Collisions with Hegel in Bertolt Brecht's Early Materialism DISSERTATIO

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“Und das Geistige, das sehen Sie, das ist nichts.” Collisions with Hegel in Bertolt Brecht’s Early Materialism

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Jesse C. Wood, B.A., M.A.

Graduate Program in Germanic Languages and Literatures

The Ohio State University

2012

Committee Members: John Davidson, Advisor Bernd Fischer Bernhard Malkmus

Jesse C. Wood

2012

Abstract

Bertolt Brecht began an intense engagement with Marxism in 1928 that would permanently shape his own thought and creative production. Brecht himself maintained that important aspects resonating with Marxist theory had been central, if unwittingly so, to his earlier, pre-1928 works. A careful analysis of his early plays, poetry, prose, essays, and journal entries indeed reveals a unique form of materialism that entails essential components of the dialectical materialism he would later develop through his understanding of Marx; it also invites a similar retroactive application of other ideas that

Brecht would only encounter in later readings, namely those of the philosophy of Georg

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Initially a direct result of and component of his discovery of

Marx, Brecht’s study of Hegel would last throughout the rest of his career, and the influence of Hegel has been explicitly traced in a number Brecht’s post-1928 works.

While scholars have discovered proto-Marxist traces in his early work, the possibilities of the young Brecht’s affinities with the idealist philosopher have not been explored.

Although ultimately an opposition between the idealist Hegel and the young

Bürgerschreck Brecht is to be expected, one finds a surprising number of instances where the two men share an unlikely commonality of imagery. Sparked by that discovery, this dissertation locates important moments in the young playwright’s work where a reading through and against Hegelian concepts opens not only a better understanding of his early writing but of the materialism that undergirds his entire oeuvre.

Such moments become particularly apparent upon examination of the young

Brecht’s critique of language. I argue that his skepticism of language’s capacity to express material reality, and its corollary tendency to support false idealisms, leads him to develop a metaphorically “material” language that draws on bodily and natural imagery in order to produce a more directly visceral experience on the part of his audience or readers. In tracing the material language of the young Brecht’s work, this study focuses in particular on three of his early plays: Trommeln in der Nacht, Im

Dickicht der Städte, and Mann ist Mann. His early works address notions of language, history, selfhood, intersubjectivity, and identity in a way that places Brecht’s approach to these in surprisingly close proximity to Hegel’s thought, although Brecht’s materialism ultimately precludes the progress found in Hegel’s dialectical idealism. In tracing these overlooked connections between Hegel and Brecht, this dissertation gains new insights into the young Brecht’s unique materialism.

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This dissertation is dedicated to my mentor and friend James K. Lyon

Acknowledgements

It is my pleasure to acknowledge a number of individuals whose guidance and support have made this dissertation possible. First, I express gratitude to my advisor John

Davidson, whose patience, guidance, and detailed feedback has fundamentally helped shape this study into something better than I alone would have been able to produce. I would also like to express thanks to my committee members, Bernd Fischer and Bernhard

Malkmus, for their willingness to serve on this committee. This dissertation is better because of their helpful insight.

I am grateful to my wife Melissa and my daughter Charlotte for their love and support and especially for their patience as I have slowly completed this dissertation.

They have always provided a relief from the stress of work and they make it easy for me to remember what the most important parts of my life are. I am also indebted to my parents, Mike and Marilyn Wood, for their encouragement and generous support as I have pursued this degree.

I would like to thank my friends and colleagues at The Ohio State University, particularly Kristopher Fromm, Kristen Hetrick, Alex Holznienkemper, Jaclyn Kurash,

Jennifer Magro-Algarotti, and Kevin Richards, for their friendship, sympathy, and the many enjoyable discussions which have enriched me both academically and personally. I am also grateful to Natascha Miller and Brenda Hosey for their friendship and help on too many occasions to count, as well as the many great baseball conversations. v

Lastly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Jamie Lyon, who has given me steady and generous encouragement and guidance in my studies over the last ten years. The countless discussions we have had, whether on Brecht, other scholarly topics, the mundane, or the spiritual, have been invaluable as they have helped me progress as a student of German literature and as a person.

Vita

April 20, 1979 ...... Born-San Jose, CA

2004...... B.A. in German Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

2004-5 ...... Graduate Teaching Assistant Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

2007...... M.A. in German Literature Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

2006-12 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

Field of Study

Major Field: Germanic Languages & Literatures

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... v

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Vita ...... viii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: “Das Wort ist am Ende.” Toward a Material Language in Brecht’s Early Work ...... 27

Chapter 2: “und dahinter die Fleischbank, die allein ist leibhaftig.” History’s schlechte Unendlichkeit in Trommeln in der Nacht ...... 60

Chapter 3: “Alles war so leicht. Sie zerfleischten sich einfach.” Intersubjectivity and Conflict in Im Dickicht der Städte ...... 94

Chapter 4: “Mich kann man am Arsch lecken mit Charakterköpfen.” The Precarious Dialectic of Identity in Mann ist Mann ...... 141

Conclusion: “Aber das Gesündeste ist doch einfach: lavieren.” A Brechtian Guide to Surviving the Material of History ...... 180

Bibliography ...... 196

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Introduction

Later in his life, Heinrich Heine recorded an encounter he had experienced as a young man with the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:

Eines schönen hellgestirnten Abends standen wir beide neben einander am Fenster, und ich, ein zweiundzwanzigjähriger junger Mensch, ich hatte eben gut gegessen und Kaffee getrunken, und ich sprach mit Schwärmerei von den Sternen, und nannte sie den Aufenthalt der Seeligen. Der Meister aber brümmelte vor sich hin: „Die Sterne, hum! hum! die Sterne sind nur ein leuchtender Aussatz am Himmel.” (Heine 98-99)

Hegel’s glaring derision of nature reflects his idealistic humanism. Spirit, or reason, which exists in human beings, must be imposed on the arbitrary chaos of nature. Mere nature is a disease on the surface of the eternal.

In the fourth stanza of his poem “Der 1. Psalm,” a young Bertolt Brecht expresses an opposing standpoint using similar imagery:

Immer denke ich: wir werden nicht beobachtet. Der Aussatz des einzigen Sternes in der Nacht, vor er untergeht! (Brecht 11:30)

These lines reject the humanistic idealism behind Hegel’s image of the stars as a cosmic leprosy whose chaos must be overcome through the application of reason and order. In

Brecht’s poem, humans are the leprosy on the surface of nature. Brecht’s materialism here is as evident as Hegel’s idealism above. Despite this sharp contrast, however, Brecht and Hegel reach their respective conclusions through this common imagery. This brief connection between Hegel and the young Brecht is an indication of much more

significant moments of encounter that have been entirely neglected in scholarship on

Brecht.

In the Dorotheenstädtischen Friedhof in former East Berlin, Brecht lies buried across the way from the grave of Hegel. That the graves are situated in this way, in close proximity but across from each other, seems fitting, considering the relationship between their written works; at numerous points over almost three full decades of his career,

Brecht carefully studied Hegel. This likely began in 1928, when the playwright began his intensive study of Marxism with Karl Korsch, and continued as he developed his dialectical theory throughout the remainder of his life.1 His reading of Hegel was, at least initially, conducted through a Marxist lens. In this way Brecht’s thought was close to

Hegel, who profoundly influenced his understanding and application of dialectics; and yet Brecht was simultaneously positioned against Hegel, as he adopted Marx’s materialist dialectic in contrast to Hegel’s idealist model.

