1898–1956
SONG ABOUT THE GOOD PEOPLE
1
One knows the good people by the fact
That they get better
When one knows them. The good people
Invite one to improve them, for
How does anyone get wiser? By listening
And by being told something.
2
At the same time, however
They improve anybody who looks at them and anybody
They look at. It is not just because they help one
To get jobs or to see clearly, but because
We know that these people are alive and are
Changing the world, that they are of use to us.
3
If one comes to them they are there.
They remember what they
Looked like when one last met them.
However much they've changed––
For it is precisely they who change––
They have at most become more recognisable.
4
They are like a house which we helped to build
They do not force us to live there
Sometimes they do not let us.
We may come to them at any time in our smallest dimension,
but
What we bring with us we must select.
5
They know how to give reasons for their presents
If they find them thrown away they laugh.
But here too they are reliable, in that
Unless we rely on ourselves
They cannot be relied on.
6
When they make mistakes we laugh:
For if they lay a stone in the wrong place
We, by watching them, see
The right place.
Daily they earn our interest, even as they earn
Their daily bread.
They are interested in something
That is outside themselves.
7
The good people keep us busy
They don't seem to be able to finish anything by themselves
All their solutions still contain problems.
At dangerous moments on sinking ships
Suddenly we see their eyes full on us.
Though they do not entirely approve of us as we are
They are in agreement with us none the less.
c 1939
Translated by
FRANK JELLINEK
Poet, actor, playwright and pioneering theater director Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born in the southern German city of Augsburg on 10 February 1898. His early life was heavily influenced by his maternal grandmother and her devotion to the Lutheran church, seeing him become intimately acquainted with the Bible and its teachings by the time he reached adolescence.
The outbreak of World War One in August 1914 prompted many of Brecht's friends and classmates to enlist in the German army. Initially a supporter of the war, he quickly became horrified by the carnage it created and an outspoken critic of the Prussian military establishment, almost being expelled from school after composing an essay that satirized the rabid patriotism of his countrymen.
Seeking to avoid conscription, Brecht enrolled as a medical student at Munich University in 1917. It was in Munich, capital of the state of Bavaria, that he first studied drama and became a passionate admirer of playwright and cabaret performer Frank Wedekind. He had by this time also become a theater critic for an Augsburg newspaper, signing his articles 'Bert Brecht.' Although he was conscripted in 1918, he was assigned to work as a medical orderly in an army clinic in Augsburg which specialized in the treatment of venereal diseases. He was still working in this clinic when the Armistice was signed on 11 November.
1918 also saw Brecht write Baal, his first full length play. The play would not be staged until 1923, by which time the young dramatist had already established his reputation as a risk taker with a 1922 production of his second full length work for the stage Drums In The Night. He soon re-located to Berlin where he befriended many of that city's most talented playwrights, poets, musicians and cabaret performers and several members of the emerging Dadaist movement who, disgusted by the needless suffering and destruction caused by the war, viewed it as being their duty to attack and ridicule the bourgeoisie at every opportunity.
Brecht followed the example of the Dadaists, using biting satire to dramatize his emerging Marxist political views. In May 1924 he had his first encounter with the Nazis when they staged a protest at the Munich premiere of Im Dickicht der Städte [In The Jungle of Cities], blowing whistles inside the theater and pelting the actors with stinkbombs. Ironically, Brecht's eldest son Frank (born in 1919 to his first love Paula Banholzer) would die in 1943 fighting for Hitler on the Russian front.
The nine years between 1924 and 1933 were a period of intensive artistic achievement for Brecht, seeing him create some of his earliest masterpieces including the 'ballad operas' Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera, 1928] and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny [Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1930] written in collaboration with composer Kurt Weill. In these and other works he continued to develop his concept of 'epic theater,' a style of production and performance that sought to shake audiences out of their passivity by constantly reminding them they were watching a play, not observing so-called 'real' events as they naturally unfolded. This technique, which became highly influential in later decades in many parts of the world, saw him adopt a variety of devices — objective narrators who commented on the action without participating in it, actors stepping out of character to directly address the audience, musical and dance numbers that juxtaposed catchy melodies with dark despairing lyrics, minimalist sets that featured few or no props, the use of placards and signs to announce the beginnings and endings of scenes — that were as innovative as they were confronting or, as some critics described them, alienating.
The appointment of Adolf Hitler to the post of Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 saw Brecht, his second wife Helene Weigel and many of their colleagues from the worlds of theater and the arts — people the Nazis accused of 'unGerman decadence' and soon began rounding up and sending to concentration camps — become voluntary exiles in other countries. Following brief stays in Prague, Paris and Zurich Brecht and Weigel eventually settled on the small Danish island of Funen, remaining there until April 1939 when the prospect of war saw them flee again to Stockholm in nearby Sweden. Following the Nazi invasion of Norway they fled yet again to Finland, remaining there until May 1941 when they were finally granted permission to emigrate to the United States.
It was while living in exile in the United States that Brecht created what came to be regarded as his most iconic works for the theater, a list which includes Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (first performed 1938), Life of Galileo (first performed 1943), Mother Courage and Her Children (first performed 1941), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (first performed 1958) and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (first performed 1948). Most if not all of these plays were conceived as direct attacks on Fascism, with The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui cleverly parodying Hitler's rise to power by re-imagining the German dictator as a Prohibition-era gangster taking over the city of Chicago. Brecht also staged several adaptations of plays written by other playwrights — including a 1946 production of The Duchess of Malfi by Jacobean dramatist John Webster co-adapted with English poet WH Auden — during this period as he'd previously done in Berlin prior to the war.
Brecht left the United States in 1947 following his decision to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, a Congressional body convened to investigate what the Government defined as the 'alleged disloyalty and subversive activities' of US citizens, civil servants and the nation's public institutions. Brecht's decision to cooperate with the Committee was viewed by many of his colleagues as a betrayal of his Marxist principles and saw him initially seek refuge in Switzerland before returning permanently to what was now a divided Berlin in 1949. It was in East Berlin, with the full political and financial backing of the new Communist state, that he and Helene Weigel created the Berliner Ensemble, a theater company specifically formed to stage his own works. Ironically, he wrote almost no new plays following his return to Europe, instead composing much of his finest poetry while mounting new productions of his old dramas utilizing the techniques he'd developed throughout his impressive thirty year career.
Bertolt Brecht died in East Berlin of a heart attack on 14 August 1956. But he remained a controversial figure even in death, revered by some as a great originator and reviled by others as an opportunistic plagiarist who knowingly and ruthlessly exploited his collaborators and many of his friends. He also attracted fierce criticism from some feminist critics who derided him for the many affairs he pursued both before and after his marriage to Helene Weigel including a longstanding relationship with Danish writer Ruth Berlau which ended acrimoniously in 1944.
Weigel, who was the mother of two of Brecht's four children, outlived him by fifteen years, serving as Artistic Director of the Berliner Ensemble until her own death on 6 May 1971.
Use the link below to read about the pioneering work of poet, actor, playwright and director BERTOLT BRECHT and his groundbreaking contributions to twentieth century theater:
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