Elisabeth Hauptmann
Elisabeth Flora Charlotte Hauptmann (born June 20, 1897 in Peckelsheim , Warburg district , Westphalia province , † April 20, 1973 in East Berlin ) was a German writer , translator and employee of Bertolt Brecht . She also used the pseudonyms Dorothy Lane , Josefine Diestelhorst and Catherine Ux. She is among other things co-author of the Threepenny Opera and main author of Happy End (under the pseudonym Dorothy Lane). After Brecht's death, she published his works at Suhrkamp-Verlag and was dramaturge at the Berliner Ensemble . A collection of her texts was published in 1977 under the title Juliet without Romeo .
Elisabeth Hauptmann was initially tutored by her American-born mother Josefine and her two siblings at home, and in the process acquired good English skills very early on. In Droyanzig near Zeitz, she trained as a teacher from 1912 to 1918 and worked as a teacher in Linde in the Flatow district from 1918 to 1922 .
Encounter with Bertolt Brecht and work together
In 1922 Elisabeth Hauptmann came to Berlin , where she met Bertolt Brecht in 1924:
"Then I was dragged forward (...) and saw a very thin person who was walking back and forth, wearing a leather jacket, very friendly, and he then told a few stories."
Elisabeth Hauptmann attributed Brecht's interest in her and his phone call the next day to a misunderstanding: Since she had the flu, she was silent almost the entire time, whereupon Brecht perceived her as a good listener. She quickly became Brecht's contact person when he was working on his dramas, and together with him she developed elements of the fable, first for the play Mann ist Mann . Brecht valued her literary judgment and good language skills and brought her to work as his editor at Kiepenheuer Verlag . From 1925 to 1927 she worked from there to Brecht, prepared translations (including by Rudyard Kipling ) and collections of material, and worked on pieces by Brecht. He gave the manuscript by Mann ist Mann - like other manuscripts later - to Elisabeth Hauptmann with a humorous personal dedication under the heading “main manuscripts”. Among other things, it said: “At the end of 1925 I will give it to Hauptmann, who has worked with me for the whole year without pay.” That was later interpreted as if she had worked for Brecht without pay. Elisabeth Hauptmann commented: “That was jokingly formulated by Brecht! And that was interpreted as if I really had no real wages. I was really well paid. ”With short stories for magazines and translations, she also tried to develop a foothold as a freelance writer at the same time.
John Fuegi puts Elisabeth Hauptmann's share in Brecht's work very high and refers to the sifting through of the manuscripts, the author's better language skills in English sources and an interview he conducted on November 9, 1970 in East Berlin: “Once renounced she partly insisted on protecting the playwright Brecht and admitted in a Berlin interview in 1970 that her share in some of the didactic pieces was 80 percent. "
"Without their discovery of the English translations of Japanese plays and theoretical writings of Arthur Waley the entire genre of likely doctrines , as developed in the workshop Brecht, hardly exist. And without her discovery of the new London staging of John Gay 's beggar opera and her preparation of a German version of the piece - although Brecht could not really warm up to the project until the end - the most famous piece of all (and certainly the greatest box-office success) would be the Threepenny Opera , does not exist."
Sabine Kebir defends Brecht: Lion Feuchtwanger and Brecht had donated texts to each other, Arnolt Bronnen and José Rehfisch had used Brecht's thicket , Brecht had not only produced collective works with Hauptmann but also with Emil Burri and others. This “interweaving of different intellectual discourses” is “ intertextuality ”, “a train of time”. She attacks Fuegi, who from a puritanical point of view only wants to prove "Brecht's depravity in character".
Diaries
From January 1926 to the beginning of 1927, Elisabeth Hauptmann kept a diary that recorded both work data and personal feelings. Later she edited the notes twice, first by reducing the personal page, then in a further pass through additions and better formulations. This last version was later for the most part published in 1957 in the second Brecht special issue of the magazine Sinn und Form and in the Elisabeth Hauptmann collection : Juliet without Romeo . Sabine Kebir published the complete diary in 1997.
The diary contains a few drafts for plays and short stories, but also notes from conversations, short reports on encounters, theater rehearsals and events, but also personal information. In an entry dated March 10, 1926, it becomes clear what difficulties Brecht had at that time in completing a long project:
"I would get him to do a longer real job - not just essays, etc., short things, scraps, half-finished things."