Nevertheless, to view the influence that Hegel had on Brecht’s thought only through the filter of Marxism would be to neglect a fuller relationship between Brecht and Hegel. Brecht explicitly voices his admiration of Hegel in a February 1939

Arbeitsjournal entry:

Die »Philosophie der Geschichte« dieses Hegel ist ein unheimliches Werk. Seine Methode gestattet ihm nicht nur, das Positive und Negative jeder geschichtlichen Erscheinung zu sehen, sondern auch diese Polarität zur causa der Entwicklung zu gestalten. (Brecht 26:330-31)

Expressing his fascination for the work, Brecht continues with adjectives like

“ungeheuer” and “großartig.” He approached Hegel’s work not simply as an extension of

1 The earliest mention of Hegel in Werner Hecht’s Brecht Chronik is October 1928, when, in his study of Marxism, Brecht asked in a letter to Bernhard von Brentano for reading material that he could use in developing his material dialectic, specifically mentioning Hegel (Hecht 255). 2

Marxism, but as an autonomous corpus in itself. Reinhold Grimm and Hans-Egon

Holthusen, for instance, both see essential aspects of Brecht’s epic theater as having developed from particular elements of Hegel’s thought.2 And a number of Brecht’s other works refer to Hegel, either directly or through the ideas expressed in them.3

Werner Mittenzwei emphasizes the importance of Hegel to Brecht: “Von der klassischen deutschen Philosophie war es vor allem Hegel, den er immer wieder las und den er bewunderte wie sonst nur noch Marx und Lenin. Von Hegel ist auch in seinen

Werken […] direkt die Rede” (Mittenzwei 150). Several instances of this occur in

Brecht’s Flüchtlingsgespräche, a series of dialogues that occur between two fictional refugees from Nazi Germany. As the two figures Ziffel and Kalle discuss Marxism, Ziffel refers to a common, incomplete understanding of Marxism as “nichts Richtiges, höchstens so einen minderwertigen Marxismus ohne Hegel” (Brecht 18:245). In form more than content, Hegel’s works enriched and added to Brecht’s dialectical thought.

Although he never incorporated Hegel’s idealism into his writing, the older Brecht certainly valued the contribution that the Hegelian dialectical method made to his work.

2 Grimm: “Die philosophische Legitimation der Verfremdung liefert Hegel […]. Brechts Notizen zum Messingkauf lassen daran keinen Zweifel. »Die Selbstverständigkeit«, lesen wir, »welche die Erfahrung im Bewußtsein angenommen hat, wird wieder aufgelöst, wenn sie durch den V-Effekt negiert und dann in eine neue Verständlichkeit verwandelt wird. Eine Schematisierung wird hier zerstört.« Diese wichtige Eintragung (vom 2. 8. 1940) variiert nicht nur ganz offensichtlich einen Satz aus der Phänomenologie des Geistes, wonach das Bekannte eben darum, weil is bekannt ist, nicht erkannt ist” (Grimm 97-98). Holthusen likewise sees Hegel’s notion of Entfremdung at the core of Brecht’s Verfremdung (Holthusen 109). See also Jost, as well as Knopf (1972) and Knopf (1974) p. 21-27. 3 In examining the notes that Brecht made in his own 1928 edition of Hegel’s collected works, Melanie Selfe outlines a methodical and systematic correspondence between Hegel’s philosophy and Brecht’s work, which is particularly evident in his Buch der Wendungen (see Selfe). Her study, like others connecting Brecht and Hegel, focuses on Brecht’s post-1928 texts. 3

Scholarship on Brecht and Hegel is noticeably absent regarding Brecht’s earlier work.4 There are brief nods to Hegel in analyses of Brecht’s earlier works, but the connections made by critics are brief and never explored in any depth. This is understandable, as the young Brecht’s writing, commonly viewed as anarchic and nihilistic, ostensibly promises very little productive comparison with Hegel’s idealism.

Additionally, in plays, poems, journal entries, or correspondence prior to his serious study of Marxism in 1928, Brecht makes no known references to Hegel or his works. In

1952, Brecht, who by this point of his life had read Hegel for over two decades, claims in his Arbeitsjournal that in this earlier period he was completely unfamiliar with Hegel’s work. Specifically regarding his early play Im Dickicht der Städte, he writes:

Das Stück bedeutet einen enormen Fortschritt in der Dramatik, bei all seinen Schwächen; sie hatte die idealistische Dialektik Hegels »nachzuholen«, bevor sie weitergehen konnte. Dabei kannte ich (wie die ganze Dramatik) keine Zeile von Hegel. Ich wollte bloß etwas so Dramatisches wie die »Räuber« schreiben[.] (Brecht 27:339)

Despite this claim, it is likely that the young Brecht had crossed paths with Hegel’s work at some point before 1928. For example, we know that during his brief studies at the

Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität in Munich, Brecht enrolled in Erich Becher’s course

(winter 1918-1919) on “allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie,” in which Hegel would most likely have been a topic of study (Hecht 49).5 Being the voracious reader that he was, Brecht may have even come across Hegel in his own reading. Nevertheless, it would not be an especially productive pursuit to try to establish a detailed Hegelian influence

4 In this study, expressions like “the young Brecht” and “Brecht’s early work” are meant to refer to Brecht and his work from young adulthood to his introduction to Hegel in 1928. 5 Karl Güttler also offered a course in summer 1918: “Geschichte der Philosophie, von Hegels Tode (1831) ab” (). This course possibly covered Hegel, at least to establish a context for the critical philosophy following him. Brecht was at the university in Munich at the same time, but I have not been able to determine if he enrolled in this course. 4

within Brecht’s early works because there is no definitive indication that he was very familiar with the philosopher. Nor is it the purpose of this dissertation to speculate about the likelihood of such a direct relationship between the works; rather, my study traces numerous points of intersection, or collision, between the work of Hegel and that of the young Brecht. I find the term “collision” fitting to describe these points, as they appear at moments in which the thought of the two is driven from very different directions to briefly occupy a common ground based on themes they address or images and language they employ to do so. After “colliding” in this way, their thinking ultimately departs in divergent paths, as dictated by their respective idealism and materialism.

While brief, these collisions illustrate important intersections between the two that have not previously received scholarly attention. In fact, although the connections that I draw between the two may encourage speculation that Brecht had some knowledge of

Hegel’s work, what makes my study important is the likelihood that Brecht was not familiar with Hegel, at least beyond a superficial level; this likelihood makes the similarities I trace between the two all the more intriguing, because these points of common ground arise within such divergent and mutually exclusive perspectives of the world. Instead of trying to locate Hegel’s direct influence on the young Brecht, then, I find my study’s justification in “Der einzige Zuschauer für meine Stücke,” a short text written around 1928, in which Brecht wrote:

Als ich »Das Kapital« von Marx las, verstand ich meine Stücke. Man wird verstehen, daß ich eine ausgiebige Verbreitung dieses Buches wünsche. Ich entdeckte natürlich nicht, daß ich einen ganzen Haufen maxistischer Stücke geschrieben hatte, ohne eine Ahnung zu haben. Aber dieser Marx war der einzige Zuschauer für meine Stücke, den ich je gesehen hatte. Denn einen Mann mit solchen Interessen mußten gerade diese Stücke interessieren. Nicht wegen ihrer Intelligenz, sondern wegen der seinigen. Es war Anschauungsmaterial für ihn. (Brecht 21:256-57) 5

Brecht claims that he does not mean to say that he had been writing Marxist theatrical pieces without knowing it, but that his early plays gained clarity and meaning through a retroactive application of Marxist theory. David Bathrick writes that “when Brecht refers to his early works as ‘Anschauungsmaterial’ for Marx, it is of his own reunderstanding and reevaluating that he is speaking” (Bathrick 4). Marxist thought provided a system and a focus for Brecht’s early works, but this was possible only because the raw materials were already present to be shaped. This applies as well to Brecht’s early dialectics, which existed in a rough yet substantial form before Marxist theory later shaped it into the or materialist dialectics that would become such an essential component of his later theory and practice. Although they would later be greatly shaped by Marxist thought, my study shows that these elements of Brecht’s early thought supplied foundations that would remain central to understanding his entire career.

