Vienna Brecht boycott
Brecht boycott is an anti-communist campaign in Austria against the author Bertolt Brecht . Between 1953 and 1963 no established Viennese theater performed his works. The initiators were the two journalists Hans Weigel and Friedrich Torberg as well as the Burgtheater director Ernst Haeussermann , the journalistic organ was the political-literary magazine FORVM .
Brecht's citizenship
Bertolt Brecht's plays were rarely performed in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s, there were also no "too tricky problems of conviction" ( Werner Mittenzwei ), and even immediately after the Second World War there were only occasional productions of his dramas, for example Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan with Paula Wessely and Albin Skoda in the Theater in der Josefstadt , directed by Rudolf Steinboeck . In 1948, under the direction of Leopold Lindtberg , Mother Courage and her children with Therese Giehse in the title role was performed at La Scala, and in 1952 Die Dreigroschenoper with Hans Putz and Inge Konradi at the Vienna Volkstheater .
A scandal ensued when Brecht, who was stateless after his German citizenship was withdrawn by the National Socialists in 1935, was a member of the board of directors of the Salzburg Festival on the recommendation of the composer Gottfried von Eine and whom he met through his friend, the set designer Caspar Neher in 1948 was granted Austrian citizenship on April 12, 1950 by the Salzburg state government . However, the Austrian public did not know about the award and, when it became known through an indiscretion in autumn 1951, reacted with a storm of protest, as Brecht had been living in East Berlin since 1948 and was considered a sympathizer of the GDR regime.
Inquiries in the Salzburg state parliament and in the Austrian national council had "the communist Brecht" on the subject. The leading theaters, above all the Vienna Burgtheater and the Theater in der Josefstadt , refused to play Brecht from then on. The two political parties ÖVP and SPÖ , who were involved in equal parts to the naturalization Brecht exhibited any responsibility, the Salzburger Nachrichten wrote "Whether one now but the Festival Committee of One or the Other clean would?" Gottfried von Einem was on Operation of Salzburg Governor Josef Klaus because of "infiltration of the festival" excluded from the festival directorate. At a board meeting of the Salzburg Festival on October 31, 1951, Josef Klaus von Eine insulted him as “a shame for Austria” and as a “liar” and demanded that he be dismissed immediately. Gottfried von Eine later recalled this meeting: “I said to Klaus that he should realize that Hitler was already dead and that his tone was absolutely impudent. Thereupon he jumped up as if stung by a tarantula, threw the chair over and shouted: 'Either you leave the room or I!' To which I replied: 'I am always happy to leave your presence.' "
The headlines in the press read: a. "Culture Bolshevik atom bomb dropped on Austria" ( Salzburger Nachrichten ) and "Who smuggled the Communist horse into German Rome?" (Editor-in-chief Viktor Reimann , Die Neue Front). In other newspapers there was talk of the “poet of the devil” , the “literary figment” and “the greatest cultural scandal of the Second Republic” . Brecht was now discredited in the official cultural scene in Austria, a collaboration with the Salzburg Festival failed, although Brecht had been considered by Gottfried von Eine for a “renewal of the festival” and had been planning a “counter- everyone ” for the festival since 1949 ( "Salzburg Dance of Death").
Torberg and Weigel
In the climate of the Cold War , a polemical press campaign developed against Brecht's work and person, which made it almost impossible for Viennese theaters to perform his plays, as they were viewed and disqualified as an important propaganda tool for the Eastern Bloc. Brecht's rejection of the uprising of June 17, 1953 in the GDR, whose violent suppression by Soviet troops he apparently approved, strengthened the front of his western opposition. In mid-1953, in a letter to Walter Ulbricht and Otto Grotewohl , Brecht declared his ties to the SED and sanctioned its measures (an attitude that he later relativized). The social-democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung wrote: "Here the poet Bert Brecht has finally died of the corpse-eating of the communist Brecht."
In 1954 Hans Weigel and Friedrich Torberg started a campaign against Brecht performances in Vienna. As early as 1946 Torberg had written: “Brecht, who has only been getting the bare shit for ten years now, but at least something was beforehand, and it was so unique that this uniqueness remains and can be credited to him to this day?” In the political -literarischen magazine FORVM (Their backers was then the CIA -Vorfeldorganisaton " Congrès pour la Liberté de la Culture ") presented Torberg the question "Should Brecht in Austria are played?" . Whereby he emphasized “I am not against Brecht. I am against the Brechtokocci. "
After a performance of Brecht's “ Mother Courage and Her Children ” at the Graz Opera House on May 30, 1958, the FORVM offered thirteen Brecht opponents a platform entitled “Should one play Brecht in the West?” . Hans Weigel demanded that the theaters “with a sense of integrity and dignity, with a feeling for political cleanliness, should forbid themselves to come into contact with the works of Bertolt Brecht” Friedrich Torberg, who described his FORVM as a “cultural-political warfare”, argued vehemently against a “softening “ The anti-communist front.
