Didactic play (theater)
Around 1930, Bertolt Brecht developed the avant-garde concept of the didactic plays in collaboration with the musicians Kurt Weill , Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler in order to break out of the classical theater and its institutions. Deliberately kept simple, the didactic pieces are aimed primarily at laypeople who should actively deal with the problems of the time by playing or participating in performances. As “school operas”, they pursued educational reform goals: Making music and playing together should combine community experiences and musical training.
In the context of the musical avant-garde movement, musicians and authors were looking for alternatives to traditional operas and concerts. The experimental form of the “didactic piece” was intended to remove the separation of musicians, singers and spectators. Laypeople should play the pieces, the audience should think along and judge in the style of epic theater , sing along with the parts of the choir or individual roles. The lay work was body-oriented: through the "gestures" and "posture" of the characters depicted, social conflicts should be made tangible. Learning processes should also trigger work on the teaching pieces for composers, the author and professional performers. The aim was to develop a simple and clear form, which nonetheless maintained a high level musically and in terms of content. Discussions with amateur actors and the audience played a role. Despite the clarity and rigor of the concept, creativity and improvisation of the actors were welcome.
Above all, Brecht and Weill developed ideas in theory and practice to open the way for the didactic pieces to the then new mass medium of radio. They wanted to make the pieces known on the radio in order to open up a mass audience. They also tried to repurpose the mass medium by activating the audience, for example by singing a part of the piece on broadcast at home or at least singing along with it. Most of the pieces were created in close collaboration with composers. Due to Brecht's further development of the texts after performances and reviews, some of the texts revised by Brecht no longer exist. Musical realizations therefore usually have to fall back on the first version.
Thematically, the pieces regularly deal with the contrast between the individual and the community, often depicted in the form of journeys on which the individual is confronted with the demands of a collective or the constraints of nature and society. These contradictions come to a head when asked whether the individual must be ready to sacrifice himself to the collective.
Brecht's didactic pieces
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Teaching pieces "in the narrower sense" by Bertolt Brecht
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title
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composition
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"Cooperation"
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Emergence
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" Lehrstück ", later: The Baden lesson on consent |
1929 1930 |
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The yes-man , In a second version: |
Elisabeth Hauptmann |
1930 |
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The measure |
Slatan Dudow |
1st version 1930 2nd version 1931 3rd version 1938 |
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The exception and the rule |
later versions: |
Elisabeth Hauptmann, |
Written around 1930–1931, First performance in 1938 in Kibbutz Givath Chajim |
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The Horatier and the Kuriatier |
Kurt Schwaen (1955) |
1935 First print in: "International Literature", Moscow March 1936, First performance on April 26, 1958 in Halle |
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More teaching pieces
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1st version under the title The flight of the Lindberghs , subtitle: "A radio lesson for boys and girls" 1949/50 slightly changed under a new title: Ocean flight |
Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith |
Elisabeth Hauptmann |
1929 1949/50 |
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Fatzer fragment |
smaller contributions by Elisabeth Hauptmann and Hermann Borchardt |
1926-1930 |
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The bad Baal the anti-social |
around 1930 |
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In 1956 Bertolt Brecht himself described five pieces as teaching pieces in the narrower sense of the word. The research counts three more pieces in this format. With didactic pieces in the narrower sense are meant pieces that serve the training of the players rather than the instruction of an audience:
“This designation only applies to pieces that are instructive for the performers. So you don't need an audience. "
In the short note from which this quotation comes, one of Brecht's last notes, it is also about the performance ban for the “measure”, which Brecht justifies conceptually rather than in terms of content: only the actor of the young comrade can do something from the “measure” learn and only if he has played through the other roles beforehand. In 1956, Brecht forbade the performance of his didactic play The Measure in front of the audience at the Kammerspiele in Uppsala on the following grounds: “Experience has shown that performances in front of an audience cause nothing but moral affects of a usually minor nature in the audience. I have therefore not released the piece for performances for a long time. "
The idea of the Lehrstück was strongly influenced by developments in musical life. Like Brecht, the composer Paul Hindemith also stated that the “purpose” of the teaching theater was “to involve all those present in the execution of the work”. Like Brecht, the avant-garde composers were also interested in the new medium of radio, which had broadcast in Germany since 1923 and which became a real mass medium in the late 1920s. Brecht staged Macbeth and Hamlet as well as his own play Mann is Mann for Shakespeare's radio . Musically, the teaching pieces could tie in with the idea of "community music". The German wave GmbH sent "chamber music in which an instrument was left out, so as to give the layman at home opportunity to intervene with his instrument." Werner center Two assumes that Brecht's idea of the theater by activation of the audience out of the crisis to lead, was initiated by these broadcasts:
"One can say with some certainty that this thought-provoking impulse triggered by the radio brought Brecht to the didactic piece."