She reports on Kipling's translations and Brecht's enthusiasm for the poems: “B. thinks that a volume of Kipling poems destroys the whole lyric. "According to Hauptmann's diary, new impulses for Brecht's work emerge in the context of the Jo-Fleischhacker project , which was supposed to depict the economic and social consequences of speculation in food and which has remained a fragment (Brecht's decision, to deal more intensively with monetary theory). Brecht recognized that a new theater concept was necessary in order to capture such complex discussions.
"In the course of these studies, Brecht developed his theory of 'epic drama'."
Dealing with Brecht's polygamy
When Brecht's relationship with Elisabeth Hauptmann began, he already had a child with Paula Banholzer , his first son Frank Banholzer. From 1922 to 1928 he was married to Marianne Zoff , an Austrian actress and opera singer and mother of Brecht's daughter Hanne Marianne, who was born on March 12, 1923 and later assumed the stage name Hanne Hiob . At the same time he had a relationship with Helene Weigel , whom he had met in 1923; their son Stefan was born in 1924. In 1929, after Brecht's divorce from Marianne Zoff, they married. In 1930 the daughter Barbara was born.
Sabine Kebir places Brecht's diverse relationships with women in the context of relationship experiments in the Berlin artist scene during the Weimar period. She interprets the tolerance of women for Brecht's complex love life as an expression of emancipation. In a matriarchal attitude, women would have maintained open relationships with men on the basis of financial and professional independence.
"In this conception, the man has something of an object of pleasure that one can afford, but which can also be sent away under certain circumstances."
The changed attitude of women is partly due to the consequences of the First World War. The shortage of men both opened up opportunities for success in professional life and blocked the hope of a civil marriage for many women. She points out that Helene Weigel knew about Brecht's relationship with Elisabeth Hauptmann and accepted it. She even made her studio apartment available to the two of them from February 1925, so she moved. Elisabeth Hauptmann had completed the re-registration for the Weigel. "Mutual respect" determined the relationship between women. Sabine Kebir admits that Brecht lied to the women and played down the other relationship.
“When he married Helene Weigel in 1929, without warning the other brides, Elisabeth Hauptmann and the writer Marieluise Fleißer each reacted with a suicide attempt, and the beautiful actress Carola Neher popped the bouquet of flowers that was supposed to reconcile her around the faithless' ears. The man-woman relationship is, so Brecht lectured, a contract in which mostly the man 'can ask a tremendous amount and the woman has to admit a tremendous amount'. Because Helene Weigel knew how to accept such unequal circumstances, she remained the main woman for life despite severe crises. A new favorite, Margarete Steffin, who entered the scene in 1931, welcomed the Weigel to the Brecht-Fallen Club with the sentence: 'I'm sorry for you, my dear child.' "
According to Fuegi, Marieluise Fleißer found out about Brecht's marriage on April 10, 1929 in the newspaper and cut her wrists. Elisabeth Hauptmann also attempted suicide. Both women were found and saved in time. In this context, John Fuegi paints a diabolical picture of Brecht and sees marriage as a construct to secure the maternal support of the Weigel, while at the same time gaining their acceptance and even support for his affairs.
Fuegi's portrayal was heavily criticized in research and reviews: He gave the long-known meaning of Elisabeth Hauptmann's contributions as a new finding. Hellmuth Karasek writes that Fuegi's analysis suffers from inaccuracies and "a terrifying ignorance of theater practice, where plays are edited, translated, changed and adapted during rehearsals in collaboration with dramaturges, directors, assistants and actors."
The journalist, critic and dramaturge Urs Jenny , on the other hand, finds an interesting question in Fuegi:
“John Fuegi's real, far from all self-righteousness, serious topic is: To what extent did the Brecht women who work with us make the great Brecht women possible and give them substance? Whores and compliant virgins stood out in his early macho-anarchic works. A militant, self-confident girl figure like 'Saint Johanna of the Schlachthöfe' was never pre-formed - and the literary model for this Johanna, no doubt, was provided by Elisabeth Hauptmann with her own piece 'Happy End'. "
Jenny describes the importance of Elisabeth Hauptmann for Brecht's work: “As a fabric supplier, co-author and constant force in the fluctuating employee collective, as an organizer of all matters that he did not want to take care of out of reluctance (in Berlin as in American exile), after all , long after his death, in East Berlin as editor of the 'Gesammelte Werke' ”. Fuegi is "heretic", although Elisabeth Hauptmann's shares in many of Brecht's plays are actually in a terrifying disproportionate to her royalty shares. “Even in the birthday 'Werke' edition, for example, it says as if it were a bagatelle, in the small print comments on the play 'Der Jasager', Brecht had a manuscript by Elisabeth Hauptmann for 'about 90 percent verbatim, with exceptions' accepted."