“ Bertolt Brecht, that cannot be shaken, was a supporter of the communist dictatorship. It was dedicated to her in the full, original sense of the word, he has his work and his person - which can no more be separated from one another than his work can be divided into an artistic and a political part - completely and deliberately in the service of communist cause and he did propaganda for this cause wherever he could "
The theater magazine “ Die Bühne ” joined in the anti-Brecht course by printing the refusals of theater directors Franz Stoss and Ernst Haeussermann to play Brecht.
In 1961, the year the Wall was built , Hans Weigel wrote (alluding to Ferdinand Raimund's planed song ): “People argue about whether one should play Brecht, the revilant of the West and lackey of Pankow because he is a poet, and remember not that the question was wrongly asked. Portable? Unsustainable? Unbearable!"
Günther Nenning, on the other hand, advocated a performance of Brecht's works in the FORVM, despite certain reservations, by ironically polemicizing: “We are fighting against communism, and it is about our - mental and physical - existence. We will not open the gates to the enemy, nowhere, not for any of them, and if he were the greatest playwright of the century ” and “ Let the communists be silent. They have no freedoms to demand from democracy, not even those of their bare political existence, which democracy nevertheless grants them out of principle and usefulness. "
The few voices that did not accept the boycott, such as Friedrich Heer , were denounced as “crypto communists”. In return, Heer called Hans Weigel a “little Mac Carthy ”, which earned him a conviction for libel.
The New Theater in the Scala
Only the New Theater in der Scala , an ensemble of returned emigrants and committed anti-fascists , many of them communists , which was in the Soviet occupation sector , dedicated itself to Brecht's plays. In 1953 Manfred Wekwerth himself staged Die Mutter with Helene Weigel , Ernst Busch and Otto Tausig under the artistic direction of Bertolt Brecht , a new production of the production by the Berliner Ensemble from January 1951. Shortly before the premiere, Theaterfreunde, the audience organization of La Scala, was still staging a Brecht evening at which the choir from Brown-Boveri , a Soviet-administered company, sang songs composed by Hanns Eisler . However, the “Scala” was boycotted by the press and became a main stage of the cultural Cold War in Austria. So there was not only a Brecht boycott, but also a “Scala” boycott in Vienna in the early 1950s. Performances taking place there were simply hushed up by the press. Torberg and Weigel accused the Scala of performing allegedly “communist tendencies”. The actors were dubbed “Communist agents” by Hans Weigel, with which he incurred a conviction. Torberg and Weigel publicly agitated against Scala and especially against Karl Paryla , against whom they were even able to obtain a professional ban at the Salzburg Festival, where Paryla was cast in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Jedermann by director Ernst Lothar in 1952 with the role of the devil, whereupon Paryla denied Salzburg Festival Fund sued.
When the Communist Party stopped providing financial support after the occupation forces withdrew , the theater had to close in 1956. Karl Paryla played the title role in Brecht's Life of Galileo in the last Brecht performance at La Scala in 1956 . Paryla, his wife Hortense Raky , the Scala director Wolfgang Heinz and the actress Erika Pelikowsky then found a new artistic home at Brecht's own theater in Berlin, the “ Berliner Ensemble ”, as there were no more engagements for them in Austria.
Blockade breaker premiere
In the 1962/63 season, the Vienna Volkstheater, under the direction of Leon Epp with Mother Courage and her children under the direction of Gustav Manker , dared to do a play by Bertolt Brecht again for the first time , although the theater was even offered money for the cancellation. The production had previously been postponed several times, initially due to the illness of actress Dorothea Neff and most recently because of the construction of the Berlin Wall . The performance represented a great risk, the press spoke of a "Blockadebrecher" premiere on February 23, 1963 (with Dorothea Neff, who was awarded the Kainz Medal for her performance , in the title role, Fritz Muliar as a cook, Ulrich Wildgruber as Schweizererkas, Ernst Meister as field preacher, Hilde Sochor as Yvette, Kurt Sowinetz as Werber and Paola Löw , who later became Friedrich Torberg's partner, as the silent Kathrin). Subsequently, Manker also staged The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1964), The Holy Johanna der Schlachthöfe (1965) and The Good Man of Sezuan (1968) at the Volkstheater , thereby initiating a rethinking of Brecht's plays on Austrian stages.
Already The Caucasian Chalk Circle (with Hilde Sochor as Grusha, Fritz Muliar as a village judge azdak and Kurt Sowinetz as shauwa) earned in 1964 "unanimous, almost demonstrative applause for Vienna's bravest theater" ( Ernst Lothar on 27 April 1964 in the " Express "). The “ Salzburger Nachrichten ” wrote: “If Brecht's exile was interrupted for the first time with 'Mother Courage', it now seems to have been lifted with the 'Chalk Circle'” and “ Die Bühne ” called the performance a “theater event” . The “ Wiener Montag ”, however, still saw the play as “a pure Marxist teaching demonstration” and wrote: “After three hours of 'pleasure' you left the theater ice cold to your fingertips and disgusted by such political rallies on the stage.”
