Fatzer (fragment)
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| Title: | Fatzer (fragment) |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Bertolt Brecht |
| Publishing year: | 1927 - 1931 |
| Premiere: | 1975 / 1976 |
| Place of premiere: | Stanford University in Stanford , USA |
| Place and time of the action: | Near the city of Mülheim , at the end of the First World War |
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Fatzer , also: Downfall of the egoist Johann Fatzer , is an incomplete stage play that has been handed down in several versions and on which Bertolt Brecht worked from 1927 to 1931. The material in the Brecht archive comprises around 600 pages with fair copy typescripts but also handwritten notes on slips of paper, wrapping paper or serviettes.
Emergence
With Fatzer , Brecht tried to find a new form of his didactic pieces in material and verse. This fragment of the drama reflects the encounter between the provincial poet and the metropolis, and articulates his reservations about the mass people living here and their dullness. Brecht, who had already moved to Berlin since 1924, went back to his birthplace Augsburg from the end of June to the end of October 1927 to work on Fatzer for the purpose of concentration and inspiration , whose Bavarian - Swabian language gesture was incorporated into the text. In his letters to Helene Weigel addressed to Berlin in August 1927, September 17, 1927, and mid-October 1928 , Brecht reported that the project had taken up and progressed .
In the various earlier and later versions, the figures of the three comrades (Johann) Fatzers also have varying names: in other versions Koch is called Nauke , Kiaul or Keuner . The parts of Büsching and Kaumann appear with names like Mellermann or as Schmitt , Frühhaupt or Leeb .
On February 25, 1939, while in exile in Denmark, Brecht stated that his piece of Galileo's life was technically a big step backwards for him , just as Ms. Carrar's rifles seemed all too opportunistic to him. you would have to completely rewrite the piece (...) Fatzer and The Bread Shop should be studied for this. These two fragments are of the highest standard technically.
When Brecht turned to Garbe fabric in the summer of 1951 - a piece design with the working title Büsching about the stove mason Hans Garbe, who had been recognized as an activist in East Berlin - he noted in an entry in the work journal of July 10: it would be the piece type the histories, that is, no basic idea would be assumed. The fatzervers (...)
In 1977 Heiner Müller looked through all of the available material in the Brecht archive, selected and assembled a version of the play for the 1978 performance at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. This text version is authorized by the Brecht heiress Barbara Schall in an agreement that grants the editor Heiner Müller 1.5% of the royalties. Müller had already been fascinated by the Fatzer texts in the 1950s when he was reading Brecht's Experiments Book 1 ; for him they were a century of work in terms of quality and density . Years later, Müller's interest increased when the different versions made it clear to him how Brecht here - through the figures of the anarchist Fatzer and the dogmatic Koch - thematizes the collision of Nietzsche's positions with those of Marx and Lenin , and how, as it were, in the self-destructive consequence the actions of the heroes have strong analogies to the RAF movement, to Baader and Meinhof . In order to recharge this thematic area of tension, Müller has a Nietzsche quote from: The happy science mounted in the Brecht text and placed in the mouth of the Fatzer figure for the seduction of Kaumann's wife. In 1985, Müller's play version was published as a stage manuscript by Henschel Verlag in East Berlin. The performance rights for the play are represented by Suhrkamp-Theaterverlag .
action
On the western front of the First World War, in autumn 1917, a tank found itself in a no-man's-land between the fronts. Three soldiers - Büsching, Kaumann, Koch - get out of the tank, fear the eerie silence and want to go back to their troops. Fatzer - a fourth soldier - persuades them to run away and make their way to Mülheim an der Ruhr . There - in Kaumann's apartment - she is supposed to hide his wife. While trying to get meat, Fatzer, with insolence and selfishness, triggers an argument with the butchers, which endangers the lives of the four deserters. Koch, Büsching and Kaumann bind Fatzer, wanting to bring him to his senses, Fatzer seduces Kaumann's wife, who loosens his chains and is taken away from him. After a back and forth as to whether Fatzer can still be trusted and a suicide attempt in which his comrades cut him off, Fatzer tries to lure her away from Mülheim. The three undecided want to get rid of the great risk that Fatzer means for them. But the deserters discovered in the meantime have already been surrounded by the military. Fatzer's last words are: from now on and for a long time / there will be no more winners / in our world but only those who have been defeated. Büsching: So shoot, Hardly! Hardly any shot, the room is destroyed by an explosion. For the final picture with the dead in the destroyed room, the Fatzerkommentar: Fatzer come. (See quote)
Bertolt Brecht's fable description within the text of the play: In Mülheim an der Ruhr, in the all morals / exposed period of the First World War, a story happened / Between four men that ended in complete ruin / All four, but in the midst of murder, oath break and / Depravity showed the bloody traces of some sort of new morality / disorder. And a room / Which was completely destroyed and inside / Four dead men and / One name!
Heiner Müller on the fable: Four people deserted from the First World War because they believe the revolution is coming soon, they hide in one person's apartment, wait for the revolution, and it won't come. Since there are no better, no expansive possibilities for their pent-up revolutionary needs, they radicalize one another and negate one another.
Performances (selection)
As early as the mid-1960s, Heiner Müller tried to initiate a first performance together with the French director Guy de Chambure Marquis de Pelletier (born February 3, 1931) and Alexander Stillmark in the Berliner Ensemble under the direction of Helene Weigel, such as the protocol written by Stillmark from a version discussion on March 25, 1967. The actor Ekkehard Schall found the piece too short of breath, there was nothing to play, it was all condensates. A production did not come about at the time.
The premiere of the Fatzer fragment took place in 1975/76 at Stanford University in Stanford , California; Director: Andrzej Wirth .