Similarly, because of the importance of Hegel to Brecht after his turn to Marxism, this dissertation locates moments in Brecht’s early work that merit a reading through and against Hegel. Although Hegel was most likely not a direct influence on the young

Brecht, this reading will illuminate characteristics of the playwright’s early work that would remain essential throughout his career. This dissertation is not meant as a parallel study of the two men; rather, it is a literary study of Brecht that seeks to shed new light on his thought through the analysis of his early work that tracks its implicit struggle with ideas drawn from a Hegelian philosophical context. I will show that the moments that invite such an approach will be productive in uncovering a fertile yet overlooked area in

Brecht scholarship.

In the first decade or two following Brecht’s death, his career was usually analyzed within a framework that divides it into three major sections: the early works, leading up to his engagement with Marxism, were largely seen as immature, nihilistic, and anarchistic. The second stage of his career entails his Lehrstücke, written in the late

1920s and early 1930s. These were largely seen as important within the development of the Marxist thought in Brecht’s later works, but, with one or two exceptions, they were also regarded as artistically rigid and sterile. Finally, the works from the mid-1930s until

Brecht’s death in 1956 were seen as his “mature” works, or the culmination of his development of form and content. The problem with this methodology is that is trivializes the works of the first two periods, reducing them to mere stepping stones in the development of a more significant body of work. In the 1970s, scholarship began to seriously question this approach to Brecht’s career; Reiner Steinweg’s analysis of the

Lehrstücke was one of the first substantial secondary works (and widely cited as the first major work) to engage in this newer methodology.6 In the 1980s, the early works likewise began to be liberated from the traditional, teleological approach, being increasingly studied on their own merits and as autonomous works outside of the existing contextual perception of Brecht’s career.7

I believe that the nature of a particular study should determine the appropriate context in which the works in question are approached. For this reason my study observes

Brecht’s adoption of Marxist thought as a boundary of sorts, not because it was a decisive point of development into a more important or superior period of creative work, but specifically because this is the historical point where Brecht is known to have begun his

6 See Steinweg. 7 See for example Wright. 7

continuing study of Hegel; accordingly, it is the earliest point taken up by scholars analyzing Brecht and Hegel together. By thus demarcating the young Brecht’s career, my study can examine the early work in a context that has been almost entirely neglected.

The conclusions I draw from my reading of Brecht’s early work in this context are not restricted, however, solely to this pre-Marxist period. Rather, the insights gained through my reading of the young Brecht in a Hegelian context can be applied to elucidate essential elements of his thought which, despite the other developments in his thinking, would remain consistently prominent throughout his entire career. Thus by ostensibly observing an outdated chronological delineation of Brecht’s work, I hope to illustrate the importance of his early work, neither as a developmental phase toward a more “mature” work nor as a self-contained corpus, but rather as an abiding, integral component of his thought as a whole.

To begin, I outline here some general characteristics of Hegel’s philosophy that most meaningfully intersect with Brecht’s early work. Hegel’s entire system of thought is a high point of German Idealism; he responded to Kant’s skepticism by arguing that the world as it truly is, or the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), is not forever out of the grasp of human reason, because the same reason that exists in the human mind is also the organizing force behind all existence. Reason (Vernunft), or Spirit (Geist), defines the thing-in-itself as it truly is, providing the rational or defining concept (Begriff) which captures the essence of things. Spirit also has its application within the material world, in which it works out its own actualization temporally and spatially. Hegel maintains that as

Spirit develops itself and its logic in the ideal realm, the material world is in constant change, continually moving toward the realization of true concepts of reason. Because

this same reason is attainable with human cognition, Hegel argues, the human mind is (at least ideally) potentially capable of reaching an absolute knowledge of reality, when the proper mode of thought is applied.

At the center of Hegel’s thought is his notion of dialectical development, which informs the individual aspects of his philosophy and binds his works together as a whole system. Hegel’s dialectics is a conceptual dialectics; that is, the development moves from one concept to a more advanced concept. This movement points to the increasingly universal until, ideally, we reach the unconditioned (das Unbedingte) or absolute.

Concepts are therefore defined in relation to those that came before and those that will come after them. There are three possible trajectories in the development toward the absolute knowledge of concepts in Hegel’s philosophy:

Das Logische hat der Form nach drei Seiten: α) die abstrakte oder verständige, β) die dialektische oder negativ-vernünftige, γ) die spekulative oder positiv-vernünftige. […] Diese drei Seiten machen nicht drei Teile der Logik aus, sondern sind Momente jedes Logisch-Reelen, das ist jedes Begriffes oder jedes Wahren überhaupt. (Hegel 8:168).8

In the first scenario, “Das Denken als Verstand bleibt bei der festen Bestimmtheit und der

Unterschiedenheit derselben gegen andere stehen; ein solches beschränktes Abstraktes gilt ihm als für sich bestehend und seiend” (Hegel 8:169). This indicates the course of understanding (Verstand), which for Hegel’s purposes means conventional, reflective thinking, or common sense. These are insufficient for Hegel, however, as they shun the contradictions inherent in all things. Verstand simply states what something is according

8 Hegel’s term here is not der Moment (moment), but das Moment, which has a number of possible translations, such as momentum or force, to name two. In addition, I note here that any emphasis placed on specific words or sections in material that I cite in this dissertation exists in the original texts cited. I have added no emphasis of my own to them. 9

to empirical experience. It sees things as fixed and static, and in avoiding the oppositions in things, it also denies the ability to progress in our knowledge of reality.

The second, or dialectical course, “ist das eigene Sichaufheben solcher endlichen

Bestimmungen und ihr Übergehen in ihre entgegengesetzten” (Hegel 8:172). Here, reason (Vernunft) observes beyond the sensory, recognizing that there must be an opposition in all things and setting out to resolve those contradictions by disregarding supposed fixity and applying speculative thought (as opposed to the merely reflective thought of Verstand) in order to divorce the concept from preconceived, “common- sensical” notions. A concept is removed from its own context and posited into the context of its other (or opposite, negation), providing a new perspective that it retains upon returning to itself. In the ensuing supersession (Aufhebung), the positive traits gained through this process are incorporated into a new concept that is now more able to capture the essence of its object. This is the third, and for Hegel ideal, development, which “faßt die Einheit der Bestimmungen in ihrer Entgegensetzung auf, das Affirmative, das in ihrer

Auflösung und ihrem Übergehen enthalten ist” (Hegel 8:176). The new concept then undergoes the same process, and through speculative reason, a chain of increasingly refined concepts is created that leads to the Absolute.

English terms commonly used to translate Hegel’s Aufhebung, such as sublation or supersession, lack the purposefully ambiguous nature of the German word which

Hegel finds so fitting for his application of it:

Es ist hierbei an die gedoppelte Bedeutung unseres deutschen Ausdrucks aufheben zu erinnern. Unter aufheben verstehen wir einmal soviel als hinwegräumen, negieren, und sagen demgemäß z.B., ein Gesetz, eine Einrichtung usw. seien aufgehoben. Weiter heißt dann aber auch aufheben soviel als aufbewahren, und wir sprechen in diesem Sinn davon, daß etwas wohl aufgehoben sei. Dieser sprachgebräuchliche Doppelsinn, wonach 10

dasselbe Wort eine negative und eine positive Bedeutung hat, darf nicht als zufällig angesehen noch etwa gar der Sprache zum Vorwurf gemacht werden, als zu Verwirrung Veranlassung gebend, sondern es ist darin der über das bloß verständige Entweder-Oder hinausschreitende spekulatlve Geist unserer Sprache zu erkennen. (Hegel 8:204-205)

In its semantic ambiguity, Aufhebung both negates and preserves. An earlier concept is negated through supersession in that it is replaced by a more inclusive concept, but as each concept also includes within itself the qualities of the past concepts it has subsumed,

Aufhebung also preserves the necessary essence of the earlier concepts, as Julie Maybee writes: “Later stages cancel the earlier stages in the sense that earlier stages are shown to be inadequate, and therefore cannot be left to stand on their own accounts. At the same time, the later stages still have the earlier stages within them – they build on top of one another” (Maybee 35).9 Like a spiral staircase, progress in Hegel is achieved cyclically; with each departure from and return to a given concept, our knowledge leads not only in a circle, but also upwards, as further knowledge of the rational concept is acquired.