Successful collaboration - The Threepenny Opera
Brecht's working relationship with Elisabeth Hauptmann did not seem to have been disturbed by the love disasters. Sabine Kebir also attributes this to the fact that Elisabeth Hauptmann and Brecht shared common political views. In 1929 she joined the KPD. She began with the series "Attempts" to edit Brecht's works. She planned to publish the collected works at Malik-Verlag. She now also worked on Brecht's short prose. Under the pseudonym Kathrin Ux, Elisabeth Hauptmann published the story Juliet without Romeo , a polemic on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , in which a romantic love fails in America, which is ruled by money and calculation. She published a number of stories in magazines on the subject of social impoverishment and how women deal with it. She described the fate of women who took refuge in prostitution.
In 1927, Elisabeth Hauptmann's commitment to Kiepenheuer ended and she was financed by translations and magazine articles. Your story Bessie so and so. A story of the Salvation Army , published in 1928 in the Berlin magazine UHU , takes up the theme of the Salvation Army . The text contains essential motifs for Brecht's later play Die Heiligen Johanna der Schlachthöfe .
Elisabeth Hauptmann and Bertolt Brecht achieved their breakthrough in 1928 with the Threepenny Opera . The theater historian Klaus Völker estimates Hauptmann's share of the text at 80%, with the linguistic style ultimately being influenced by Brecht. According to Brecht's daughter Barbara Brecht-Schall , Helene Weigel originally discovered the threepenny fabric. Elisabeth Hauptmann aroused Brecht's interest in the original English text , John Gay's The Beggar's Opera from 1728, and translated the text and prepared it for Brecht. She states that she worked on the piece with Brecht for six months, from the winter of 1927 to the summer of 1928. In an interview, she emphasized the importance of the songs that she developed on the piano together with Brecht on the guitar.
“With songs, with pronounced lyrics for pieces, for example, we often did that together, even in the twenties. (…) He came very soon after that I could play the piano. It wasn't that far. (...) And now Brecht benefited enormously. (…) An incredible number of lyrics were made, in the mornings, with melodies. "
Many of the songs were written independently of the pieces and later used, sometimes several times, such as the Salomon song in the Threepenny Opera and in Mother Courage and Her Children . In 1972 Elisabeth Hauptmann told how new the idea of the Threepenny Opera was at the time and that some actors felt it was unreasonable to step out of the role and sing from the ramp. Even at the premiere on August 31, 1928, the audience would have reacted irritably to the epic elements such as the renovation on the open stage. The breakthrough was the cannon song and the rave reviews the next day. Elisabeth Hauptmann received 12.5% of the royalties for the Threepenny Opera and 15% of the royalties for foreign performances.
In 1928/29 the follow- up project Rise and Fall of Mahagonny was born . Elisabeth Hauptmann stated in 1972 that the Alabama song came from her.
happy end
Due to the commercial success of the Threepenny Opera , the two planned that Elisabeth Hauptmann should write her own piece under the title Happy End , a "massary business", as Brecht called the commercial direction of the project, alluding to the revue star Fritzi Massary . Elisabeth Hauptmann provided the lyrics, Brecht and Weill wrote the songs. The author's contract with the theater publisher Felix Bloch Erben was rewarded directly with a check for 5,000 marks. The piece should appear under the pseudonym "Dorothy Lane". Brecht and Weill only reserved the right to use the songs in other contexts. Fuegi assumes that Brecht systematically "sabotaged" the performance in order to be able to further exploit Elisabeth Hauptmann's dependence.
The American Brecht translator Eric Bentley comments on Fuegi's allegations in the case of Happy End and generally on the thesis that Elisabeth Hauptmann's share in Brecht's work was systematically suppressed and that she herself was cheated of the financial fruits. Bentley sees Happy End as a second-rate version of the Brecht style. He does not believe that Elisabeth Hauptmann's real part in Brecht's oeuvre can be reconstructed and makes fun of the hypnotic influence of Brecht on Elisabeth Hauptmann, which is assumed by Fuegi. He sees little evidence of Elisabeth Hauptmann's literary influence on Brecht, but, conversely, in Happy End, the style of a Brecht epigone .