Despite frequent criticism of the didactic pieces, they are also considered part of perhaps Brecht's most creative production phase. Brecht researcher Jan Knopf sees the teaching pieces as a “never again achieved technical standard” by Brecht. In collaboration with Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Hindemith, he created a “new musical-theatrical type of game”. The success of the new form of opera, the “Threepenny Opera” and the “Mahagonny” work was more commercial, but it was still rebellious against the emptiness of the traditional opera business. Through the epic form in combination of text and music, Brecht created a new genre, which, however, has itself become a commodity.
"The years 1928–1930, the time of the didactic plays and the operas, formed the climax in B's dramatic oeuvre."
Hans-Thies Lehmann argues similarly, claiming that Brecht's experimental didactic pieces “went far beyond the boundaries of epic theater”. Lehmann sees a fundamentally different character of teaching here, because it is not the audience that is the target of the didactic endeavor, but the performers themselves.
“Formally, the boldness of this concept consists in the paradox of a 'theater without spectators'. By adopting certain postures and gestures, a physical and scenic conflict is acted out and discussed for the purpose of self-teaching. "
Conception of the teaching pieces
etymology
According to Grimm's dictionary , a didactic piece is “a piece of a teaching”; “Piece, something smaller and self-contained than teaching: let God's example in this matter be a lesson for you. Schuppius 755 "Stephen Hinton points out that Brecht usually the term" used piece "and traditional generic terms such as tragedy or comedy avoided.
Hinton connects the concept of "doctrine" with theology . The religious instruction of the children is based back to Luther's Small Catechism of 1529 on "didactic pieces". Luther himself made a distinction between “main pieces”, which convey the principles of the Christian faith, and “question pieces”, which serve for confirmation lessons , and in 1531 he added the “didactic pieces” from the “office of keys” and “confession” between the 4th and 5th main parts. The aim of these "didactic pieces" was the didactic addition to the main pieces. In the 19th century Gustav Mey (1822–1877) used the term “Lehrstück” in his “Complete Catechesis for the Lowest Class of Catholic Elementary Schools”. The first text explicitly called “Lehrstück-Catechism” was Heinrich Stieglitz's “Larger Religious Book” from the year Been in 1916. Stieglitz didactic concept emphasized the interaction between teacher and student. “This, after all, is the precise theological meaning of the didactic pieces: an instructive unit linked to the catechism, presented in a language accessible to children, and based on inductive rather than deductive principles. "
In Brecht's work, the term first appears in the “Augsburger Sonnets” in “Lehrstück No. 2. Advice from an older Fohse to a younger one” from 1926. The instructions of an older prostitute to a younger one appear as “transmission of life experience”. As the next source of information, Klaus-Dieter Krabiel gives a survey on the future plans of writers and artists from the winter of 1928/29. Here Brecht outlines his intention to go beyond the song pieces to develop “a kind of teaching piece” that will turn the theater into a “chair for the general public”. He planned to “philosophize and reform from the stage” and found this project “extremely difficult”, as the drama should not lose “its vividness”. Then the term Lehrstück appears in the Fatzer fragment and other unfinished pieces. In the sense of a "type designation" and in a different sense than in the older sources, Brecht only uses the term "Lehrstück" in relation to the works created in the context of New Music 1929–1935, which literary studies still use this term today.
Lessons as anti-opera
Various authors point out the importance of music for the development of the concept of the Lehrstück. Dealing with the opera was a central theme for Brecht. Between 1926 and 1956 he developed about two dozen opera projects. Brecht saw Richard Wagner as his main opponent. Brecht's criticism of traditional opera was primarily directed against two aspects:
- the anesthetic effects due to the uninterrupted sound of music,
- the function of representation for the bourgeoisie and the reproduction of social hierarchies that grows from it.
On the other hand, there are also surprising parallels between Brecht and Wagner. Both were successful through operas at the age of 30, both were interested in Shakespeare and Antigone and both later fought for their own house. In a lecture in 1933, Thomas Mann referred to the epic character of Richard Wagner's operas . He interprets Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen as a scenic epic. Adorno , too , saw the conception of the ring as basic features of epic theater. The thematic relationship between didactic pieces and Wagner's opera work is also striking: both deal intensively with the sacrifice of an individual for a community. Friedrich Nietzsche sees the central motif in Wagner's work as the “struggle of the individual with everything that confronts them as an apparently indomitable necessity, with power, law, tradition, contract and the whole order of things. Individuals cannot live more beautifully than when they make themselves ready to die in the struggle for justice and love and make sacrifices. ”But this is exactly where the opposites become clear. The rejection of the individual and the stylization of death for liberation bears metaphysical and mythological features in Wagner, while Brecht interprets isolation as a product of the capitalist epoch, which can only be confronted collectively.