This pattern of Aufhebung is of the highest importance in Hegel’s thought. It is the process by which we can progress, through reason, to a knowledge of the universal

9 In this introduction, and again in my discussion of identity in chapter four, I draw heavily from Maybee’s analysis in summarizing the aspects of Hegel’s philosophy that are most pertinent to this study. I refer to Maybee’s text for a few principal reasons. Unlike other prominent contemporary readings of Hegel, Maybee’s study does not seek to separate him from the metaphysical context with which he is traditionally associated. Instead of rejecting Hegel based upon an opposition to what they see as a flawed and outdated metaphysics, critics like Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Terry Pinkard, and Robert Pippin recontextualize Hegel by reading his work as divorced from the metaphysics with which it is traditionally associated. This approach focuses on a non-metaphysical, strictly epistemological reading of Hegel, while Maybee’s study is more traditional in that it does not see the need to recontextualize Hegel in order to be able to validate his work in the face of criticism. Maybee is content to read Hegel within a more traditional context of his metaphysics, as do other important scholars like Charles Taylor. Because the young Brecht’s work does not display much concern for epistemological questions, but rather for a kind of materialist ontology, I choose to draw from Maybee’s work for my exposition of Hegel’s thought. In addition, whatever contact, direct or indirect, that Brecht may have had with Hegel’s thought would have likewise occurred within this traditional metaphysical context. And although Maybee’s study focuses exclusively on Hegel’s Logik, it is through this that her work presents the essence of his philosophical thought as a whole, because the processes that occur within the Logik are the fundamental movements that are followed, both in individual areas of Hegel’s thought such as history or self-consciousness, as well as in the overall idealistic volition of his philosophy toward the ideal, or the absolute. 11

and the rational, or in Kantian terms, the thing-in-itself. For Hegel the chain of increasingly rational concepts along which reason dialectically progresses leads to, in

Maybee’s words, “an overall, all-encompassing, unconditioned universal. The unconditioned universal is supposed to be the universal that contains everything else or is completely comprehensive. (Maybee 35) And this process applies to progress within all areas of Hegel’s philosophy. Maybee writes that “every one of Hegel’s works is an attempt to grasp the unfolding of reason as it occurs in some particular realm of knowledge […]. Each one tells a dialectical story about self-developing reason in relation to some particular subject-matter” (Maybee 32). Hegel illustrates this interconnectedness of his philosophy with the image of a “circle of circles”:

Jeder der Teile der Philosophie ist ein philosophisches Ganzes, ein sich in sich selbst schließender Kreis […]; das Ganze stellt sich daher als ein Kreis von Kreisen dar, deren jeder ein notwendiges Moment ist, so daß das System ihrer eigentümlichen Elemente die ganze Idee ausmacht, die ebenso in jedem einzelnen erscheint. (Hegel 8:60)

The ideal end result is the realization of the Absolute; this is manifested in various ways, depending on the respective area of Hegel’s philosophy. Regarding the areas of his thought addressed in this dissertation, this ideal entails subjective and objective freedom, fully realized selfhood, and a pure knowledge of the rational and true. As the individual chapters of this dissertation examine Brecht’s early materialism, we will read his works in the context of the smaller circles within Hegel’s overall circle. Proceeding in this manner, my study will accomplish two main functions: first, it will provide an unprecedented analysis of the overlooked connection between the thinking of the young

Brecht and Hegelian philosophy as a whole. This alone presents an innovative new context in which to approach Brecht’s early work. Second, this dissertation will generate

a greater understanding of the young Brecht’s unique materialism by understanding it in this context.

There is an additional condition addressed in Hegel’s philosophy which is of importance for my study. In the various areas of his work, he often refers, derisively, to nature (Natur) or natural state (Naturzustand) as a condition occurring outside of progress, reason and Spirit. I neither mean to argue here that Hegel despised nature in its physical manifestation, nor that he did not recognize an order therein. Rather, Natur signifies in his language the historical, social, and political conditions from which Spirit, the driving force toward ideal order, is absent. Thus I do not believe that Hegel’s indictment of the stars in Heine’s account reflects a literal hatred of the stars themselves, but a contempt for what he viewed as the incorrect, idealized emphasis with which

Heine’s praise obscures Hegel’s humanistic idealism. In this sense Hegel repeatedly disparages what he refers to as nature, but it must be remembered that this is not in reference to nature in itself, but always implies some form of human sociality that is not actively pursuing the ends of Spirit.

In all the areas of Hegel’s thought the true progression of Spirit only begins once reason establishes itself in the picture. Hegel pays relatively little attention to what occurs before or outside of this reason, and often refers to this pre-rational or extra-rational condition with disdain. He does not subscribe to the romantic notion of a paradisiacal natural state, arguing in contrast to this “Vorstellung eines Naturzustandes […], in welchem Freiheit und Recht in vollkommener Weise vorhanden sei oder gewesen sei”

(Hegel 12:78), that nature is “vielmehr der Zustand des Unrechts, der Gewalt, des ungebändigten Naturtriebs, unmenschlicher Taten und Empfindungen” (Hegel 12:59).

Hegel sees in this Naturzustand a site of chaotic, arbitrary change. Before or outside of reason, these repetitive transformations lack the direction of Spirit, which is necessary in order for there to be not only quantitative change, as occurs in the natural sphere, but also qualitative change, or true dialectical progress through a cyclical pattern of development:

Nur in den Veränderungen, die auf dem geistigen Boden vorgehen, kommt Neues hervor. Diese Erscheinung am Geistigen ließ in dem Menschen eine andere Bestimmung überhaupt sehen als in den bloß natürlichen Dingen – in welchen sich immer ein und derselbe stabile Charakter kundgibt, in den alle Veränderung zurückgeht –, nämlich eine wirkliche Veränderungsfähigkeit, und zwar zum Besseren – ein Trieb der Perfektibilität. (Hegel 12:74)

As opposed to “in den bloß natürlichen Dingen,” change in the spiritual sense indicates a continuous return to the self in “eine andere Bestimmung,” progressing through a cyclical supersession as Spirit brings the concept outside of itself for a new perspective. This being outside of itself results in what Hegel calls being-with-self (Beisichselbstsein), and provides the critical perspective necessary for dialectical progress. Spirit provides “[den]

Trieb, [den] Impuls des geistigen Lebens in sich selbst, die Rinde der Natürlichkeit,

Sinnlichkeit und Fremdheit seiner selbst zu durchbrechen und zum Lichte des

Bewußtseins, d.i. zu sich selbst zu kommen” (Hegel 12:78).

