensemble", "Mother Courage and Her Children", was immediately awarded the National Prize of the GDR, then further performances more and more often aroused suspicion. Repertoire problems also arose: the SED leadership believed that the Nazi past should be forgotten, attention was ordered to focus on the positive qualities of the German people, and primarily on the great German culture - therefore, not only anti-fascist plays were undesirable (Arturo Ui's Career appeared in the repertoire "Berliner Ensemble" only in 1959, after Brecht's student Peter Palich staged it in West Germany), but also "The Governor" by J. Lenz and G. Eisler's opera "Johann Faust", the text of which also seemed insufficiently patriotic. The appeals of the Brecht theater to the classics - "The Broken Jug" by G. Kleist and "Prafaust" by JV Goethe - were regarded as "denial of the national cultural heritage."

Tonight in a dream
I saw a violent storm.
She shook the buildings
Iron beams tore down
The iron roof was blown off.
But everything that was made of wood
It bent and survived.

B. Brecht

As a member of the Academy of Arts, Brecht more than once had to defend artists, including Ernst Barlach, from the attacks of the newspaper "Neues Deutschland" (organ of the Central Committee of the SED), which, in his words, "the few remaining artists were plunged into lethargy." In 1951, he wrote in his work journal that literature was again forced to do "without a direct national response," since this response reaches writers "with disgusting extraneous noises." In the summer of 1953, Brecht called on Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl to dissolve the Commission for the Arts and thus put an end to “its dictatorship, poorly reasoned prescriptions, administrative measures alien to art, vulgar Marxist language that abhorrent artists”; he developed this theme in a number of articles and satirical poems, but was heard only in West Germany and by that public, which by their approval could only do him a disservice.

At the same time, reproducing the ideological campaigns carried out in the USSR at different times, the SED leadership refrained from Soviet "organizational conclusions"; The wave of political trials that swept across Eastern Europe - against R. Slansky in Czechoslovakia, against L. Raik in Hungary and other imitations of the Moscow trials of the 30s - bypassed the GDR, and it was obvious that East Germany did not get the worst leadership.

June events of 1953

On June 16, 1953, strikes began in Berlin at individual enterprises, directly related to higher production rates and higher prices for consumer goods; During the spontaneous demonstrations in different parts of Berlin, political demands were also put forward, including the resignation of the government, the dissolution of the People's Police and the reunification of Germany. By the morning of June 17, the strike developed into a citywide strike, thousands of excited columns of demonstrators rushed to the government quarter - in this situation, the non-party Brecht considered it his duty to support the leadership of the SED. He wrote letters to Walter Ulbricht and Otto Grotewohl, which, however, in addition to expressing solidarity, also contained an appeal to enter into dialogue with the strikers - to respond properly to the legitimate discontent of the workers. But his assistant Manfred Wekvert was unable to break into the building of the Central Committee of the SED, already besieged by the demonstrators. Outraged that the radio broadcasts operetta melodies, Brecht sent his assistants to the radio committee with a request to provide air to the staff of his theater, but was refused. Without waiting for anything from the leadership of the SED, he himself went to the protesters, but from conversations with them he got the impression that the discontent of the workers are trying to take advantage of the forces, which he described as "fascist", attacking the SED "not because of its mistakes, but because of its merits, "- Brecht spoke about this on June 17 and 24 at the general meeting of the Berliner Ensemble. He understood that in the radical moods of the demonstrators, the lack of freedom of speech was avenging itself, but he also said that lessons were not learned from the history of Germany in the 20th century, since this topic itself was banned.

The letter, written by Brecht to Ulbricht on June 17, reached the addressee and was even partially published a few days later - only that part of it in which support was expressed, despite the fact that after the suppression of the uprising, the support itself acquired a different meaning. In West Germany, and especially in Austria, it caused outrage; an appeal published on June 23, in which Brecht wrote: “... I hope that ... workers who demonstrated their legitimate discontent will not be put on the same level with provocateurs, for this from the very beginning would have prevented the much-needed broad exchange of views on mutually committed mistakes ”- nothing could change; the theaters that had previously staged his plays declared a boycott to Brecht, and if in West Germany it did not last long (calls for a boycott resumed in 1961, after the construction of the Berlin Wall), the “Viennese boycott” lasted for 10 years, and at the Burgtheater it ended only in 1966 year.