The central motifs of the play Happy End are the Salvation Army, the big city and its destruction, and the gangs who pursue their dark plans behind a bourgeois facade with extreme brutality. The core theme is the connection between religion and business. In the end, the former gangsters run their businesses under the serious camouflage of the Salvation Army. "The gangster who has recognized that robbery is much more productive in a bourgeois way becomes a citizen himself and uses the Salvation Army as an ideological cloak." At the beginning of the rehearsal, the third act was probably not yet completed, some reports speak of it chaotic conditions and a failed performance. Jan Knopf rejects this, citing Elisabeth Hauptmann's positive memories and a report in the Rote Fahne from September 4, 1929. The premiere in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm became a scandal and had negative press. The play was soon canceled.
No theater and didactic plays
Elisabeth Hauptmann remembers that she developed an interest in traditional Japanese Nō pieces ( 能 ) in 1928 or 1929 . No is a form of theater from the 14th century and in the Edo period only samurai were allowed to play or visit No theaters. Elisabeth Hauptmann explained that because of her limited theater experience, she liked the simplicity of the fable. For Brecht, the Nō was particularly interesting because of its extreme stylization. As in epic theater, the Japanese performer works with carefully considered, simple gestures. The No-Theater does without realistic, realistic representation, there are artistic elements, music and dance interludes. The choir takes on narrative tasks and connects the parts of the plot. The intelligibility of the word and the action takes precedence over the music.
Elisabeth Hauptmann translated Arthur Waley's work The No-Plays of Japan , which an acquaintance had brought her from London. At first Kurt Weill and later Bertolt Brecht showed interest. From the translation of Taniko or The Throwing into the Valley , the didactic play The Yes Man . Although the piece consists largely of Elisabeth Hauptmann's translation, she was not mentioned as a co-author at the time. In a 1972 interview, Hauptmann stated that Brecht's main contributions were the idea of the boy's consent to his execution and the changed ending. Elisabeth Hauptmann attributes the non-nomination to the time pressure before the Berliner Festwochen. For the publication in the experiments she forgot to give her name herself.
Saint Joan of the slaughterhouses
Saint Joan of the slaughterhouses was created in close collaboration between Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Emil Burri. Jan Knopf speaks of the “product of a well-coordinated work collective” that often met in Brecht's apartment. Brecht's work consisted essentially of “editing and expanding texts”. Advice would Hermann Borchardt , Walter Benjamin and Bernhard Reich participated. The publication in the “Trials” names Borchardt, Burri and Hauptmann as “employees” and also contains a clear reference to the special importance of Hauptmann's preparatory work: “The piece emerged from the play 'Happy End' by Elisabeth Hauptmann.” Up to After her death, Elisabeth Hauptmann lived next door to the famous Brecht interpreter and actress Gisela May.
The play tells the story of the Salvation Army soldier Johanna Dark, who wants to bring the faith in God closer to the workers in the slaughterhouses in Chicago who have been locked out due to stock market speculation . The drama 1929/1930 | 30 came about during the Great Depression . The action takes place in the Union Stock Yards , the slaughterhouses of Chicago.
The source was initially the extensive literature on Joan of Arc and the Salvation Army. George Bernard Shaw's drama Major Barbara (1905) already showed the disappointments of a member of the Salvation Army. In his play Die heilige Johanna (1923) Shaw took a critical look at Schiller's idealized Johanna figure and the historical sources.
One of the themes of the play is the role of religious organizations in the crisis. One source on this topic was the book Figures by Paul Wiegler , which examined the financial conduct of the Salvation Army and contains a chapter on Joan of Arc . Since 1927, Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann had dealt intensively with the Salvation Army . They attended meetings and found out about the organizational structure and work. Salvation Army publications were additional sources. Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle provided information about the inhumane conditions in the slaughterhouses in Chicago . Brecht's research has identified a number of other American novels and texts as well as documents on the historical figure Joan of Arc as sources.
In addition, there was extensive preparatory work, all of which revolved around the attempt to credibly portray the complex processes of the capitalist economy in the crisis on the theater stage. Brecht's fragments of the drama Jae Fleischhacker in Chicago and The Bread Shop already contain essential Johanna motifs. Elisabeth Hauptmann's happy ending also played a major role . The piece was completed in 1930. Revisions followed in 1932 and 1937.
