Baal (Brecht)

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Data
Title: Baal
Original language: German
Author: Bertolt Brecht
Publishing year: 1922
Premiere: December 8, 1923
Place of premiere: Old theater in Leipzig
Place and time of the action: Beginning of the 20th century
people
  • Baal , poet
  • Ekart , composer, friend of Baal
  • Mech , publisher and wholesale merchant
  • Emilie , Mech's wife
  • Dr. Piller , critic
  • Johanna , Johannes friend
  • Luise , waitress
  • Johannes Schmidt , Baal disciple
  • The two sisters

Baal is a drama by Bertolt Brecht . The twenty-year-old wrote the first version in 1918, the second in 1919. This was followed by other versions. Brecht integrated a number of his early songs and poems into the piece, partly based on the poems of François Villon . It was premiered on December 8, 1923, after Brecht had been awarded the Kleist Prize , in the Leipzig Old Theater under the direction of Alwin Kronacher .

action

Baal is a young, talented poet and is reading a poem to his patron, the wholesale merchant Mech, at an evening party. Although he is met with enthusiasm and admiration, Baal shows no interest, behaves rowdy and is thrown out. Baal says: “What can I do if the wine you give me makes me drunk!” Mech's wife becomes Baal's lover, he treats her roughly, forcing her, for example, to kiss a coachman in a brandy tavern. He sleeps with Johanna, the much younger friend of his admirer Johannes; When he doesn’t care any more, she throws herself desperately into a stream.

Baal impregnates Sophie Dechant, whom he probably loved at first, but then quickly sees her as a burden and wants to "cede" to his friend Ekart. Baal: “What do I have to give you to take my wife?” In the spring he disappears with Ekart and the two cheatily roam the country. Eight years later, Baal Ekart is stabbed to death in an argument and eventually dies with woodcutters, to whom he had fled. The drama ends with a sentence by a woodcutter, who tells of Baal's last words: “I'm still listening to the rain”.

Epic structural elements

Baal was created long before Brecht's conception of the epic theater . However, individual elements in Baal already point in the direction of his later theater theory. The beginning and the end of the piece, for example, are kept open and thus set themselves apart from Aristotelian theory . With the sensuality and 'this-sidedness' of Baal, Brecht wanted to differentiate himself from the pathos of Expressionism .

Differentiation from Expressionism

Baal was created in 1918 from a position that opposed the expressionist drama Der Einsame. A human end by Hanns Johst . There a poet fails because of society because he is spiritually far ahead of it, and ends up in loneliness. Baal was supposed to represent the radical counterpart to Johstens drama figure Grabbe . Brecht shows a person who has dedicated himself to vitalism . A complete turn to nature results in a turning away from people, and this at the expense of society.

In doing so, Brecht dismantles the expressionist pathos that seeks to return people to their natural state by reducing vitalism to absurdity. The Expressionism can be understood as an inspiration point for the emergence of Baal. At the same time, Brecht uses expressionist stylistic devices.

Differentiation from the Aristotelian theory

Brecht calls for an anti-illusionist theater. Because the audience is prevented from thinking independently by the illusion. The goal was a piece with which the viewer cannot identify. In his diary he wrote: “I hope to have avoided a major mistake in other art in the Baal and the thicket: to carry away their efforts. [...] "

Baal and the theory of epic theater

The later theory of the epic theater did not emerge until 1930, after the first version of Baal was made. There was never a final version of the theory. However, many elements of epic theater already exist in Baal , such as the alienation effect .

An important element of this alienation are the interspersed songs and poems in Baal. The opening poem The Choral of the Great Baal is already part of this effect. More epic elements in Baal:

  • Incorporation of different genres,
  • Identity resolutions,
  • Stage directions and additional text,
  • Characters as narrators,
  • Contradictions in the plot,
  • Contradictions in the course of time,
  • Contradicting dialogues,
  • open entry,
  • open end.

Nevertheless, the debut drama Baal cannot yet be considered a play from the epic theater . For this purpose, the integration of the representation of social processes is missing. The history factor only appears in Baal in an abstract form. Although this speaks for a certain epization of the drama, the typical dialectic that is typical of all of Brecht's later works is missing . An epization takes place here in the form, but not in the content.