Last year

In the conditions of the Cold War, the struggle to preserve peace became an important component of not only social, but also of Brecht's creative activity, and the curtain of the theater he created adorned Picasso's dove of peace. In December 1954, he was awarded the International Stalin Prize "For Strengthening Peace Among Nations" (two years later renamed to Lenin), on this occasion, in May 1955, Brecht arrived in Moscow. He was taken to theaters, but in those days the Russian theater was just beginning to revive after twenty years of stagnation, and, according to Lev Kopelev, of everything that was shown to him, Brecht liked only V. Mayakovsky's Bathhouse at the Theater of Satire. He recalled how in the early 1930s, when he first went to Moscow, his Berlin friends said: “You are going to the theatrical Mecca,” - the past twenty years had thrown the Soviet theater back half a century. They hurried to please him: in Moscow, after a 20-year hiatus, a one-volume edition of his selected plays is being prepared for publication - Brecht, who wrote back in 1936 that “epic theater”, in addition to a certain technical level, implies “an interest in free discussion of vital questions ", not without sarcasm noted that his plays for the Soviet theater are outdated, such" radical hobbies "in the USSR were ill in the 1920s.

When delusions are exhausted
Emptiness looks into our eyes -
Our last interlocutor.

B. Brecht

In Moscow, Brecht met with Bernhard Reich, who had survived the Stalinist camps, and again tried unsuccessfully to find out the fate of the rest of his friends. Back in 1951, he reworked Shakespeare's Coriolanus for staging in his theater, in which he significantly shifted the emphasis: "The tragedy of an individual," wrote Brecht, "interests us, of course, to a much lesser extent than the tragedy of society caused by an individual." ... If Shakespeare's Coriolanus is driven by wounded pride, Brecht added to it the hero's faith in his indispensability; he looked in Coriolanus for concrete means of counteracting "leaderism" and found them in the "self-defense of society": while Shakespeare's people are changeable, the cowardly aristocracy and even the tribunes of the people do not shine with courage, in Brecht's people rushing from one extreme to another , in the end, under the leadership of the tribunes, he creates something reminiscent of the "popular front" of the 30s, on the basis of which a kind of people's power is formed.

However, in the same year, work on Coriolanus was interrupted: the "personality cult" borrowed from the experience of the USSR flourished in the early 1950s in many countries of Eastern Europe, and what made the play relevant, at the same time made it impossible to stage it. In 1955, it seemed like the time had come for Coriolanus, and Brecht returned to this work; but in February 1956, the 20th Congress of the CPSU took place - the Central Committee's resolution "On Overcoming the Cult of the Personality and Its Consequences" published in June dispelled his last illusions; "Coriolanus" was delivered only eight years after his death.

Since the beginning of 1955, Brecht worked with his old colleague Erich Engel on staging The Life of Galileo in the Berliner Ensemble and wrote a play that, unlike Life of Galileo, was really dedicated to the creators of the atomic bomb and was called The Life of Einstein. "Two powers are fighting ..." Brecht wrote about the play's central conflict. - X gives one of these powers a great formula, so that with its help he himself can be protected. He does not notice that the facial features of both powers are similar. A favorable power to him wins and overthrows the other, and a terrible thing happens: she herself turns into another ... "The disease slowed down his work both in the theater and at his writing table: Brecht returned from Moscow completely exhausted and could start rehearsals only at the end of December, and in April he was forced to interrupt them due to illness - Engel had to finish the play alone. Einstein's Life remained in the outline; written in 1954, "Turandot" was Brecht's last play.

Sickness and death

A general decline in strength was already evident in the spring of 1955: Brecht had aged dramatically, at the age of 57 he walked with the support of a cane; in May, going to Moscow, he drew up a will, in which he asked that the coffin with his body should not be publicly exhibited anywhere and farewell words should not be said over the grave.

In the spring of 1956, while working on a production of Galileo's Life in his theater, Brecht suffered a myocardial infarction; since the heart attack was painless, Brecht did not notice it and continued to work. He explained the growing weakness to himself by fatigue and at the end of April went to rest in Bukkov. However, the state of health did not improve. On August 10, Brecht arrived in Berlin for rehearsals of the play "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" for the upcoming tour in London; from the evening of the 13th, his condition began to deteriorate.