Years of exile
Arrest and escape to Paris
The last years of the Weimar Republic must have been turbulent, but apparently not really explored yet. Sabine Kebir reports on Hauptmann's own literary activities in the form of texts for magazines, radio reports from crime novels to documentation and translations. In addition, Elisabeth Hauptmann seems to have broken away from Brecht personally. There is evidence of a love affair with Burri, possibly even with a short marriage. From March 14, 1931 to March 8, 1932 she was married to the editor Friedrich Wilhelm Werner Kurt Hacke, whom she is said to have left because of a woman named Bianca Minotti (Margaret Mynatt, 1907–1977). Simultaneously with these personal adventures, the pressure from fascism increased. House searches were carried out and manuscripts and other material had to be secured. Elisabeth Hauptmann was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. She was able to obtain her release through friends and a lawyer. Elisabeth Hauptmann was finally able to escape from Nazi Germany through her sister who was married in the USA. In Paris , the first stop on their flight, there was a violent confrontation because Hauptmann had lost a suitcase with manuscripts. She writes to Walter Benjamin : “Br. claims that now that the papers are lost, he has no more what to talk about ”. She writes to Brecht:
“Let's break off this kind of relationship entirely, Brecht. You are apparently happy. I, too, believe me, with complete separation from you, I will find a great, natural and very affectionate relationship with a person, also in work, what I wish for! Our relationship was a bit sparse and tender and awkward, but it was the greatest working friendship that you will ever have and that I will ever have. "
In the USA
In early 1934, Elisabeth Hauptmann arrived at her sister's in St. Louis , Missouri . She had great difficulty gaining a foothold as a writer in the US and had a lot of reservations about the capitalist US. In August 1934, she took over a foster home with a mentally ill person, which in her unstable condition put her at risk. Desperate, she thought about going to Moscow, where Sergei Tretyakov and Wieland Herzfelde wanted to get her a job, but this plan also failed. George Grosz warned Hauptmann urgently against a trip to Moscow when he heard of the plans; And rightly so, considering that Tretyakov was arrested on July 16, 1937 and died in the gulag under unknown circumstances.
From the autumn of 1935 she worked briefly with Brecht again, this time in New York in the production of the mother based on Maxim Gorki's novel. Brecht had problems with American culture and language and thus got into conflict with the actors. In 1937, Hauptmann got involved in the German-Mexican aid to Spain, gave lectures and supported emigrants who were still trying to escape to the USA. She lectured and published articles in newspapers. In 1940 Elisabeth Hauptmann became an American citizen. She worked as a teacher in St. Louis until 1940.
Hauptmann moved to New York, where she met the former police chief of Magdeburg , Horst W. Baerensprung . Baerensprung, who had an adventurous journey through Chinese exile as an army advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and his secret service, also dealt with police issues in the USA. Elisabeth Hauptmann began to work on his biography. The two lived together. After Baerensprung left her in 1946 and returned to his wife in Germany, Elisabeth Hauptmann moved to Los Angeles, where she began a relationship with Paul Dessau . In 1948 the two married in Santa Monica . Sabine Kebir states that the archives contain no material about this marriage with Dessau. Elisabeth Hauptmann left the USA on October 9, 1948.
Years in the GDR
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In the ruined city of Berlin, Elisabeth Hauptmann had difficulties getting used to the general need and the confrontation with traces of the Nazi era, especially in the language. She found work at DEFA, where she worked as a dramaturge until 1950 . She initially lived with Wolfgang Langhoff , later in the remains of the Hotel Adlon. On March 22, 1949, she found an apartment in Hohenschönhausen. Finally, her marriage to Dessau, which she left because of the young actress Antje Ruge , also failed . In the fall of 1950, Elisabeth Hauptmann made another suicide attempt. For the next several years she was plagued by depression. The official divorce from Paul Dessau took place on July 24th.
Nevertheless, during this time at DEFA, she began to work on the film project on Mother Courage . In 1949 she signed a contract with Suhrkamp to publish Brecht's works and joined the SED . 1950–1954 she worked again as a freelance writer and translator, repeatedly running into financial difficulties, while at the same time the commercial success of Brecht's works increased. Her friend Herb Tank's translation of the play Tanker Nebraska , which was performed in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1951, was a success . Finally, in 1954, Brecht found her a permanent position as a dramaturge at the Berliner Ensemble.
Elisabeth Hauptmann was again part of the Brecht collective and worked on various pieces, regularly with Benno Besson and Manfred Wekwerth . She now lived together with other Brecht employees at Friedrichstrasse 129a. In 1956 she went to Milan with Brecht and his daughter Hanne Hiob to perform the Threepenny Opera , which Giorgio Strehler had staged. On August 14, 1956, Brecht died of a concealed heart attack at the age of 58. Brecht's political course remained cautious until the end and was shaped by tactics towards the cultural bureaucrats of the GDR. Elisabeth Hauptmann continued this course until her death, withheld pornographic or politically provocative texts and behaved opportunistically towards the GDR nomenklatura.