Reviews

In retrospect, the author criticized: Baal was anti-social,

"But in an anti-social society"

- Bertolt Brecht, 1953

As Brecht puts it, Baal is

"The self-inflating and Andreaus liver"

- Bertolt Brecht, 1938

literature

expenditure

  • Bertolt Brecht: Large commented on Berlin and Frankfurt editions. Volume 1. Pieces 1 Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 978-3-518-40001-2 (The new annotated edition).
  • Bertolt Brecht: Baal. The evil Baal the anti-social. Texts, variants and materials . Critically edited and commented by Dieter Schmidt. 11th edition, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-10248-0 (= Edition Suhrkamp , Volume 248).
  • Bertolt Brecht: Baal. Three versions (versions from 1918, 1919 and 1926). Critically edited and commented by Dieter Schmidt. 24th edition, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-10170-4 (= Edition Suhrkamp , volume 170).

Settings

Friedrich Cerha compiled the text for his opera Baal from the four versions of Bertolt Brecht , which was premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 1981 (director: Otto Schenk , conductor: Christoph von Dohnányi , Baal: Theo Adam , coproduction with the Vienna State Opera ).

Willem Breuker , composer: Baal, Brecht, Breuker. LP and CD. (Among others with: Han Bennink , Louis Andriessen , Maarten van Regteren Altena ).

David Bowie recorded five songs from Baal for a television production for the BBC , and the EP David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal was released in 1982.

Movie

Radio

  • 2018 Baal - in all roles: Thomas Thieme , editing: Julia von Sell, music: Arthur Thieme, director: Matthias Thalheim (MDR KULTUR), first broadcast: February 5, 2018

further reading

  • Borrmann, Dagmar: A fiery bastard. Baal in 1994 at the Leipzig Theater. In: Texts on literature. Edited by Alfred Klein, Roland Opitz and Klaus Petzold. Volume 5, Leipzig 1998
  • Damm, Benjamin: Baal and the epic theater. Grin 2011. ISBN 978-3-640-99243-0
  • Demčišák, Ján. 2012. Queer Reading from Brecht's early work. Marburg: Tectum Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8288-2995-4
  • Denkler, Horst : The Drama of Expressionism. in: Rothe, Wolfgang: Expressionism as literature. Collected Studies. Bern: Francke 1969
  • Hauptmann, Elisabeth (Ed.): Brecht: About Expressionism. In: Collected Works. Vol. 15. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1966
  • Kesting, Marianne : The Epic Theater. On the structure of modern drama. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1959
  • Mittenzwei, Werner: The Life of Bertolt Brecht or Dealing with the World Riddles. Construction publishing house Berlin and Weimar 1986
  • Rülicke-Weiler, Käthe: The dramaturgy of Brecht. Theater as a means of change. Berlin: Henschel 1966
  • Schmidt, Dieter: "Baal" and the young Brecht. A text-critical investigation into the development of the early work. Stuttgart: Metzler 1966
  • Schumacher, Ernst: Brecht. Theater and Society in the 20th Century. Berlin: Henschel 1981
  • Schürer, Ernst: Considerations on the imagery of Expressionism. In: Dialogue with Modernism: Fritz Wotruba and the Kamm Collection. Zug: Balmer 1998
  • Szondi, Peter: Theory of Modern Drama. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1956
  • Fast, Axel : "Virtual Revolutionaries" and "Depraved Gods". Brecht's “Baal” and the Adversary's Incarnation (doctorate), Bielefeld 1993, ISBN 978-3-925670-91-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. See Schmidt, Dieter: “Baal” and the young Brecht. A text-critical investigation into the development of the early work. Stuttgart: Metzler 1966; P. 28.
  2. ^ Brecht, Bertolt: Collected works in 20 volumes. Vol. 15, Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1967; P. 62.
  3. See Schumacher, Ernst: Brecht. Theater and Society in the 20th Century. Berlin: Henschel 1981; P. 143.
  4. Cf. Damm, Benjamin: Baal and the epic theater. GRIN 2011. ISBN 978-3-640-99243-0 .
  5. Bertolt Brecht: Baal. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 bde. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , Vol. 3, p. 97
  6. Bertolt Brecht: Baal. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 bde. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , Vol. 3, p. 97
  7. Excessively good - Baal in the radio play , Stefan Fischer in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of February 5, 2018, page 23