The next day, a doctor called by relatives diagnosed a massive heart attack, but an ambulance from a government clinic arrived too late. On August 14, 1956, five minutes before midnight, Bertolt Brecht died at the age of 59.

In the early morning of August 17, Brecht was buried, according to his will, in the small Dorotheenstadt cemetery not far from the house in which he lived. In addition to family members, only the closest friends and the Berliner Ensemble theater staff took part in the funeral ceremony. As the playwright wanted, no speeches were made over his grave. Only a few hours later, the official wreath-laying ceremony took place.

The next day, 18 August, a funeral meeting was organized at the Theater on Schiffbauerdamm, where the Berliner Ensemble had been located since 1954; Ulbricht read out the official statement of the President of the GDR V. Pick in connection with the death of Brecht, on his own behalf he added that the leadership of the GDR had provided Brecht "for the implementation of all his creative plans" with the management of the theater, he received in East Germany "all the opportunities to speak with the workers." Literary critic Hans Mayer, who knew the value of his words well, noted at this “absurd celebration” only three sincere moments: “when Ernst Busch sang their common songs to a dead friend,” and Hans Eisler, hidden behind the scenes, accompanied him on the piano.

Personal life

In 1922, Brecht married actress and singer Marianne Zoff, in this marriage in 1923 he had a daughter, Hannah, who became an actress (known as Hannah Hyob) and played many of his heroines on stage; passed away on June 24, 2009. Zoff was five years older than Brecht, kind-hearted and caring, and to a certain extent, writes Schumacher, replaced his mother. Nevertheless, this marriage turned out to be fragile: in 1923, Brecht met in Berlin with a young actress Helena Weigel, who gave birth to his son Stefan (1924-2009). Brecht divorced Zoff in 1927 and formalized his relationship with Weigel in April 1929; in 1930 they had a daughter, Barbara, who also became an actress (known as Barbara Brecht-Schall).

In addition to legitimate children, Brecht had an illegitimate son from his youthful love - Paula Bahnholzer; Born in 1919 and named Frank after Wedekind, Brecht's eldest son remained with his mother in Germany and died in 1943 on the Eastern Front.

Creation

Brecht the poet

According to Brecht himself, he began "traditionally": with ballads, psalms, sonnets, epigrams and songs with a guitar, the texts of which were born simultaneously with the music. “In German poetry,” wrote Ilya Fradkin, “he entered as a modern vagant, composing songs and ballads somewhere at a street intersection ...” Like vagantes, Brecht often resorted to parody techniques, choosing the same objects for parody - psalms and chorales (collection "Home Sermons", 1926), textbook poems, but also bourgeois romances from the repertoire of organ grinders and street singers. Later, when all of Brecht's talents were locked in the theater, the zongs in his plays were born in the same way with music, only in 1927, when staging the play "Man is a Man" in Berlin "Volksbuehne", he first entrusted his texts to a professional composer - Edmund Meisel, who was collaborating with Piscator at the time. In the "Threepenny Opera" the Zongs were born together with the music of Kurt Weill (and this prompted Brecht to point out when the play was published that it was written "in collaboration" with Weill), and many of them could not exist outside of this music.

At the same time, Brecht remained a poet until recent years - not only the author of lyrics and songs; but over the years he increasingly gave preference to free forms: the “ragged” rhythm, as he himself explained, was “a protest against the smoothness and harmony of ordinary verse” - the harmony that he could not find either in the world around him or in his own soul. In the plays, since some of them were written mainly in poetry, this "ragged" rhythm was also dictated by the desire to more accurately convey the relationship between people - "as a contradictory relationship, full of struggle." In the poems of the young Brecht, in addition to Frank Wedekind, the influence of François Villon, Arthur Rimbaud and Rudyard Kipling is noticeable; later he became interested in Chinese philosophy, and many of his poems, especially in recent years, and above all "Bukovskaya Elegies", in form - in laconicism and capacity, partly in contemplation - resemble the classics of ancient Chinese poetry: Li Bo, Du Fu and Bo Juyi, which he translated.