With the “Threepenny Opera” and the “Mahagonny” opera, Brecht tried to reform the opera from the inside with his own works. The didactic pieces show sharper alternatives to the main characteristics of the opera. A starting point for the conception of the didactic plays was Brecht's fundamental doubts about the bourgeois theater business with its passive audience, which he felt as frozen and outdated. Compared to the media of film and radio, he only saw a chance of survival for the theater if it broke new ground.
“Since the film with its technical possibilities is superior to the theater, but at the same time continues its old attitude of consumption, the chance and the future of the theater lies precisely in the abolition of the consumer point of view, in the activation of the viewer: but it remains without a chance if the reality of the viewer does not allow the possibility of his activation in reality; otherwise the theater is overwhelmed and remains what it is: a place for 'upscale' entertainment, subsidized because it cannot cope with the competition from cinema (and television). Brecht saw this at least as early as 1930. "
In the same vein, new music composers were also looking for ways to reach a wider audience. In an interview from 1930, Kurt Weill named the “movement of the workers' choirs” and, in the longer term, the sound film as a target group alongside schoolchildren.
Some of the suggestions made by Kurt Weill's teacher Ferruccio Busonis for reforming the opera are even considered by some authors to be a blueprint for epic theater in general. may have influenced the development of the teaching pieces. Busoni asked the composers to have the courage to break with the existing and to activate the audience and showed that “in order to receive a work of art, half the work on it must be done by the recipient himself”. Like Brecht later, he turned against the theater of illusions:
"Just as the artist, where he is supposed to stir, must not be stirred himself - if he should not lose control over his means at the given moment - the viewer, too, if he wants to taste the theatrical effect, must never see it for reality, should not the artistic enjoyment decline to human participation. The actor is 'playing' - he is not experiencing. The viewer remains incredulous and therefore unhindered in spiritual reception and gourmet taste. "
Brecht sought provocation and experiment with the didactic pieces, he wanted to open up completely new spaces for himself through the media and educational institutions. Composer Weill also had high hopes for the new format: On the one hand, the school opera was also supposed to force professional singers to “force simplicity and naturalness in singing 〈…〉”. The new Weill operas should also continue to serve as models for a new style of composition:
“An opera can initially be training for the composer or for a generation of composers. Especially at this time, when it is a matter of putting the genre 'opera' on a new basis and redefining the limits of this genre, it is an important task to create original forms of this genre. [...] In this sense one could also [...] describe the Threepenny Opera as a school opera. "
Brecht has explained his concept of the didactic piece in a series of brief remarks. Around 1930 he wrote a “Theory of Pedagogy” in which he developed the idea of “educating young people through drama”. The reasoning initially follows the famous 11th Marxian Feuerbach thesis:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways ; it is important to change it . "
Brecht relates Marx's criticism of pure theory without reference to practice to the strict separation between active performers ("active") and purely passive spectators ("viewers") in bourgeois theater. His proposal is based on the fact that young amateurs can combine theory and practice while actively acting, "becoming both active and observer". The assessment of the quality of the presentation should not be based on aesthetic criteria, but rather on the question of "whether the state will benefit from it". Whether a utopian state, the Soviet Union or even the Weimar Republic is meant here is not explained. The last part of the “Theory of Pedagogy” is directed against a demand made by “Socialist Realism” to inspire the audience for the construction of socialism by depicting positive heroes.
"The state can best improve people's anti-social instincts by forcing them, which come from fear and ignorance, into a form that is as perfect as possible and almost unattainable for the individual."
Here one of Brecht's core ideas becomes clear: He does not want to win people over by presenting positive action, but rather set them the task of learning from the mistakes of the stage characters, even and especially when they do not understand anything. Thanks to this concept, the didactic pieces always allow completely opposing interpretations. The audience has to answer the question whether the behavior presented in the lesson is to be assessed as positive or as wrong. The reviews of the individual didactic pieces were therefore always contradicting.
Voluntary sacrifice of the individual for the collective
In its original version, the yes-man presents the sacrifice of an individual for the community: on an expedition through the mountains, a boy becomes sick and cannot go any further. In this situation, the fellow travelers remind him of the tradition that a sick person is thrown into the valley by his fellow travelers and thus into death in order not to hinder the journey. The strange ritual that the potential victim is also asked for his “consent” to his execution, but according to the convention must always answer in the affirmative, drives the conflict between the individual and the community to extremes.
The reviews were full of contradictions. Walter Dirks interpreted the willingness to make sacrifices as a religious statement. Metaphysical and religious motifs are expressed in the opera. Frank Warschauer, on the other hand, saw the play in the Weltbühne as a defense of cadaver obedience and senseless authority.