Other stages
There was an occasional softening of the Brecht boycott through stages outside Vienna such as the Graz Opera House (May 30, 1958, Mother Courage and her children ). In 1960 Fritz Klingenbeck dared to perform Brecht's The Good Man of Sezuan at the Salzburg State Theater . In 1963, the Linz State Theater played Mother Courage and her children under the direction of Harald Benesch . Finally, in the spring of 1964, The Caucasian Chalk Circle was also performed in Linz and Klagenfurt.
On December 14, 1958, a song and recitation evening with Ernst Busch , Gisela May and Wolfgang Langhoff and Wolfgang Heinz took place in Vienna as part of a guest performance by the Deutsches Theater Berlin in the Wiener Konzerthaus , on whose program the Brecht matinee entitled “Songs . Poems. Stories ”, which was performed for the first time on February 10, 1957 in Berlin. The majority of the Viennese press kept silent about the concert. In the Volksstimme , the central organ of the KPÖ , Edmund Theodor Kauer took the Brecht evening as an opportunity to criticize the ongoing Brecht boycott: “In Vienna, the stages, the halls and the streets of Brecht are silent. The cuddlers of the 'free world' - Bert Brecht slams them away. "
In 1966 Brecht was first performed at the Vienna Burgtheater , Life of Galilei , directed by Kurt Meisel with Curd Jürgens in the title role.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, too, a Brecht boycott was propagated here and there in 1953 and after the building of the Wall in 1961, but this did not prevail. The Munich critic Joachim Kaiser called the Austrian “Brecht boycott” a “remarkable journalistic triumph”.
In 1973 Alfred Kolleritsch and Klaus Hoffer named “Brecht-preventers” and “CIA protégés” in the magazine manuskripte in the course of the spin-off of the Forum Stadtpark from the Austrian PEN Club Friedrich Torberg , which resulted in a court case.
literature
- Kurt Palm : From boycott to recognition. Brecht and Austria. Löcker, Vienna / Munich 1983, ISBN 3-85409-064-1 .
- Joachim Kaiser : Hot war against cool dramas. On Torberg's anti-Brecht theses . In: The Month 14 (1961)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Brecht boycott. Frowned upon as a communist , oe1.orf.at, August 16, 2006
- ↑ Marcel Atze , Marcus G. Patka (Ed.): The "Dangers of Versatility". Friedrich Torberg 1908–1979. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Jewish Museum Vienna . Vienna: Holzhausen 2008. ISBN 978-3-85493-156-0
- ^ Corruption Festival: Gottfried von Eine, Bert Brecht, Jean Ziegler, ... , Rätischer Bote, July 27, 2011
- ↑ a b Kurt Palm : The noble marten in the chicken coop , May 1998
- ^ Profile , August 1, 2011
- ↑ Thomas Eickhoff: Political Dimensions of a Composers' Biography in the 20th Century - Gottfried von Eine , Supplements to the Archives of Musicology, Volume XLIII, 1998
- ↑ Stephan Baier: Arguable and controversial . ( 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.
- ^ David Axmann: Friedrich Torberg - The biography . Langen Müller, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7844-3138-3
- ↑ Brecht should still be played. Answers to a FORVM survey . In: FORVM. Austrian monthly for cultural freedom , 5th year, issue 57, 1958
- ^ Friedrich Torberg : Three kinds of theater . In: FORVM , 5th year, issue 55/56, July / August 1958
- ^ Günther Mahal: Authorial theater - the stage as a pulpit . Gunther Narr, Tübingen 1982, ISBN 3-87808-575-3
- ^ Günther Nenning : Why Brecht should be played in the West. For the performance of “Mother Courage” in the Graz playhouse . In: FORVM , 5th year, issue 54, 1958
- ↑ a b Manfred Scheuch: With full pants , Der Standard , August 11, 2006
- ^ Manfred Mugrauer: Ernst Busch in Vienna . (PDF; 637 kB)
- ↑ quoted from: Michael Hansel: … to create a lack of drool . In: Marcel Atze, Marcus G. Patka (Ed.): The dangers of 'versatility'. Friedrich Torberg 1908–1979 . Jewish Museum Vienna, Holzhausen 2008, p. 121
- ↑ 100 years of Volkstheater . Theatre. Time. Story . Youth and People, Vienna / Munich 1989, ISBN 3-224-10713-8
- Jump into the castle . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1966 ( online ).
- ^ Paulus Manker : The theater man Gustav Manker . Search for clues . Amalthea, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85002-738-0
- ↑ Kurt Palm: From Boycott to Recognition . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1983, p. 154. ISBN 3-85409-049-8
- ^ Edmund Theodor Kauer: The Brecht Ensemble in Vienna . In: Volksstimme , December 16, 1958
- ↑ Joachim Kaiser : Hot war against cool dramas. On Torberg's anti-Brecht theses . In: The Month 14 (1961)