Translations with a tendency
Elisabeth Hauptmann regularly worked with Eric Bentley on the translation of Brecht pieces into English, which was not without conflict. Bentley uses examples to show how, as he remembers, Hauptmann brought translations along the Communist party line or adapted them to local political circumstances. When translating the fear and misery of the Third Reich , Hauptmann had made small changes to cover up the struggle between Social Democrats and Communists right up to the concentration camps, since the Communist Party had meanwhile proclaimed the policy of the Popular Front.
Sabine Kebir justified this change against Bentley: Elisabeth Hauptmann had shown through her relationship with the social democrat Baerensprung and through various political activities that she had actually opened up to a broader alliance structure. It is true that this reasoning weakens Bentley's accusation that he is Moscow-affiliated. Still, Bentley feared for his reputation as a translator. As a further example of politically motivated incorrect translations, Bentley cites the translation of the statement: “Stay true to your class!” Elisabeth Hauptmann had enforced that it should have read in English in the style of current politics: “Be true to the common people.” which means in German, for example: “Stay true to normal people.” Bentley states that Brecht, when asked about such problems, always took Hauptmann's side. But the wrong translations really haunted him:
"And the line remains to haunt me because some years later when I went down to the East Village to see a performance of the play, a shrill voice in the theater lobby reached my ears:" Bentley obviously doesn't know German, he has translated the word that means "class" as "common people"! '
And the line haunted me. A few years later I was going to the East Village to see a performance of the play when a shrill voice in the theater foyer reached me: 'Bentley obviously doesn't speak German, he translated the German word' Klasse 'as' common people '.' "
Bentley tried to show that Elisabeth Hauptmann was willing to manipulate facts for political reasons. She would have asked him to research eyewitness reports that apparently formed the basis of the scenes of fear and misery of the Third Reich .
"Had I done so, the play would have become 100 percent authentic, historical, truly a living Newspaper. Each scene was to be headed by a relevant eyewitnes account or legal document (...) "
It is difficult to judge whether the allegation of intent to falsify applies here. Bentley didn't seem to know that the piece was originally based on collections of everyday events in fascist Germany that Margarete Steffin and Brecht had begun in 1934. During Bentley's last visit to Brecht in June 1956, his reservations about Elisabeth Hauptmann were again expressed. During a private conversation with Brecht in his apartment on Chausseestrasse, he wanted to talk to Brecht about political issues, about Stalin's departure from the XX. Party congress of the CPSU and Brecht's texts critical of the system. During the conversation, Elisabeth Hauptmann kept walking in and out for no real reason. Bentley compares her to a prison guard who makes sure that Brecht could hand something over to him. Bentley had heard the rumor that Brecht had written subversive texts and dreamed that Brecht could hand them over to him, like old Galileo his writings to the former student. It remained with the imagination, until the publication of Brecht's anti-Stalinist poems was not until 1982.
Editorial activities after Brecht's death
After Brecht's death, Elisabeth Hauptmann became party secretary at the Berliner Ensemble. She started organizing archive material. Helene Weigel was able to successfully contest Brecht's last will, which, in addition to the family, also included his closest employees in the royalties, because some of it was only typewritten. After Brecht's death, Helene Weigel ran “the legacy as a private enterprise,” a phrase that Sabine Kebir seemed to welcome because the only alternative that seemed likely to her was nationalization by the GDR. But Helene Weigel and Elisabeth Hauptmann, who now determined access to the archival material, also operated extremely restrictively. They prohibited or limited publications with unpublished material “in order to avoid later legal conflicts”, as Sabine Kebir legitimizes the procedure.
“Weigel and the captain must be credited with the particular difficulties that the abundance of material brought with it. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that a right was exercised here, but because of the great public interest in East and West, its use was an exercise of extraordinary power. "
When publishing Brecht's works, Elisabeth Hauptmann, like the Suhrkamp Verlag and the Aufbau-Verlag in the GDR, showed no interest in presenting the collective work on many works. Together they knitted the Bertolt Brecht myth. Sabine Kebir shows on the basis of archival material that particularly the part of Elisabeth Hauptmann and Margarete Steffin remained “underexposed”. From 1958 to 1963 Suhrkamp and Aufbau-Verlag pursued the goal of an all-German critical Brecht edition. Then they put back, first in the direction of a complete edition of the last hand, and finally to collected works. Nevertheless, the task of editing remained explosive: while in the East there was fear of an end to the edition, if too explosive material was to be published, in the West, in view of the building of the Wall and later the suppression of reforms in the CSSR, texts that were critical of the system were expected.