To this day, it is controversial how the statement on the core issue of consent is to be interpreted. In the new Brecht handbook, Klaus-Dieter Krabiel advocates the thesis that the key message of the yes-man is the necessity of sacrifice for community.
“A social community can only exist in the long term if, in the event of a conflict, the individual members are prepared to make sacrifices to the whole, if the overall interest is given priority over the particular interests: This is a highly uncomfortable, also dangerous (since it can be misused), but hardly dismissible idea the basis of the teaching piece. "
The Berlin students who took part in the first performances rejected the imposition of agreeing to their own annihilation, which motivated Brecht to write a second version in which the naysayer successfully contradicts the judgment.
From the point of view of Sabine Kebir , the boy's senseless and brutal sacrifice, legitimized only by an old custom, “should lead to contradiction among fellow players and the audience and trigger the awareness 〈...〉 that old customs cannot simply be adopted, that it is useful can be to establish a new custom. ”Kebir describes this demand on the audience, who should understand something that the characters on stage cannot understand, as the“ courage effect ”.
In the note "The Great and the Small Pedagogy" (around 1930) describes two steps in the transformation of the theater. The Small Pedagogy is supposed to democratize the theater in the “transition period of the first revolution” and use the sector of traditional drama “for the purpose of weakening the bourgeois ideological positions”. The "great pedagogy" should then completely abolish the separation between actors and audience and make "imitative play a main component of pedagogy". In a professional performance, the professionals should also play like students, with one exception. If “typical behavior” of a person is to be shown, “acting” is required.
In 1937, in the context of the printing of the "Measure" in the "Collected Works", Brecht again took a position on the didactic piece. In the typescript “On the theory of the didactic play” he first explains the effect of active play on the amateur actors: He expects “that the player can be socially influenced by performing certain actions, adopting certain postures, playing certain speeches, etc.” New is Brecht's clear indication of the possibilities for improvisation: The strict form of the didactic pieces in particular should make it possible to insert “parts of one's own invention and current nature the easier”. He cites the performance of the Baden teaching piece as examples of possible variations. During the performance, the composer and the playwright intervened on the stage.
There are various theoretical approaches that attempt to explain the concept of voluntary self-surrender politically or psychologically. The cultural scientist Helmut Lethen sees in the Weimar period various "behavioral doctrines of the cold" across the political camps, which try to compensate for their tendency to "self-extinguish" by connecting to collectives that provide clear rules of conduct and goals. “A model case for Lethen is the unequal couple Ernst Jünger and Bertolt Brecht. In their writings, both sketch an 'uncanny world of absolute selflessness', as David Roberts notes: Jünger's workers and Brecht's crowd, learned choir and control choir do not specifically refer to workers. Their point of reference is rather a negative, bourgeois individual to be negated , because their fascination is with the 'selfless' type, the technician and specialist of the revolution, who sacrificed his individuality and humanity to the struggle for the new order and who is the focal point of the Can serve collectively. "
In fact, Brecht's communities to which the individual sacrifices themselves have a very different character in the didactic pieces. If the yes-man is still a small, almost private travel group, the collective in the “Baden teaching piece from consent” is already changing to an anonymous “crowd”. In the “measure”, it is the communist party that demands that a young comrade consent to his execution in the interests of the revolution.
- The first agitator:
“We have to shoot you and throw you into the lime pit so that the lime burns you. And we ask you: Do you agree? " - The young comrade: Yes. 〈…〉
- The young comrade invisible :
"In the interests of communism, I
agree with the advance of the proletarian masses
All countries
saying yes to revolutionizing the world"
Michael Grossheim interprets Brecht's radical demand for self-sacrifice and self-surrender beyond the political justification of Stalin's politics and moral condemnation as a “comprehensive objectification impulse” in Brecht's work.
“Brecht's message is unmistakable: exemplary and strong are those who are not attached to anything, the 'refrigeration technicians' and 'separation specialists' (Lethen), who cover their tracks, pass by strangers to their parents, who stay nowhere, who have their property and theirs Leaving equipment behind, nameless and intangible 〈…〉 If you want to allow yourself to be moved or inclined, you should think twice about it and usually refrain from it. Because he perceives subjectivity as weakness or luxury, sentimentality or embarrassment, in his work it becomes an apprenticeship or an object of irony and Brecht in the 20th century the poet who omits subjectivity par excellence. "
In the following he names aspects of "epic theater" that should be taken into account in the didactic plays. Alienation effects are just as important as the intellectual mastery of the piece and “a free, natural and personal appearance” of the actors.
For Brecht, educational theater is enjoyable, happy and combative learning, because "Theater remains theater, even if it is educational theater, and as far as it is good theater, it is amusing."