Since the late 1920s, Brecht wrote songs designed to raise people to the fight, like "Song of the United Front" and "All or Nobody", or satirical, like a parody of the Nazi "Horst Wessel", in Russian translation - "Sheep March". At the same time, writes I. Fradkin, he remained original even in topics that seemed to have long since become a graveyard of truisms. As one of the critics noted, Brecht in these years was already such a playwright that many of his poems, written in the first person, are more like the statements of stage characters.

In post-war Germany, Brecht put all his work, including poetry, at the service of the construction of the "new world", believing, in contrast to the leadership of the SED, that this construction can be served not only by approval, but also by criticism. He returned to lyric poetry in 1953, in his last closed cycle of poems - "Bukovskaya Elegies": Brecht's country house was located in Bukovo on the Shermiutzelsee. Allegories, to which Brecht often resorted to in his mature drama, were increasingly encountered in his later lyrics; Written on the model of Virgil's Bukolic, the Bukovian Elegies reflected, as E. Schumacher writes, the feelings of a person “on the verge of old age and fully aware that there is very little time left for him on earth”. With the bright memories of youth, here side by side not just elegiac, but overwhelmingly gloomy, according to the critic, verses - to the extent that their poetic meaning is deeper and richer than the literal meaning.

Brecht the playwright

House of Brecht and Weigel in Bukow, now Bertolt-Brecht-Strasse 29/30

Brecht's early plays were born out of protest; "Baal" in the original edition, 1918, was a protest against everything that is dear to a respectable bourgeois: the asocial hero of the play (according to Brecht - asocial in "asocial society"), the poet Baal, was a declaration of love for Francois Villon, "a murderer, a robber from the high road, to the composer of ballads ", and, moreover, obscene ballads - everything here was designed for shocking. Later, "Baal" was transformed into an anti-expressionist play, "counterplay", polemically directed, in particular, against the idealized portrait of the playwright Christian Grabbe in "Lonely" by G. Jost. The play Drums in the Night, which developed the same theme in the "concrete historical situation" of the November Revolution, was also polemical in relation to the well-known thesis of the Expressionists "a good man".

In his next plays, Brecht also polemicized with the naturalistic repertoire of German theaters. By the mid-1920s, he formulated a theory of "epic" ("non-Aristotelian") drama. “Naturalism,” wrote Brecht, “gave the theater the opportunity to create exceptionally subtle portraits, scrupulously, in all details to depict social 'corners' and individual small events. When it became clear that naturalists overestimated the influence of the immediate, material environment on human social behavior ... - then interest in the "interior" disappeared. A wider background gained importance, and it was necessary to be able to show its variability and the contradictory effect of its radiation. " At the same time, Brecht called his first epic drama "Baal", but the principles of "epic theater" were developed gradually, and its purpose was clarified over the years, and the nature of his plays changed accordingly.

Back in 1938, analyzing the reasons for the special popularity of the detective genre, Brecht noted that a person of the 20th century acquires his life experience mainly in catastrophe conditions, while he himself is forced to search for the causes of crises, depressions, wars and revolutions: “Even when reading newspapers ( but also bills, news of dismissal, mobilization summons and so on), we feel that someone did something ... What and who did? For events that are reported to us, we assume other events that are not reported to us. They are real events. " Developing this idea in the mid-50s, Friedrich Dürrenmatt came to the conclusion that the theater is no longer able to reflect the modern world: the state is anonymous, bureaucratic, sensually incomprehensible; in these conditions, art has access only to sacrifice; it can no longer comprehend those in power; "The modern world is easier to recreate through a little speculator, clerk or policeman than through the Bundesrat or through the Chancellor."

Brecht looked for ways to present "real events" on stage, although he did not claim to have found it; he saw, in any case, only one opportunity to help modern man: to show that the world around us is changing, and to the best of his ability to study its laws. Since the mid-30s, starting with "Roundheads and Sharpheads", he increasingly turned to the parabola genre, and in recent years, while working on the play "Turandot, or the Whitewater Congress", he said that the allegorical form is still the most suitable for "Alienation" of social problems. I. Fradkin and Brecht's tendency to transfer the action of his plays to India, China, medieval Georgia, etc., explained by the fact that exotic costumed plots more easily fit into the form of a parabola. "In this exotic setting," the critic wrote, "the philosophical idea of ​​the play, freed from the shackles of familiar and familiar life, more easily achieves general significance." Brecht himself saw the advantage of the parabola, with its known limitations, in the fact that it is "much more cunning than all other forms": the parabola is concrete in abstraction, making the essence clear, and, like no other form, "can elegantly present the truth."