The explosiveness of the material became massively clear when the Buckower Elegies were published . The poem The Solution , which, after the June 17 uprising, depicts in bitter sarcasm a scene in which the “Secretary of the Writers' Union” distributed leaflets accusing the people of “having forfeited the government's trust” and “only through doubled work ”. The poem closes with the verses:
"Wouldn't it be
easier if the government
dissolved the people and
chose another?"
According to Sabine Kebir, Elisabeth Hauptmann advocated omitting the poem in the collected works in order not to endanger the GDR edition, while Helene Weigel saw the credibility of the Western edition endangered by such a step and advocated publication. The relevant volume of the collected works appeared in 1964 with the solution and five years later also in the GDR. De facto, Brecht's collected works could not be obtained in the GDR book trade, which Sabine Kebir attributes to the fact that the Aufbau publishing house had sold its edition on a large scale in the West in order to obtain foreign currency.
Similar disputes also arose around Brecht's erotic poems, which appeared as island ribbons under the title Liebesgedichte , omitting poems with a clear sexual content .
In 1961 Elisabeth Hauptmann received the Lessing Prize of the GDR . With the Brecht boom in the west, Hauptmann's financial situation finally turned for the better. She now had health problems more often, but always found the strength to stand up for others. In a will she noted that she never received a salary from Brecht and, for some pieces in which she had a major share, no authors' fees or royalties. Here she calls man is man , The Yes Man and The Mother , in the latter piece, the first scene in particular is essentially her. The Threepenny Opera is the first piece that she would have made a financial contribution to. Hauptmann's last will from 1972 bequeathed her library and valuable material such as Brecht's manuscripts, letters and photos as well as edition notes to the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. The royalties for the Threepenny Opera went to her friend Margaret Mynatt alias Bianca Minotti, her American family received the rights to Happy Ending , and she shared other shares among various comrades-in-arms.
Elisabeth Hauptmann died on April 20, 1973. Following the publication by John Fuegis, the heirs litigated again for higher shares, but could not sufficiently prove Elisabeth Hauptmann's participation in other works. Her grave is in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery .
Works
- 1971: Optimistic tragedy (TV) - collaboration on the script.
- Elisabeth Hauptmann reading book. Compiled and with an afterword by Walter Gödden with the assistance of Inge Krupp . Cologne 2004 [= Nylands Kleine Westfälische Bibliothek 6], ISBN 3-936235-06-6 .
- Elisabeth Hauptmann: Juliet without Romeo. Stories. Pieces. Essays. Memories. 252 pages, Aufbau-Verlag, 1st edition 1977.
media
- “Seriously, that's how it was!” Elisabeth Hauptmann - writer, collaborator and lover of Brecht. An original feature. Münster 2004, audio testimonials on Westphalian literature 4, 2 CDs, ISBN 3-923432-35-6 .
literature
- Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht. Evanston, Ill. (Northwestern University Press) 2008, p. 429, ISBN 978-0-8101-2393-9 .
- John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. biography. Authorized extended and corrected German version by Sebastian Wohlfeil, ISBN 3-434-50067-7 .
- Paula Hanssen: Elisabeth Hauptmann: Brecht's Silent Collaborator. New York (Peter Lang) 1995, 173 pages.
- Hiltrud Häntzschel : Brecht's women. 314 pages, Rowohlt Tb. 1/2003, ISBN 978-3-499-23534-4 .
- Sabine Kebir : I didn't ask for my share. Elisabeth Hauptmann's work with Bertolt Brecht. Berlin (Aufbau-Verlag) 1997, 292 pages, ISBN 3-7466-8058-1 (also documents Elisabeth Hauptmann's diaries from 1926).
- Astrid Horst, Klaus Völker: Prima inter pares. Elisabeth Hauptmann - Bertolt Brecht's employee. 95 pages, Königshausen & Neumann 1997, ISBN 978-3-88479-685-6
- Tobias Lachmann: 'And the whole thing ends happily / of course.' Gangsters, girls and financial affairs in Elisabeth Hauptmann's comedy 'Happy End'. In: Rüdiger Sareika (ed.): Grace does not save effort. On the rediscovery of Bertolt Brecht. Iserlohn 2005, pp. 135-170, ISBN 3-931845-92-3 . [1]
- Jan Knopf: Sex for text. Instructions for founding a company or How the American literary scholar John Fuegi once deciphered the sheets of the poet Bertolt Brecht. In: Concrete. Politics and Culture, Issue 10, October 1994, pp. 53–55.
- John Willett: Bacon without Shakespeare? - The problem of cooperation. In: Brecht-Jahrbuch 12, 1985.