Reactions to the world premieres and radio broadcasts
Lindbergh
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Right from the start, the didactic pieces provoked attention and sometimes strong reactions, both positive and negative. The first lesson, “Lindbergh. A radio play for the festival week in Baden-Baden “, was designed from the beginning to be effective in the media. The first solo crossing of the Atlantic from New York to Paris by Charles Lindbergh on May 20, 1927 was a media event of the first order. Brecht's text counteracts the stylization of Lindbergh as the national hero of the USA by soberly depicting the details of the flight. Brecht was able to refer to Lindbergh's autobiographical description "We", which appeared in 1927, and to numerous newspaper reports.
On July 27, 1929, the piece was broadcast on the radio in a setting that demonstrated the possibilities and limits of music transmission on the radio of the time. At the same time, the piece was played over loudspeakers in several halls. The next day, Brecht put through a second, concert performance, which he converted to demonstrate his idea of audience participation. The stage was shared and simulated that the Lindbergh's singer was singing to the orchestra's music on the radio at home. Before and during the performance, Brecht explained his concept. He formulated the educational goal of involving numerous listeners, for example in schools, in the performances in order to educate them. The piece was recorded again immediately after the festival and broadcast by almost all German broadcasters. Contrary to the later lay orientation of the didactic pieces, the performers were professional musicians and broadcasters.
Theater scandal - "didactic play" or "the Baden didactic play on consent"
The Baden didactic piece of consent , first listed under the title "Lehrstück", is an alternative to the "Flight of the Lindberghs" and begins with the final section of the Lindbergh dramatization. Bertolt Brecht and the composer Paul Hindemith developed the work with the support of Elisabeth Hauptmann and Slatan Dudow . In contrast to the illustration of the first Atlantic crossing, the plane fails here with its three fitters. When he asks people for help, he is turned away and dies. The technical development that manifests itself in aviation is examined for its social consequences. The choir repeats several times: “It didn't make bread cheaper.” The triumphs of machines don't help the little people. "Poverty has increased ..." The need for help is interpreted as an expression of the violent, exploitative conditions.
“As long as there is violence, help can be refused.
If there is no more violence, no help is needed.
So you shouldn't ask for help, but abolish violence. "
The piece calls for willingness to die, for “consent” to dying, to the loss of property, and thus that everything is changed. The three fitters who crashed with the plane are supposed to “march” against “exploitation and ignorance”. The final roll call emphasizes the demands once again:
“ The learned choir :
Change the world, change yourselves!
Give up!
The leader of the trained choir :
March! "
The theatrical scandal caused by the premiere of the “Lehrstück” was one of the reasons that those responsible in the City of Baden-Baden no longer supported the Chamber Music Festival, so it took place in Berlin next year.
Theo Lingen , actor of the clown who is dismantled, describes the scandal:
“Clown Schmidt was dissatisfied with himself and everything and had constant psychological as well as physical pain, and his two companions, also clowns, advised him to simply cut off all the limbs that ached him. To do that, I was put on stilts. I had extended arms and hands, also a huge head, and could only see something through my chemisette , which was made of gauze. In the course of the piece, all of my limbs were skillfully amputated. I also had to inject the blood with a bellows that contained blood: that was really too much for the audience. And when they saw my head off because I complained of a headache, a scandal broke out that I have never seen again in the theater. Anything that wasn't nailed down flew onto the stage. My teammates fled the scene 〈...〉 "
Phase models
In striking agreement, western and eastern research devalued the phase of the didactic plays compared to the later "phase of the great plays" and the anarchic plays of the young Brecht. The criticism in the GDR accused Brecht of “mechanical” ideas of the “transition phase”: the individual was undialectically devalued in the didactic pieces “as a mere reflex of the external material conditions”, and the community was only grasped abstractly.
In the West, criticism of the didactic pieces arose from the treatment of the central topic: the relationship between the individual and the community. This contrast is dealt with there in different ways, but the fable of the plays regularly boils down to the fact that the individual must be ready to sacrifice himself for the community. Brecht describes the situation in his didactic play The Measure in the following words: “In order to prove to the court the necessity of this measure of shooting a comrade, they show [four communist agitators] how the young comrade behaved in the various political situations . ”This formulation could be interpreted to mean that Brecht was ready to put his epic theater at the service of the Stalinist terror, which justified the“ liquidation of vermin ”as“ necessary ”.