Brecht - theorist and director

It was difficult to judge from the outside who Brecht was as a director, since the outstanding performances of the Berliner Ensemble were always the fruit of collective labor: in addition to the fact that Brecht often worked in tandem with the much more experienced Engel, he also had thinking actors, often with directorial inclinations, which he himself knew how to awaken and encourage; his talented students, Benno Besson, Peter Palich and Manfred Vekvert, contributed as assistants to the creation of the performances - such a collective work on the performance was one of the fundamental principles of his theater.

At the same time, working with Brecht, according to Vekvert, was not easy - because of his constant doubts: “On the one hand, we had to accurately record everything that was said and worked out (...), but the next day we had to hear:“ I have never didn’t say, you wrote it down wrong “”. The source of these doubts, according to Weuquvert, in addition to Brecht's spontaneous dislike of all kinds of “final decisions”, was also the contradiction inherent in his theory: Brecht professed an “honest” theater that did not create the illusion of authenticity, did not try to influence the viewer's subconscious mind bypassing it. mind, deliberately revealing its techniques and avoiding the identification of the actor with the character; meanwhile, theater by its very nature is nothing more than the “art of deception,” the art of portraying something that does not exist in reality. “The magic of the theater”, writes M. Vekvert, lies in the fact that people, having come to the theater, are ready in advance to indulge in illusion and take at face value whatever is shown to them. Brecht, both in theory and in practice, tried by all means to counteract this; often he chose performers depending on their human inclinations and biographies, as if he didn’t believe that his actors, experienced masters or bright young talents, could portray on stage what is not typical for them in life. He did not want his actors to act - the "art of deception", including acting, in the mind of Brecht was associated with those performances into which the National Socialists turned their political actions.

But the "magic of the theater", which he drove through the door, kept bursting through the window: even the exemplary Brechtian actor Ernst Bush, after the hundredth performance of Galileo's Life, according to Vekvert, "already felt like not only a great actor, but also a great physicist ". The director tells how one day the staff of the Institute for Nuclear Research came to the "Life of Galileo" and after the performance expressed a desire to talk with the performer of the main role. They wanted to know how an actor works, but Bush preferred to talk to them about physics; spoke with all passion and persuasiveness for about half an hour - the scientists listened as if spellbound and at the end of the speech burst into applause. The next day Vekvert received a call from the director of the institute: “Something incomprehensible has happened. ... I just realized this morning that it was sheer nonsense. "

Was Bush really, in spite of all Brecht's insistence, identified himself with the character, or was he simply explaining to physicists what the art of an actor is, but, as Weckvert testifies, Brecht was well aware of the indestructibility of "theater magic" and in his directorial practice tried to make her serve their goals - to turn into a "cunning mind" ( List der Vernunft).

For Brecht, the "trick of reason" was "naivety" borrowed from folk, including Asian, art. It was the readiness of the spectator in the theater to indulge in illusions - to accept the proposed rules of the game that allowed Brecht both in the design of the performance and in the acting game to strive for maximum simplicity: to designate the place of action, era, character of the character with mean but expressive details, to achieve "reincarnation" sometimes with the help of ordinary masks - cutting off everything that can divert attention from the main thing. For example, in Brecht's production of The Life of Galileo, Pavel Markov noted: “The direction knows exactly at what point in the action the viewer's special attention should be directed. She does not allow any unnecessary accessories on stage. Precise and very simple decoration<…>only a few scanty details of the furnishings convey the atmosphere of the era. The mise-en-scènes are constructed just as expediently, sparingly, but rightly "- this" naive "laconicism ultimately helped Brecht to focus the audience's attention not on the development of the plot, but above all on the development of the author's thought.