- Sense and Form (2nd Brecht special issue). Contributions to the literature. Edited by Dt. Academy d. Arts. Berlin, Rütten & Loening 1957 (contains excerpts from Elisabeth Hauptmann's diaries).
- Short biography for: Hauptmann, Elisabeth . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
See also
Web links
- Literature by and about Elisabeth Hauptmann in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Elisabeth Hauptmann in the German Digital Library
- Elisabeth Hauptmann in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Elisabeth Hauptmann in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
- Elisabeth Hauptmann at filmportal.de
- Elisabeth Hauptmann. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
- Elisabeth Hauptmann archive in the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Fuegi writes the mother's name "Josephine" and states that the mother was born in Vienna in 1875 and was adopted by a cousin of her father in the USA when she was two and grew up in Brooklyn. Brecht & Co., pp. 203 ff.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 25 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 29.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 29.
- ^ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. p. 210.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 64 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 68.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 34 ff.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 44.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 74.
- ↑ Fuegi refers, among other things, to Marieluise Fleißer's story Avantgarde , which he interprets as a settlement with Brecht, while Fleißer states that he lets the young Brecht come to life again as he was: Marieluise Fleißer: Avantgarde. Written in Ingolstadt in 1962, originally under the title Das Trauma ; First printed in 1962; quoted from: Marieluise Fleißer: Gesammelte Werke. Third volume. Frankfurt am Main 2/1983, ISBN 3-518-04477-X , p. 117; Fleißer's opinion in the comments, p. 314 f.
- ^ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. p. 329 f.
- ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Done by Brecht? SPIEGEL editor Hellmuth Karasek on John Fuegi's book B.-B. In: Der Spiegel 38/1994, p. 211.
- ↑ Urs Jenny: Look, the monster has talent! In: Der Spiegel 1/1998, p. 154.
- ↑ Urs Jenny: Look, the monster has talent! In: Der Spiegel 1/1998, p. 155 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 96.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 102.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 107.
- ↑ GBA vol. 28, letters 1, p. 320
- ^ A b John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. p. 303.
- ↑ “ She wrote in the Brecht manner, and not surprisingly came up with second-string Brecht. ”Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht. P. 359.
- ↑ “ Given his capacity to be Svengali to any Trilby, couldn't he have told her what to write, perhaps even verbatim? ”Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht. P. 359
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht manual. Theater, Stuttgart (Metzler) 1986, unabridged special edition, ISBN 3-476-00587-9 , p. 86.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht manual. Theater, Stuttgart (Metzler) 1986, p. 84.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 149.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir : I did not ask for my share. P. 150 ff.
- ↑ a b Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch 1980, Theater, p. 107
- ↑ GBA vol. 3, page 128; also in: Experiments 13, Issue 5, 1932, p. 361.
- ↑ Major Barbara in the English language Wikipedia
- ^ Paul Wiegler: Figures. Leipzig 1916.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht manual. P. 106.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht manual. 1980, p. 105 f.
- ^ In: Bertolt Brecht: Large commented on Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 10.1, Pieces 10, pp. 271-318, based on various typescripts; see. Notes in Vol. 10.2, p. 1070.
- ^ In: Bertolt Brecht: Large commented on Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 10.1, Pieces 10, pp. 565-659.
- ^ Ana Kugli, Michael Opitz (ed.): Brecht Lexikon . Stuttgart and Weimar 2006, p. 83
- ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 158.
- ↑ Margaret Mynatt , accessed on July 5, 2018
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 166.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 169.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 182 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 183 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 187.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 194 f.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 208.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 208 ff.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 190 ff.
- ^ Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht. P. 385; Sabine Kebir translates: “Remain loyal to the common people.” In: Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 192
- ^ Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht. P. 385.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 279.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 211.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 212.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 213.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 215.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 216 ff.
- ^ Reference was a real event: Kurt Barthel ("Cuba"), secretary of the GDR Writers ' Union and member of the Central Committee of the SED, had asked the workers in New Germany on June 20, 1953 to do extra work so that they "would forget this disgrace" which, after some arguments, led to his dismissal as secretary. See GBA Vol. 12, p. 448.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 226 ff.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 228.
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 233.
- ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share. P. 237.
- ↑ List on the AdK page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Captain, Elisabeth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lane, Dorothy (pen name); Diestelhorst, Josefine (pseudonym); Ux, Catherine (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer and collaborator Bertolt Brechts |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 20, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Peckelsheim , Warburg District , Westphalia Province , Prussia |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 20, 1973 |
| Place of death | East Berlin |