Change (Veränderung) in nature, on the other hand, is undirected and random, with no sense of development. For this cause, Hegel generally disregards the

Naturzustand in his philosophy, aside from occasionally acknowledging it as the pre- rational condition from which life must individuate itself through the application of reason. While in a natural state, conditions repeatedly return to themselves, but without the supersession elevating them to a more progressed form. Hegel refers to this condition as a negative or spurious infinity (schlechte Unendlichkeit), which he describes as “dies

fortgehende Überfliegen der Grenze, das die Ohnmacht ist, sie aufzuheben, und der perennierende Rückfall in dieselbe” (Hegel 5:264). Instead of qualitative supersession through recurring departures and new returns to self, change within a negative infinity is

“ein Wiederholen von einem und eben demselben, Setzen, Aufheben und Wiedersetzen und Wiederaufheben, – eine Ohnmacht des Negativen, dem das, was es aufhebt, durch sein Aufheben selbst als ein Kontinuierliches wiederkehrt” (Hegel 5:264). Spirit, on the other hand, guides change, which consequently takes on the characteristic of development (Entwicklung):

Das Prinzip der Entwicklung enthält das Weitere, daß eine innere Bestimmung, eine an sich vorhandene Voraussetzung zugrunde liege, die sich zur Existenz bringe. Diese formelle Bestimmung ist wesentlich der Geist […]. Er ist nicht ein solcher, der sich in dem äußerlichen Spiel von Zufälligkeiten herumtriebe, sondern er ist vielmehr das absolut Bestimmende und schlechthin fest gegen die Zufälligkeiten, die er zu seinem Gebrauch verwendet und beherrscht. (Hegel 12:75)

Meaningful progress can be made toward Hegel’s ideal only when Spirit imposes the order of reason upon the chaos of nature. For Hegel, change without Spirit is both the cause of and the product of a profound tedium (Langeweile) which arises from the repetitive, strictly quantitative changes that occur in a schlechte Unendlichkeit: “Soviel ist nun allerdings richtig, daß wir es zuletzt bleiben lassen, in solcher Betrachtung weiter und immer weiter vorzuschreiten, jedoch nicht um der Erhabenheit, sondern um der

Langweiligkeit dieses Geschäfts willen” (Hegel 8:199). There is no spiral staircase of progression in nature; change in nature, regardless of its variety, only repeats itself endlessly: “in der Natur geschieht nichts Neues unter der Sonne, und insofern führt das vielförmige Spiel ihrer Gestaltungen eine Langeweile mit sich” (Hegel 12:74). This tedium, Hegel writes elsewhere, is “die Langeweile der Wiederholung, welche […] nur

das Gefühl der Ohnmacht dieses Unendlichen oder dieses Sollens gibt, das über das

Endliche Meister werden will und nicht kann” (Hegel 5:265). The schlechte

Unendlichkeit is a condition of perpetual ought-to (Sollen), ultimately impotent to develop beyond the current natural stage. The resulting tedium arises at numerous points in Hegel’s work, corresponding with the Naturzustand as this applies to the various areas of his thought. To escape the Langeweile of nature, Hegel’s work focuses primarily on true development as brought about by Spirit.

The schlechte Unendlichkeit is the strictly quantitative change within the

Naturzustand, or the absence of Spirit. Nature is not something that only precedes Spirit, however; it can also exist simultaneously with, but outside of Spirit. Instances of negative infinity frequently emerge when stagnancies arise amidst the possibility of progress.

While Spirit is carried forward in its development by specific people or peoples at a time, it is not universally present in the whole of humankind. Thus others adjacent to these vehicles of Spirit may still exist in a schlechte Unendlichkeit, spinning their wheels but moving nowhere. As an example I refer to the introduction to Hegel’s philosophy of history, in which he explains that history, as he uses the term, refers only to events that have taken place within the greater framework of Spirit’s progression. To contribute to history, Hegel maintains that a people must be actively fulfilling some aspect of the self- actualization of Spirit, or universal freedom. For this reason he argues that India, for example, despite its rich cultural tradition, has no objective history because its social structure is based on a caste system, which willfully rejects the movement toward universal freedom (Hegel 12:85). India, for him, thus exists outside of Spirit and history, in a natural state, while other civilizations that are contemporary with or even predate our

knowledge of India’s past, such as Ancient Egypt, are viewed as having a history in which Spirit actively develops itself.

Likewise, while the path along which Spirit guides from reflective understanding to absolute knowledge is available to all who will exercise the discipline and commitment necessary to progress along it, much of the “logic” exercised in the world remains content in the realm of empirical perception and Verstand, ignoring reality’s inherent contradictions through which knowledge can dialectically progress. Thus the

Naturzustand that Hegel so derides persists and even reappears in the world despite the overall gradual realization of Spirit. Once Spirit has brought itself as far as it can with one vehicle (a people, for example), Hegel teaches that it then departs to another vessel, abandoning the first to inevitable decline and decay in a tepid pattern of routine

(Gewohnheit) which yields only quantitative change and produces the Langeweile of the negative infinity.

Certain expressions found in Hegel, such as Naturzustand, schlechte

Unendlichkeit, and Langeweile, are of primary importance to my study, because these describe the conditions in which much of Brecht’s work takes place. Geist was never a primary concern for the adult Brecht, regardless of the point in his career, and the earlier works in particular display an acutely hostile stance toward idealism and metaphysics. In the play Im Dickicht der Städte, the character Garga makes an assertion which, while directed at his enemy Shlink, could also serve as an absolute rejection of Hegel’s entire philosophical system. Responding to Shlink’s claim that the conflict between the two is a metaphysical action and is spiritual in its nature rather than physical, Garga tells him,

“Aber das Geistige, das Sehen Sie, das ist nichts” (Brecht 1:493). The play itself suggests

that Garga’s assessment is accurate, as does the body of Brecht’s early work in general.

Given the nihilistic leanings of the early writings, this should be expected, and I believe it can be reasonably claimed that, if the young Brecht had been familiar in any degree with

Hegel’s idealism, he would have completely dismissed it.

Rejecting das Geistige, Brecht’s early work portrays a world in a complete

Naturzustand in the Hegelian sense, where the only transformation is the quantitative change of a schlechte Unendlichkeit. The young Brecht does not attempt to enforce reason and order onto nature; rather, his work focuses on the chaotic material character of existence. And fittingly, as nature is an absence of reason and progress in Hegel, the figures in Brecht’s world hover in a schlechte Unendlichkeit, undergoing only quantitative change and unable to make any idealistic progress like that which Hegel prescribes. The world of Brecht’s writing is a world of mere Veränderung without

Entwicklung, and I explore this world through a close reading of his early work. Just as

Spirit enables the move, in Hegel’s idealism, beyond the condition of nature, what keeps

Brecht’s work within this Naturzustand is the absence of Spirit in his materialism.

Because of the importance of the idealist/materialist division between Brecht and

Hegel to this study, I first provide the general definitions of these terms as I understand them. Idealism is, generally speaking, the philosophical view that transcendental notions like mind, reason, or spirit are what make up the fundamental nature of reality (Acton

552). It views thought as the primary determinant of the nature of the world, and thus

Hegel maintains that the rational concept of a thing is its real nature, and the material world, while certainly existing within reality, is secondary to its true, absolute form.

Inasmuch as a thing in the material world conforms to or agrees with its corresponding

rational concept, it is reality, or actuality (Wirklichkeit). A material thing that does not live up to the definition set by its rational concept is, on the other hand, a contingency

(Zufälligkeit). Maybee expounds this thought with an example:

A broken hammer, for example, would be an existing item, but it would not be an actuality, because since it is broken, it does not live up to its concept as a hammer. The broken hammer is therefore a contingent existence, and while it is certainly there in the world, it is not rational, and hence not “actual,” in Hegel’s sense. Philosophy, Hegel says, is not concerned with such contingent items, however, but with ‘the Idea’ […], with the rational concepts or universals themselves and with their expressions in the world. (Maybee 14).