Directing work

• 1924 - "The Life of Edward II of England" by B. Brecht and L. Feuchtwanger (adaptation of the play "Edward II" by K. Marlo). Artist Kaspar Neer - Kammerspiele, Munich; premiered on March 18
• 1931 - "Man is man" by B. Brecht. Artist Kaspar Neer; composer Kurt Weil - State Theater, Berlin
• 1931 - “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagoni”, opera by K. Weill to a libretto by B. Becht. Painter Kaspar Neer - Theater on Kurfürstendamm, Berlin
• 1937 - "Rifles of Teresa Carrar" by B. Brecht (co-director Zlatan Dudov) - Sall Adyar, Paris
• 1938 - "99%" (selected scenes from the play "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire" by B. Brecht). Artist Heinz Lomar; composer Paul Dessau (co-director Z. Dudov) - Sall d'Jena, Paris
• 1947 - "The Life of Galileo" by B. Brecht ("American" edition). Artist Robert Davison (co-director Joseph Losey) - Coronet Theater, Los Angeles
• 1948 - "Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti" by B. Brecht. Artist Theo Otto (co-director Kurt Hirschfeld) - "Schauschpielhaus", Zurich
• 1950 - "Mother Courage and her children" by B. Brecht. Artist Theo Otto - Kammerspiele, Munich

Berliner Ensemble

• 1949 - "Mother Courage and Her Children" by B. Brecht. Artists Theo Otto and Caspar Neer, composer Paul Dessau (co-director Erich Engel)
• 1949 - "Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti" by B. Brecht. Artist Kaspar Neer; composer Paul Dessau (co-director Erich Engel)
• 1950 - “The Governor” by J. Lenz in B. Brecht's processing. Artists Kaspar Neer and Heiner Hill (co-directors E. Monk, K. Neer and B. Besson)
• 1951 - "Mother" by B. Brecht. Artist Kaspar Neer; composer Hans Eisler
• 1952 - "Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti" by B. Brecht. Composer Paul Dessau (co-director Egon Monk)
• 1953 - "Katzgraben" by E. Strittmatter. Artist Karl von Appen
• 1954 - "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" by B. Brecht. Artist Karl von Appen; composer Paul Dessau; director M. Vekvert
• 1955 - "Winter Battle" by I. R. Becher. Artist Karl von Appen; composer Hans Eisler (co-director M. Weckvert)
• 1956 - "The Life of Galileo" by B. Brecht ("Berlin" edition). Artist Kaspar Neer, composer Hans Eisler (co-director Erich Engel).

Heritage

Brecht is best known for his plays. In the early 60s, the West German literary critic Marianne Kesting in her book Panorama of Contemporary Theater, introducing 50 playwrights of the 20th century, noted that most of those living today are "sick with Brecht" ("brechtkrank"), finding a simple explanation for this: to myself ”concept, which combined philosophy, drama and methodology of acting, drama theory and theater theory, no one could oppose another concept,“ just as significant and internally whole ”. Researchers discover the influence of Brecht in the work of such different artists as Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Arthur Adamov, Max Frisch and Heiner Müller.

Brecht wrote his plays "on the topic of the day" and dreamed of the time when the world around him would change so much that everything he wrote would be irrelevant. The world was changing, but not so much - interest in Brecht's work either waned, as it did in the 80s and 90s, then revived again. He was revived in Russia as well: Brecht's dreams of a “new world” have lost their relevance - unexpectedly, his view of the “old world” turned out to be relevant.

The name of B. Brecht is the Political Theater (Cuba).

Essays

The most famous plays

• 1918 - "Baal" (German. Baal)
• 1920 - "Drums in the Night" (German: Trommeln in der Nacht)
• 1926 - "Man is man" (German: Mann ist Mann)
• 1928 - "Threepenny Opera" (German Die Dreigroschenoper)
• 1931 - "St. John of the Slaughterhouse" (German: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe)
• 1931 - "Mother" (German Die Mutter); based on the novel of the same name by A.M. Gorky
• 1938 - "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire" (German: Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches)
• 1939 - "Mother Courage and her children" (German Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder; final edition - 1941)
• 1939 - "The Life of Galileo" (German. Leben des Galilei, second edition - 1945)
• 1940 - "Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti" (German Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti)
• 1941 - Arturo Ui's Career That Could Not Be (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui)
• 1941 - "The Good Man from Sichuan" (German Der gute Mensch von Sezuan)
• 1943 - "Schweyk in World War II" (German: Schweyk im zweiten Weltkrieg)
• 1945 - "Caucasian chalk circle" (German Der kaukasische Kreidekreis)
• 1954 - "Turandot, or the Congress of Whitewash" (German: Turandot oder Der Kongreß der Weißwäscher)