The German premiere saw the piece with an in-house selection of texts on March 11, 1976 under the title The Downfall of the Egoist Fatzer at the Schaubühne on Halleschen Ufer , West Berlin. Director: Frank-Patrick Steckel .
In 1977 there was a performance by The Shelter West Company at the Vandam Theater in New York , directed by W. Stuart Mc Dowell.
The Fatzer fragment in the text version by Heiner Müller had its German premiere on March 5, 1978 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg . Production: Manfred Karge / Matthias Langhoff .
The Müller version, translated into French by R. Rey, was performed under the title La chute de l'Egoiste Johann Fatzer at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers Paris in 1981. Directed by Bernard Sobel.
The TheaterAngelusNovus Vienna brought the Müller-version of the fragment in 1985, directed by JOSEF SZEILER out.
A version of the Heiner Müller version specially created for the Berliner Ensemble was the basis for the GDR premiere of the work on June 16, 1987 with Ekkehard Schall in the title role. Direction: Manfred Wekwerth and Joachim Tenschert .
Kölner Schauspiel , Schauspielhaus stage space: Fall of the egoist Fatzer , version by Heiner Müller, staging: Günter Krämer , premiere: September 15, 1990.
Deutsches Theater Berlin , Kammerspiele: Fall of the egoist Fatzer , staging: Tom Kühnel and Jürgen Kuttner , premiere: November 12, 2016.
radio play
Heiner Müller staged his version of the fragment from June to December 1987 for the radio of the GDR , where it was first broadcast on February 11, 1988 at 8 p.m. on the Berliner Rundfunk program with a length of 78,54. In order to ensure the unambiguous assignment of the acting characters, which is important for a radio play, Müller dispenses with the multiple names of the characters from the various Brecht versions, which were also included in the personnage in his stage version and limits the main roles on the radio to Fatzer , Büsching , Hardly and cook .
In order to avoid an overly perfect, too common radio play performance, Müller cast in addition to Johanna Schall (choral texts) and Jörg-Michael Koerbl (Fatzer) also the stage director Frank Castorf (Koch), members of the independent East Berlin theater group Zinnober such as Werner Hennrich (Büsching) , Ulrich Zieger (Kaumann), Iduna Hegen (Frau Kaumann) and the puppeteers Regina Menzel (the other), Knut Hirche (soldier) and Jochen Menzel (butcher) as well as the graphic artist and cabaret artist Wolfgang Krause Zwieback (another butcher). Heiner Müller himself spoke the subheadings , stage directions and the final monologue Fatzer komm . For the music, he selected pieces that the German band Einstürzende Neubauten had published on the long-playing records Kollaps and Drawings of the Patient OT .
In order to avoid conventional studio acoustics, the scenes of the radio play version were partly recorded in the open air and in the former shop used by the Zinnober group in Knaackstraße 45 on East Berlin's Kollwitz-Platz . Sound and technology were in the hands of Peter Kainz, Günter Wärk and Andreas Meinetsberger. Co-director: Wolfgang Rindfleisch and Matthias Thalheim
Quote
"(...)
2
the table is ready, carpenter.
allow us to take it away.
don't fiddle with it now
stop painting
do not speak of it good or bad:
as it is, let's take it.
we need him.
give him out.
you are done statesmanthe state is not ready.
allow us to change it
according to the conditions of our life.
allow us to be statesmen, statesman.
your name is under your laws.
forget the name
respect your laws, legislators.
please you, folder.
the state doesn't need you anymore
hand it out. "
Text output
- Fatzer, 3 in: "Attempts Heft 1". paperback, gray cardboard cover, printed sheets not cut open, 44 pages, Berlin, Kiepenheuer Verlag 1930
- Fall of the egoist Fatzer , version: Heiner Müller, paperback stage type script, 107 pages, Berlin, Henschelverlag 1985
- The downfall of the egoist Johann Fatzer , stage version by Heiner Müller, Berlin, paperback 122 pages, Suhrkamp Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3-518760-95-6
Individual evidence
- ^ Günter Glaeser: The Fatzer manuscript in Brecht's estate , original contribution to the program booklet for the performance of Fatzer at the Berliner Ensemble, editor: Werner Mittenzwei , June 1987
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht, Helene Weigel: Briefe 1923-1956 , edited by Erdmut Wizisla , Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2012, p. 45ff.
- ↑ Reiner Steinweg : The didactic piece. Brecht's theory of a political-aesthetic education , Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 1975
- ^ Werner Hecht : Brecht Chronicle 1898-1956 , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997
- ^ Jan-Christoph Hauschild : Heiner Müller or The Principle of Doubt , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2001
- ↑ from: First book: 4. The species-preserving : The strongest and most evil spirits have so far brought mankind forward the most ... until ... and again and again the ploughshare of evil has to come.
- ^ Heiner Müller: Keuner ± Fatzer , in: Brecht-Jahrbuch 1980, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981
- ↑ Peter Hacks / Günther Nickel (ed.): Peter Hacks writes to Mamama , Eulenspiegelverlag Berlin 2013, page 913: Chambure, Guy de - nephew of Baron Guy de Rothschild , lived from 1958 to 1969 in the GDR, inspired by Benno Besson , was a dramaturge and Assistant director at the Berliner Ensemble (...) In 1969 he went back to his native France.
- ^ Downfall of the egoist Fatzer , documentation of the performance, theater work in the GDR 15, Brecht Center of the GDR, paperback, 166 pages, Berlin 1987
- ^ Matthias Thalheim: Fatzer on the radio - encounters of rare nature , epubli Verlag, Berlin 2019, pp. 86-101