For Hegel, although material things contain within themselves aspects of their rational forms, they are only reflections of their true natures, which are determined primarily on a rational level. In Hegel’s idealism, Spirit is the agent that brings reality, both in the rational and physical realms, to the absolute, or the real.

Materialism, on the other hand, entails a number of philosophical views that regard matter as the primary determinant of the nature of reality. Non-physical notions like spirit, soul, and mind are secondary to and dependent upon matter, or simply by- products of material processes (Campbell 5). Thought is not an external, independent force that defines the nature of reality and to which we merely have access, and reason, as it exists in human thought, exists only in human thought. It follows, then, that as the primary causal factor in the world, matter shapes human thought and reason. Throughout his adult career, Brecht was undoubtedly a staunch materialist. Conditions in the material world were always of primary importance to him, and his work did not speculate about an ideal realm of rational concepts. His later materialism, informed by his reading of Marx, was a dialectical materialism; it saw constant change in the continuous opposition within material existence and focused on social improvement. It was an optimistic materialism 19

in that Brecht’s later work allows for the possibility of positive development, which is generally excluded from the early work.

A distinction must be made between the dialectical materialism of Brecht’s later career and his early materialism, as the latter merits scholarly attention not only in its relationship with his later work, but also in itself. Scholars generally overlook the uniqueness of Brecht’s early materialism, however, examining it in the context of the

Marxism he would later adopt. And while his early materialism certainly was, in some regards, a stepping stone toward a dialectical materialism, to view it in this light alone is to neglect a vital ingredient of Brecht’s earlier work as an autonomous whole, as well as its application to his entire career. Some scholars have attempted to give special attention to an early materialism in Brecht, albeit with mixed results. Astrid Oesmann, for example, refers to what she calls Brecht’s “theatrical materialism”:

Brecht locates historical change and intellectual comprehension strictly in the social and physical realms, and in the process, he develops a distinct theatrical materialism years before turning to the historical materialism of Marx. It is through this ‘pre-Marxian’ and distinctly theatrical materialism that Brecht challenges and enriches Marxism. (Oesmann 88)

Oesmann’s designation is problematic, however, primarily as the term “theatrical materialism” places the emphasis on Brecht’s plays, ignoring the materialism of his thought as a whole, evident in his poetry, journals, essays, and prose. This suggests that there is something specifically “theatrical” about this materialism, and that the materialism in his early plays is not reflected in his other writing. But Brecht’s early materialism is more comprehensive in its application than the adjective “theatrical” allows, and it can be found through all genres of his writing. In addition, while Oesmann uses the term to designate a materialism found in Brecht’s early theater, she provides no

explanation why “theatrical materialism” should apply to the early creative output as opposed to all of his theatrical works, including the materialism of his later pieces.

Nevertheless, I agree with Oesmann’s argument that Brecht’s early materialism would enrich and provide the basis of his later dialectical materialism. Brecht’s materialism can be traced to the popular German materialism of the nineteenth century that originated with Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel’s idealism. Feuerbach’s philosophy provided a starting point for various (and quite divergent) threads of materialism including the scientific materialism of Carl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, and

Ludwig Büchner, and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Even though the different materialist camps were openly hostile toward each other, they nevertheless shared the common influence of Feuerbach, whose critique of Hegel had argued that existence precedes thought (Gregory, “Scientific versus” 217). The scientific materialists and dialectical materialists drew from and also critiqued Feuerbach’s philosophy. Although the young Brecht would not read Feuerbach (as far as can be determined) until his study of Marx, it is nevertheless likely that he came into indirect contact with Feuerbach through the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who was also influenced by Feuerbach, and much of whose work Brecht had already read by the time of his first full-length play Baal (1918).

The young Brecht’s materialism includes aspects of these various strains of materialism, and yet it must be distinguished from them as well. It shares a component of biological reductionism found in Vogt, Moleschott, and Büchner, but these men nevertheless maintained a kind of metaphysics and religion in their materialism that is absent in the young Brecht, whose materialism is more chaotic and naturalistic. And

although Marx eschewed religion, his philosophy depends on a teleological projection and focuses on social change, while Brecht’s materialism shows no faith in such development. Brecht also reflects the vitalism of Nietzsche that would be adopted by expressionist writers like Gottfried Benn. Yet I believe that a term like vitalism, or related terms like Lebensphilosophie are unfit for encompassing Brecht’s materialism. With these, life is self-determining based on some principle that lies outside of the physical, such as the will or the soul. In contrast, Brecht’s materialism emphasizes a principle of survival by adapting to the potentially destructive elements of material reality. This is achieved largely through passivity that can be traced, as I will later address, to East-Asian philosophy.10

Brecht’s early materialism is informed by a tradition that, despite differences in individual incarnations, is polemically opposed to Hegelian idealism. It is remarkable, then, that the young Brecht and Hegel, despite the obvious differences between their respective materialism and idealism, converge at so many (and such specific) points in their language and thought. The moments of intersection between Brecht and Hegel become particularly apparent upon examination of Brecht’s network of tropes employing natural and corporeal imagery. Since Hegel disparages nature as a condition bereft of reason and Spirit, it seems appropriate that the young Brecht, in whose materialism Spirit amounts to nothing, so heavily utilizes imagery from the natural world in his language. In particular, trees (including roots, forests, jungles) and water (rivers, rain, pools) are found frequently in connection with bodily references (faces, skin, etc.) in his earlier writings.

10 See Tatlow (1977); Detering; Li 22

In tracing these material metaphors through Brecht’s early work, my study illustrates how they often make up a materialist reflection of aspects of Hegel’s thought.

As is the case with reflections, however, the respective thought of the two is inverted – that is, Brecht and Hegel stay on the same spectrum but on opposite sides of the axis that ultimately divides them, namely the boundary between idealism and materialism. At certain points the trajectories of their thought brings them into brief collision with each other on this axis. These points, where the thought of Hegel and the young Brecht collide, overlap, and depart in correspondingly opposite directions, illustrate a greater symmetry that particular aspects of their respective thought compose.

Of course, the relationship between the two cannot be reduced to mere inversion. To claim that this is consistently the case would be a gross oversimplification. Surprisingly, however, the young Brecht was already quite Hegelian in certain areas of his thought, albeit in a strictly materialist sense that rejects idealistic notions of progress. He locates and addresses many of the same issues that Hegel does, but because of his materialism, his work comes to different conclusions than Hegel. The different chapters of this study illustrate these moments of collision in the two writers’ respective views of language, history, intersubjectivity, and identity.

The first chapter examines the ways in which Brecht’s early materialism informs his critique and use of language. This further distinguishes his thought from other forms of materialism, which often entail an implicit belief in language’s capacity for transparent communication. Brecht, on the other hand, treats language as something that removes us from authentic material experience: “Im Anfang war nicht das Wort. Das Wort ist am

Ende. Es ist die Leiche des Dinges” (Brecht 26:158). The word is not simply a deficient

representation of things; rather, it comprises only their fossilized remains. This chapter also looks at Hegel’s attitude toward language as a limited, yet necessary means of conveying rational concepts. I argue that Brecht attempts to vitalize language through a use of metaphor and imagery that evokes visceral experience and a more direct, sensuous engagement with material reality than language in its conventional use. Brecht’s approach to and use of language in this manner is made evident in his early journal entries and poems. This first chapter lays the foundation for the subsequent chapters’ focus on this language, which I will designate as a “material language,” as a site of tension between Brecht and Hegel, and illustrates these points at which the work of the two men intersects. These points are addressed in the other chapters

As an example of this materialization of language, the second chapter turns to

Brecht’s metaphorical Fleischbank, which arises in his play Trommeln in der Nacht, and contrasts it with Hegel’s apologetic image of the Schlachtbank of history, found in his

Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. For Hegel, the Schlachtbank is an unfortunate byproduct of history’s teleological progression, and he advises that it not be dwelt or reflected upon, but rather that we look past it to recognize the greater spiritual purpose for which its sacrifices are made. Brecht’s theater, on the other hand, rejects a teleological philosophy of history by explicitly pointing out the artifice of the Kulisse in his play in order to focus on the reality of the Fleischbank. Brecht’s text displays a historical materialism years before Benjamin would outline the concept in his Über den

Begriff der Geschichte. Brecht employs water (rivers, pools) and bodily references (skin, throat, voice) as supporting metaphors for his materialist opposition to a teleological historical narrative.