Apart from the fact that this terror around 1930 has not yet reached its full extent, it can be argued against this thesis that Brecht did not consider the escalation shown in the didactic plays to be inevitable: “The logic of fables is in all didactic plays with a dramatic one Coming to a head: A boy is killed and thrown into a ravine ( The Yes-Man ); a willing, loyal coolie shot by his master ( the exception and the rule ) or a young revolutionary shot by his comrades and thrown into a lime pit ( the measure ). As artificially constructed, the aggravations are shown to be avoidable from the outset. The tragic inevitability of classical tragedy is taken from them. This structure aims to trigger an investigation process among the players. Looking back, starting from the 'crisis', the social patterns and typical characters are looked for for the fault that was the cause of the fatal development, ”says Reiner Steinweg.
Reception through theater pedagogy
In 1972 Reiner Steinweg made it possible with his work: Das Lehrstück. Brecht's theory of a political-aesthetic education. , a new look at the teaching pieces. In numerous essays, didactic play weeks and circulars, he showed the educational theater possibilities that could be discovered in Brecht's theater model. Steinweg worked out that the title “Lehrstücke”, which sounded like instruction and political agitation, put Brecht's series of experiments in a completely wrong light. He discovered the possibilities offered to laypeople when performing a didactic play, the chance to experience “physical and inner emotional, rational, psychological attitudes”. Brecht's didactic pieces deal with death and violence, resistance and anti-sociality. There is criticism of the war, for example in the depiction of desertion in the Fatzer fragment, but there is also legitimate violence in connection with revolution and war, but above all - as in the Yesager - the opportunity for fellow players to have direct personal experiences To make violence and to reflect.
“Despite the literary text and spoken language, despite space and reflection, the body of the Lehrstück player is the focus, it is the central material for attitudes. In our society, however, the human body primarily exists - we all experience it every day - as a commodity, consumer article and object of pleasure and it is marked by discipline, instrumentalization and pressure to perform or by wear and tear, self-destruction and poverty. The body is, so to speak, in a constant state of emergency and the voyeuristic 'enjoyment' of the horror and cruelty of body destruction, be it in reality (accidents, acts of violence, war) or - particularly intensely in recent years - in the media and their brutalized forms of representation , is supposed to cover up the creeping destruction of the body, perceptible in our immediate surroundings or in ourselves, which also works. The staging of body destruction obstructs our view of real physicality. "
Steinweg discovered therapeutic possibilities in Brecht's didactic pieces. By taking on a role, the "sobriety and rigor with simultaneous aesthetic intensity" of the pieces and the reduction of the characters to certain postures, the performers could empathize intensively with an attitude, definitely in the sense of Aristotelian catharsis . By changing roles, epic interruptions and practice, the chance for reflection opens up:
“Nevertheless, in the didactic play, the player experiences body destruction and death so intensely, he perpetrates violence and suffers violence so concretely that the voyeur-like view of the violence in the media is unsettled; the threatening-alien is physically very close in the game, we even recognize it in ourselves. "
Reiner Steinweg developed theater-pedagogical perspectives for anti-aggression training from the teaching pieces, with possibilities that go far beyond moralizing criticism of violence.
Sigle
- GBA = Bertolt Brecht: Works. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition, edited by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, Klaus-Detlev Müller. 30 volumes and one index volume, 1998–2000
literature
- Robert Cohen : didactic piece . In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism , Vol. 8 / I. Edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug et al. Berlin: Argument 2012, pp. 886–903.
- Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. University of California Press, Berkeley 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-25482-4
- Werner Hecht (Hrsg.): Bertolt Brecht: Writings about theater . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1977.
- Jan Knopf : Brecht manual, theater. unabridged special edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-476-00587-9 .
- Jan Knopf: Brecht manual vol. 1 pieces. New edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01829-6 , pp. 242-253.
- Gerd Koch, Florian Vaßen: The long way of the Lehrstück game. In: Marcel M. Baumann, Hanne-Margret Birckenbach, Volkhard Brandes, Sandra Dieterich, Ulrich Gundermann, Ulrike Suhr (eds.): Friedensforschung und Friedenspraxis. Encouragement to work on utopia. Reiner Steinweg on his 70th birthday. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 2009, pp. 168–192. (Online version of the manuscript)
- Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : The didactic pieces . In: Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch vol. 1 pieces. New edition. P. 28ff.
- Hans-Thies Lehmann : Theater as a field of experimentation. Mejerchol'd, Brecht, Artaud. In: Funkkolleg literary modernity. Study Letter 5, Unit 14, 1993/94.
- Theo Lingen : About me. Interview of an actor with himself. Friedrich-Verlag, Velber 1963
- Werner Mittenzwei : The Trace of Brecht's Lehrstück theory . In: Werner Hecht: Brecht's theory of the theater . Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt / Main 1986, pp. 183-213.
- Werner Mittenzwei: The Life of Bertolt Brecht or Dealing with the World Riddles. Volume 1. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-7466-1340-X , p. 158 ff.
