Bertolt Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches: A German Exile Drama in the Struggle against Fascism (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

276 Pages·2010·1.38 MB·English

by  Ann White

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Brecht’s Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches (Fear and Misery of the Third
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Reich) gives a compelling documentary picture of life in Nazi Germany. T

Close readings of individual scenes are accompanied by a detailed B
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analysis of their role within the play’s overall structure. Contrary to the
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assumption that it is a work of Aristotelian realism, Brecht is shown to
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employ covert alienation devices that are an integral part of his literary
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campaign against Third Reich Germany. T
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This first study in English on the subject of Brecht and fascism offers S
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in the case of The Private Life of the Master Race, to the partial shift from the
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Third Reich of 1933-38 to the war period predicted in the original Furcht
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und Elend cycle.
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The play’s central theme of resistance, its propaganda value, and its N
political and artistic reception are addressed within their historical and D
ideological framework. The result is a challenging assessment of the
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play’s strengths and limitations as a response to German totalitarianism. L
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JOHN J. WHITE is Emeritus Professor of German and Comparative
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Literature at King’s College London, and ANN WHITE is Senior Lecturer

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in German at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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CAMDEN HOUSE
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Camden House I
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668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
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P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.camden-house.com E
www.boydellandbrewer.com S
John J. White
Cover image: The National Day of Labor celebrations at Berlin’s Tempelhof Field, 1 May 1933, at which Hitler
and members of the government were present. Bundesarchiv image 102–14575. and Ann White
Jacket design by Maureen Manley
Bertolt Brecht’s Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches
Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture
Bertolt Brecht’s Furcht und
Elend des Dritten Reiches
A German Exile Drama in
the Struggle against Fascism
John J. White and Ann White
Rochester, New York
Copyright © 2010 John J. White and Ann White
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2010
by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-373-1
ISBN-10: 1-57113-373-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, John J., 1940–
Bertolt Brecht’s Furcht und elend des dritten reiches: a German exile
drama in the struggle against fascism / John J. White and Ann White.
p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-373-1 (acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 1-57113-373-9 (acid-free paper)
1. Brecht, Bertolt, 1898–1956. Furcht und Elend des III. Reiches.
I. White, Ann. II. Title. III. Series.
PT2603.R397F839 2010
832’.912—dc22
2010004401
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Textual Note ix
Abbreviations of Works Frequently Cited xi
1: The Historical Context of the Furcht und Elend Project 1
2: Brecht and Fascism 29
3: Fear and Misery in Brecht’s Depiction of Third Reich
Germany 70
4: “Der Widerstand, und zwar der wachsende Widerstand”:
Brecht’s Dramatized Typology of Forms of Opposition 103
5: Songs, Poems, and Other Commenting Devices in
Furcht und Elend and The Private Life of the Master Race 147
6: Epic Structure, Alienation Effects, and Aristotelian Theater 180
Concluding Remarks 222
Appendix A: Furcht und Elend Scene Titles and their
English Equivalents 231
Appendix B: The First Four Verses of “Die deutsche
Heerschau” in German and English 232
Bibliography 235
Index 253

Acknowledgments
SOME PARTS OF THE ARGUMENT in Chapters Four, Five, and Six of the
present study are based on readings that have been published elsewhere
in an earlier form. We are grateful to the Modern Humanities Research
Association for permission to re-use material from “Bertolt Brecht’s Furcht
und Elend des III. Reiches and the Moscow ‘Realism’ Controversy,” first
published in The Modern Language Review in 2005. A draft of Chapter Five
was presented as a paper at the international conference “Bertolt B recht: A
Reassessment of His Work and Legacy,” held at the Institute of Germanic
and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Studies (University of London),
in February 2006. We should like to thank Gerd Labroisse, editor of the
Rodopi series Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Neueren Germanistik, for permis-
sion to use some sections of our London paper in the present volume. We
also want to express our thanks to the following friends and colleagues for
commenting on various versions of the present study and for other forms
of help given during our work on the project: Robert Gillett (London),
Michael Minden (Cambridge), Hamish Ritchie (Sheffield), Ritchie Rob-
ertson (Oxford), Ronald Speirs (Birmingham), Martin Swales (London),
Alfred Trupat (Berlin), and Godela Weiss-Sussex (London). We owe a spe-
cial debt of gratitude to William Abbey, former librarian of the erstwhile
Institute of Germanic Studies in the School of Advanced Studies, University
of London. Bill, a scholar-librarian of the old school, was of inestimable help
to us in our search for early versions of Furcht und Elend and material relat-
ing to Brecht’s exile antifascist work. He is the embodiment of the academic
ethos of a specialist research library. We should also like to thank Camden
House’s two expert readers, Stephen Brockmann (Carnegie Mellon Univer-
sity, Pittsburgh) and Stephen Parker (University of Manchester), for their
challenging queries, comments, and suggestions. We are much indebted to
Edward Batchelder for his scrupulous copy editing, valuable observations,
and assistance with presentation. Particular thanks go, as always, to Jim
Walker at Camden House for encouraging the present project and for the
tireless patience with which he helped us nurse it through to completion.
This book is dedicated to Jonathan White (London School of Eco-
nomics) and Lea Ypi (Nuffield College, Oxford) for all the support and
encouragement they gave us over the years.
J. J. W. and A. W.
March 2010

Textual Note
IN THE FOLLOWING STUDY, quotations in German from Furcht und Elend
des Dritten Reiches and references to individual parts of the play are to
the version in the Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe
(BFA 4:339–453). This standard thirty-volume scholarly edition is also
our source when other material by Brecht is cited in the German origi-
nal. The BFA text of the play, published in 1988 as Furcht und Elend des
III. Reiches, is that of a surviving Prague galley proof dating from 1938.
The BFA corpus comprises twenty-seven scenes arranged in the sequence
approved by Brecht for publication in Volume 3 of the aborted Malik-Ver-
lag edition of his Gesammelte Werke. (Two further scenes, “Der Gefühlser-
satz” and “Moorsoldaten,” are contained in an appendix to the main
corpus.) Our decision to work with this source is, however, not unprob-
lematic. Some scenes subsequently added to the ever-changing corpus do
not appear here, nor does the expository information about the setting
and date of each episode that was printed at the beginning of each scene in
later versions. Some scenes that formed part of the Malik Ur-version were
dropped or replaced in subsequent editions. Those relegated to the BFA
appendix are, unfortunately, made to appear less important, even though
one of them was eventually integrated into the Aurora edition (New York,
1945) that superseded the planned Malik sequence. The Aurora edition
became the textual basis for virtually all subsequent versions of Furcht und
Elend, including those in the East and West German Suhrkamp editions
of Brecht’s Gesammelte Stücke, upon which the Methuen translation (Fear
and Misery of the Third Reich) is based. The order of scenes in the Aurora
edition differs significantly from that in prior publications. It represents the
final text approved for publication by the playwright: the “Ausgabe letzter
Hand.”
Nonetheless, in the chapters of our study that follow, pagination and
indications of a scene’s position within the sequence refer to the version
in BFA 4, which is now the standard edition of Brecht’s collected works,
so far as Brecht scholarship is concerned. The notes to this edition, details
of variants, and copious documentation of the work’s genesis and recep-
tion make it indispensable for anyone working on Brecht. Major differ-
ences in the order of scenes in other editions of Furcht und Elend have,
where appropriate, been taken into account in our analyses. Substantial
reference will also be made to The Private Life of the Master Race, the first