Chapter three examines Brecht’s Im Dickicht der Städte, which presents a number of interpersonal scenarios that closely mirror different models of intersubjectivity in

Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes, particularly the warrior/warrior relationship in which two self-consciousnesses confront each other in a battle to the death, and its dialectical successor, Hegel’s famous master/slave scenario. In Brecht’s play, die

Entzweiung der Sprache permanently isolates individuals from each other, so that the simpler warrior/warrior phase is unattainable, as is Hegel’s ideal stage of reciprocal recognition (Anerkennen), which finds its analogue in Brecht’s play in the term

Verständigung. Trapped in a state of stagnancy with no possibility of progression, the characters are consigned to a warped master/slave relationship with no possibility of progression. To elucidate Brecht’s treatment of this subject, this chapter focuses on imagery surrounding trees (forests, jungles) and the body (skin, face).

The fourth chapter turns its attention from intersubjectivity to subjectivity, focusing on the notion of identity. In Mann ist Mann, Brecht approaches the topic in a manner suggestive of Hegel’s treatment of identity, as found in his Logik. The assessment of identity in Mann ist Mann revolves primarily around Galy Gay’s lines: “Einer ist keiner. / Es muß ihn einer anrufen” (Brecht 2:142). I place this idea in close proximity to

Hegel’s position that “Das Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem und dadurch, daß es für ein Anderes an und für sich ist; d. h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes” (Hegel 3:145).

Both statements argue that external recognition is required for a sense of self-identity, but again, the idealistic void in Brecht’s work means that a determination of identity lacks the dialectical progress found in Hegel’s model. Brecht reduces identity strictly to its material, the body, which for Galy Gay proves much more important than any notion of

inner permanence. He is ultimately praised for his ability to reject a fixed individual selfhood by taking on the identity of another for the sole purpose of material survival.

I place Hegel’s idealist dialectic next to a peculiar dialectical mode of thought present in the young Brecht’s works which, although informed by his early materialism, was still far removed from the dialectical materialism that he would eventually incorporate into his later work and theory. Scholarship connecting Brecht with Hegel has traditionally focused on Brecht only after his turn to Marxism, a system of thought much more directly associated with Hegelian philosophy. By tracing out aspects of this connection in the early Brecht, my study provides a new key to understanding the poet's early materialism and how it informed his work.

Writing about Hegel is a daunting prospect, and to approach his thought without careful consideration is a formula for, at best, dilettantism. I take comfort in Theodor

Adorno’s assertion: “Im Bereich großer Philosophie ist Hegel wohl der einzige, bei dem man buchstäblich zuweilen nicht weiß und nicht bündig entscheiden kann, wovon

überhaupt geredet wird” (Adorno 107). Nonetheless, the primary objective of this dissertation is not to critique or evaluate Hegel’s philosophy itself, but to fairly represent pertinent areas of his thought in order to provide a new context in which we may better understand the materialism and the dialectical element of Brecht’s early thinking before these were shaped by his study of Marx.

Chapter 1: “Das Wort ist am Ende.”

Toward a Material Language in Brecht’s Early Work

The young Brecht had, to say the least, an ambiguous relationship with language.

On the one hand, it was his creative medium, but on the other, he critically questioned its effectiveness. That he continued writing so prolifically until his death in 1956 suggests that despite his doubts, he still maintained a faith in language’s potential to communicate the themes and material he wanted to present in his writing. Nevertheless, as much of his early work makes clear, the young author harbored significant doubts regarding the shortcomings and flaws that he perceived in language, or at least in its conventional use, as indicated in this August 1920 journal entry:

Die Worte haben ihren eigenen Geist. Es gibt gefräßige, eitle, schlaue, stiernackige und ordinäre. Man muß eine Heilsarmee gründen zu ihrer »Errettung«, sie sind so verkommen. Man muß sie einzeln bekehren, vor allem Volk, und sie im Gefolge mitnehmen und allem Volk zeigen. […] Einige sollte man erschießen, standrechtlich, sie vogelfrei machen, niederknallen, wo man sie stellt […]. Gerichtshöfe her für die Worte! (Brecht 26:147)

Here Brecht calls for a salvation and a conversion of words, and where that is not a possibility, for their execution. Language’s function should be to express living, flowing reality, which, for Brecht, is strictly material reality. Language often performs precisely the opposite, however, as Brecht indicates in his journal a week after the above entry:

“Im Anfang war nicht das Wort. Das Wort ist am Ende. Es ist die Leiche des Dinges”

(Brecht 26:158). Brecht complains that instead of representing a living reality, the word

acts as its corpse, assigning a fixed, petrified meaning to what is fluid and dynamic.

Brecht saw a mortification of reality at the hands of its common linguistic representation.

His journal suggests that this critical suspicion of language, which was a major theme addressed throughout his early work, emerged as a substantial issue in his thinking in the middle of 1920. In particular, a series of entries from August and September of that year focus on the topic. For instance, Brecht writes elsewhere in the same journal entry: “Das

Schlimmste, wenn die Dinge sich verkrusten in Wörtern, hart werden, weh tun beim

Schmeißen, tot herumliegen. […] Lieber Gott, laß den Blick durch die Krusten gehen, sie durchschneiden!” (26:158). For Brecht, the word is not with or in God. In fact, in an ironic plea, he asks God to cut through the crusts that words form around reality. Instead of being the source of the existence of all things, Brecht treats the word as a lifeless residue of the thing, an inanimate shell that renders a flowing reality inert. The salvation of words that Brecht preaches is to come about through a metaphorical materialization of language. By endowing his language with a sensuous viscerality, he removes the deadening linguistic crust from the thing and revitalizes language, enabling it to effectively communicate a living reality instead of merely becoming its corpse.

I refer to this language as a material language because of the visceral experience its bodily and natural metaphors evoke. This is not to say that the term “material” in this sense broadly corresponds with the tradition of materialism, however. Nineteenth-century materialism generally showed little concern regarding language’s capacity for transparent communication. Valentin Voloshinov observed that a serious study of language had been largely neglected within Marxist materialism; this prompted his 1929 work Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, which seeks “to substantiate the significance of the

philosophy of language for Marxism as a whole” (Voloshinov xiv). In addition, the growing emphasis in non-Marxist materialism on a scientific, positivistic approach to understanding the world gained momentum with the publication, for example, of major philosophical and scientific works by Ludwig Feuerbach and those who further developed and critiqued his thought, as well as international authors like Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin.11 In the late nineteenth century, literary naturalism was largely based upon this positivistic, scientific form of materialism and suggested that reality can be captured by language.

Although Brecht’s early materialism shares many aspects of the scientific and social materialism of the nineteenth century, his view of language is not one of them. His skepticism of language resonates, rather, with the modernist aesthetic and philosophical movements that position themselves in direct opposition to scientific positivism and naturalism. An essential critique of language was a key component of the modernist atmosphere as Brecht began to develop his own Sprachkritik, and many aspects of his critique correspond closely with established positions. Brecht’s attitude toward language is ultimately distinct from this modernist tradition, however. While many elements of

Brecht’s Sprachkritik recall that of immediate literary and philosophical forerunners, this chapter will demonstrate that essential aspects of his approach to language, such as an underlying optimism in its potential and a similar solution to its shortcomings, demonstrate an essential similarity between his thought and Hegel’s and constitute, at various key moments, a materialist reflection of corresponding points within the philosopher’s approach to language.