- Patrick Primavesi: Crossings. Brecht's didactic piece as a media and theater experiment. In: Henri Schoenmakers (Hrsg.), Stefan Bläske (Hrsg.), Kay Kirchmann (Hrsg.), Jens Ruchatz (Hrsg.): Theater und Medien / Theater and the Media: Basics - Analyzes - Perspektiven. An inventory. German English. Transcript-Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8376-1064-2 .
- Reiner Steinweg : The lesson. Brecht's theory of a political-aesthetic education . 2nd, improved edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 1976 (= Metzler, Stuttgart 1972).
- Reiner Steinweg: didactic play and epic theater: Brecht's theory and theater pedagogical practice . 2nd Edition. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt / Main 2005 (= Frankfurt / Main 1995).
- Kurt Weill: Music and Theater. Collected Writings. With a selection of conversations and interviews. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00114-9 .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : Der Yesager / Der Neinsager, p. 245
- ↑ cf. for example the conceptual remarks by Brecht in GBA vol. 21, p. 396ff.
- ↑ GBA Volume 3, pp. 25-46
- ↑ GBA Volume 3, pp. 47-55
- ↑ GBA Volume 3, pp. 73-125
- ↑ GBA Volume 4, pp. 279-303
- ↑ GBA Volume 3, pp. 7-24
- ↑ Renamed because of Lindbergh's sympathies for fascism; see. for example Hans-Thies Lehmann: Theater as a field of experimentation. Mejerchol'd, Brecht, Artaud. P. 18
- ↑ GBA Volume 10.1, pp. 387-529-125
- ^ Judith Wilke: Fatzer. In: Brecht Handbook. Vol. 1, p. 169
- ↑ GBA Volume 10.1, pp. 663-675
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Note on the didactic pieces . In: Bertolt Brecht: Collected works in 20 volumes. Volume 17: Writings on Theater 3 . Suhrkamp. 1967. pp. 1034f .; see also GBA Volume 23, p. 418
- ↑ cf. Brecht's statement in GBA Volume 23, p. 418
- ↑ GBA Volume 23, p. 418.
- ↑ cf. GBA Volume 23, p. 418
- ↑ quoted from Benedikt Descourvières: Recognize - Judge - Act. Beginnings of theater pedagogy in Bertolt Brecht's didactic play "The Measure"
- ↑ Quoted from: Hans-Thies Lehmann: Theater als Experimentierfeld., P. 17
- ↑ a b c Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht , Volume 1, p. 312
- ↑ Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht Handbook. Vol. 1, pieces, p. 2
- ↑ Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht Handbook. Vol. 1, pieces, p. 2
- ^ A b Hans-Thies Lehmann: Theater as an experimental field. Mejerchol'd, Brecht, Artaud. P. 17
- ↑ Grimm's dictionary online ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. continues: should my damages be your lesson. 756; Among Plato's ancient doctrines there was also this that nothing should be asked of the gods other than: to give what is most useful to man. Butschky Chancellor. 347; in a theological sense: one came up with that crucial lesson on justification. Tendril princes u. peoples 2, 188.
- ↑ Stephen Hinton: Lehrstück: An Aesthetics of Performance. In: Bryan Randolph Gilliam (Ed.): Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic. P. 59
- ↑ Stephen Hinton: Lehrstück, p. 61
- ↑ For the theological classification cf. for example: Albrecht Peters; Gottfried Seebass: Commentary on Luther's Catechisms, Göttingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 1990
- ↑ Stephen Hinton: Lehrstück, p. 62
- ↑ Stieglitz, Heinrich: Larger Religionsbüchlein. - With pictures by Augustin Pacher, Kempten, Munich (Kösel) 1916. IX, 142 S.: [Ill.], 8 half linen
- ↑ Stephen Hinton: Lehrstück, p. 63 "This, then, is the precise theological sense of Lehrstück: an instructional unit related to the catechism, presented in a language accessible to children, and based on inductive rather than deductive principles."
- ↑ GBA vol. 11, p. 123f.
- ^ A b Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : The teaching pieces. In: Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch , vol. 1, p. 28
- ↑ GBA vol. 21, p. 342f.
- ↑ GBA vol. 21, p. 343
- ↑ GBA 10, p. 1145
- ↑ cf. about Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : The teaching pieces. In: Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch vol. 1, p. 28; Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. P. 2 ff.
- ↑ cf. Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. P. 1.
- ↑ cf. Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. P. 4 and 16 ("the powerful narcotic of continuous music").
- ↑ Thomas Mann: Suffering and greatness of Richard Wagner. Lecture in the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Munich in February 1933, published in: Die Neue Rundschau, Berlin, Volume 44, Issue 4, 1933, quoted from: ders .: Suffering and greatness of the masters. Frankfurt am Main 1974, page 85.
- ↑ cf. Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. P. 3 f .; the author mentions a number of other biographical parallels between Brecht and Adorno.
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. Untimely reflections, fourth piece, in: Karl Schlechta (Ed.): Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke I, p. 384.
- ↑ cf. Joy Haslam Calico: Brecht at the Opera. P. 5.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht Handbook. Theater, Stuttgart (Metzler) 1986, p. 424
- ↑ Kurt Weill in an interview with Dr. Hans Fischer, The maintenance of music. Monthly magazine for music education, music organization and choral singing. Berlin, I (1930), No. 1, April 1930, pp. 48-53; quoted from: Kurt Weill: Musik und Theater. Collected Writings. With a selection of conversations and interviews. Berlin (Henschel Verlag) 1990, ISBN 3-362-00114-9 , p. 306.
- ^ Ferruccio Busoni: Draft of a new aesthetic of music. from: On the power of tones. In: Selected Writings. Pages 47–81, editor: Siegfried Bimberg, date of origin: Triest 1907 / Leipzig 1916, Insel-Verlag, Volume 202, 1916, quoted from: Wikisource.
- ↑ = " Blueprint for epic theater in general"; Vera Stegmann: Brecht contra Wagner: The Evolution of the Epic Music Theater. A Bertolt Brecht Reference Companion. Ed. Siegfried Mews. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997. p. 252.
- ^ Ferruccio Busoni: Draft of a new aesthetic of music. P. 60.
- ↑ a b Susanne Fischer Quinn: From the use of utility music. Athens 2009 (university publication), p. 41 ( PDF ; 372 kB).
- ↑ a b c d e f GBA vol. 21, p. 398.
- ↑ Karl Marx: Theses on Feuerbach. MEW 3, p. 7, 1845
- ↑ Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung of December 30, 1930
- ↑ cf. GBA, Vol. 3, p. 424
- ↑ Die Weltbühne Berlin 1930, No. 28; quoted from: GBA, Vol. 3, p. 424
- ↑ cf. Helmuth Kiesel: Thinking about life and death, p. 183
- ↑ Sabine Kebir: I did not ask for my share . P. 152
- ↑ a b c cf. GBA, Vol. 21, p. 396
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: About the performance of teaching pieces. GBA, Vol. 21, p. 396
- ↑ cf. GBA, Vol. 22.2, p. 1011
- ↑ a b cf. GBA, Vol. 22.1, p. 351
- ↑ cf. GBA, Vol. 22.1, p. 352
- ↑ Helmut Lethen: The behavior of the cold. Life attempts between the wars. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1994. ISBN 3518118846 , pp. 174ff.
- ↑ Michael Großheim : Political Existentialism. Subjectivity between alienation and engagement, Philosophical Investigations 9, Tübingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2002; Großheim quotes David Roberts here: Individual and collective. Jünger and Brecht on the outcome of the Weimar Republic. In: Orbis Litterarium 41, 1986, p. 164
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The measure. GBA
- ↑ Michael Großheim : Political Existentialism. P. 242
- ↑ cf. Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : The Lindberghflug / The flight of the Lindberghs / The ocean flight. P. 216; in: Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch Vol. 1 "Pieces", Stuttgart (Metzler) 2001 (new edition)
- ↑ cf. Klaus-Dieter Krabiel : The Lindberghflug, p. 220ff.
- ↑ Speaker: Paul Laven , who had already broadcast the real Lindbergh flight; Singer: Josef Witt (Stadttheater Dortmund); Johannes Willy (Frankfurt Opera); Oskar Kálmán Berlin Kroll Opera ; Betty Mergler (Frankfurt Opera House); Chamber choir. Hugo Holles Madrigal Association (Stuttgart) and the Frankfurter Rundfunkorchester;
- ↑ a b GBA vol. 3, p. 30
- ↑ GBA vol. 3, p. 38
- ↑ a b GBA vol. 3, p. 45
- ↑ GBA vol. 3, p. 46
- ^ Elizabeth Janik: Recomposing German Music: Politics and Musical Tradition in Cold War Berlin. Studies in Central European Histories, Brill Academic Pub 2005, Language: English, 372 pages, ISBN 978-90-04-14661-7 , p. 47
- ↑ cf. Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, Stuttgart (Metzler) 1986, p. 418
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The didactic piece "The measure" . In: Bertolt Brecht: Collected works in 20 volumes. Volume 17: Writings on Theater 3 . Suhrkamp. 1967. p. 1034
- ↑ Reiner Steinweg / Wolfgang Heidefuß / Peter Petsch: Because we are without weapons. A theater pedagogical research project on political education . Frankfurt / M. 1986, pp. 45f. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c cf. Gerd Koch; Florian Vaßen: The long way of the Lehrstück game.