11 See Rogers. 29

Brecht’s statement “Im Anfang war nicht das Wort” alludes to and subverts the opening of the Gospel of John in the New Testament: “Im Anfang war das Wort, und das

Wort war bei Gott, und Gott war das Wort. / Dasselbe war im Anfang bei Gott. / Alle

Dinge sind durch dasselbe gemacht, und ohne dasselbe ist nichts gemacht, was gemacht ist” (Thomson Studienbibel, Joh. 1.1-3).12 These verses see the Word as the power of divine creation and the catalyst through which God’s will is carried out. It existed with and in God before material creation, and through it “Alle Dinge” were made. The young

Brecht’s inversion of the passage clearly illustrates the materialism of his thought: whereas John places the Word at the origin of creation, attributing to it a primacy over things, Brecht’s designation of the word as “die Leiche des Dinges” treats it as the dead remains of a material reality that predates it, a reality to which Brecht repeatedly refers as

“die Dinge.” Hans-Harald Müller and Tom Kindt note this terminology in their discussion of Brecht’s criticism of language:

Die Sprache, so Brechts wiederkehrende Klage, verstellt den Zugang zur Welt; die Wörter machen es nahezu unmöglich, mit der Wirklichkeit oder – wie es in seinen Notizbüchern immer wieder heißt – mit den ›Dingen‹ unmittelbar in Berührung zu kommen. (Müller and Kindt 17)

That Brecht uses such material language to indicate reality reflects his early materialism.

The whole of existence for him is made up of things, and not ideas, thought, or concepts.

And in using the term Dinge to signify the primary nature of reality, he subverts John’s words, in which “Dinge” exist through and as a result of the Word.

Brecht’s early Sprachkritik had its most significant development in his early twenties. Until then, he displayed no significant criticism of language. A journal entry

12 The German edition of the Thomson Studienbibel is based on Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, which was the translation with which Brecht was most familiar. 30

from March 10, 1921 looks back at the hubris with which he had earlier utilized language in his work:

Zuerst ist alles einfach, naiv, gesund. Der Zwanzigjährige begreift den Kosmos. Er ist, wie er sein soll. Er hat eine natürliche Beredsamkeit und verwendet sie für einfache, starke Dinge. Das leicht Hymnische seiner Diktion drängt er ins Maß durch derbe Zynismen. Oh, diese Sicherheit des Unbesiegten, Tapferkeit des Beginners! (Brecht 26:186)

This self-assurance in his own comprehension of reality and his language’s capacity to communicate transparently is apparent in the major work from the indicated time period: in May 1918, at the age of twenty, Brecht completed Baal, his first full-length play. This work displays such a “Sicherheit des Unbesiegten.” The language in Baal is at times hymnic and at times cynical and vulgar, but it consistently reflects a confidence in its ability to relate existence and experience. Over the next few years, however, Brecht’s writing treats language with increasing skepticism. The journal entry continues: “Mit einem Mal ergeben sich Fehler bei vollständig richtiger Rechnung. Die Dinge, wie sie sind, verändern ihr Gesicht oder werden unerreichbar” (Brecht 26:186). This indicates that at some point after Baal, Brecht’s position underwent an abrupt change (“Mit einem

Mal”) as doubt arose in language’s ability to directly access reality.

Before Brecht, a sharp critique of language had already been established as a major issue among modernist literary and philosophical forerunners. Primary among these in the philosophical realm was Friedrich Nietzsche. By 1916 Brecht already claimed that his interest in Nietzsche had come to an end, writing in a journal entry,

“Nietzsche mag ich nimmer” (Brecht 26:108). Nevertheless, as Hans-Harald Müller and

Tom Kindt observe, the Sprachskepsis that began to manifest itself in Brecht’s work around 1920 unmistakably exists within the modern tradition of language critique

established by Nietzsche (Müller and Kindt 17). In his essay “Über Wahrheit und Lüge im Außermoralischen Sinne” Nietzsche introduces his critique of language with a parable of a “Gestirn, auf dem kluge Tiere das Erkennen erfanden” (Nietzsche 605). As such intelligent beasts, human beings have developed language, an arbitrary system of auditory signs to organize and make meaning of the experience that their limited faculties of perception and understanding permit. Nietzsche criticizes language as a second-degree metaphor for a reality that we cannot perceive: “Was ist ein Wort? Die Abbildung eines

Nervenreizes in Lauten” (Nietzsche 608). The first degree of metaphor is the sensory stimulus associated with the perceived reality, and the second is the word, the sound associated with the sensory data. Both are inadequate indicators of the meaning they are supposed to signify; the stimulus that we associate with a phenomenon is entirely subjective, and the word is an arbitrary construction. Nietzsche thus criticizes humanity’s pretension both to have knowledge of phenomena as well as to be able to assign meaningful concepts to express this knowledge. “Wir glauben etwas von den Dingen selbst zu wissen, wenn wir von Bäumen, Farben, Schnee und Blumen reden, und besitzen doch nichts als Metaphern der Dinge, die den ursprünglichen Wesenheiten ganz und gar nicht entsprechen” (Nietzsche 2:609-10). The Sprachkritik in Nietzsche’s essay is epistemological at its core, focusing on the inability of human perception to comprehend reality. Brecht appears less concerned with the issue of cognition – his writing does not indicate significant doubt in our capacity to grasp reality. Where he overlaps with

Nietzsche is in his criticism of language’s struggle to communicate, on an essential level, objects of reality.

Brecht’s critique of language goes beyond communicating things, however. He also criticizes language’s failure to adequately describe things in relation to each other, as illustrated in his journal:

Es regnet auf einen Randstein. Wie komisch! Regen. Randstein. Es regnet. Was ist eigentlich Regen? Welche Traurigkeit in dem Plätschern, es muß alles herunter, kann nicht anders, den Randstein schlägt es platt, es rinnt ihm in die Lücken, er weicht auf wie ein Kragen. Aber es freut ihn vielleicht, oder besteht nichts zwischen Randstein und Regen? Kennen sie sich nicht? Warum sind diese Dinge da, wenn man nichts mit ihnen anfangen soll? (Brecht 26:158)

This passage considers the inability of words like “Regen” and “Randstein” to communicate anything besides a vague indication of the objects they are supposed to signify. They cannot adequately present, for example, the relationship between the rain and the curb, the subtleties of their interaction, or the emotional significance therein.

Brecht’s interest in language’s capacity to describe not only things, but also their relationships, is expounded as the journal entry continues:

[Man] läuft an ein Gitter hin, […] er schüttelt an [den Stäben], sie sind naß vom Regen. Er hat nasse Hände. (Zuerst sind die Stäbe naß. Auch seine Hände sind dann naß, werden auch kalt, andere Hände, hängen an den Handgelenken, nasse Hände …) (Brecht 26:158)

This puts into question conventional language’s ability to express the interaction between things, and in particular the causal relationship that exists among them. The bars of the fence transfer the quality of wetness to the person’s hands, which, upon becoming wet and cold, become other hands, foreign to the body they hang from. Although they are still one’s (seine) hands, this transfer of a particular quality of the bars has changed them in a way that language struggles to capture. Brecht’s work consistently maintains a sharp focus not only on individual things and people, but also in relation to each other, and one

concern of his Sprachkritik is, accordingly, the possibility of expressing these relative properties instead of simply expressing isolated things.

Another important contemporary philosopher whom Brecht read and who wrestled with a critique of language was the Austrian author Fritz Mauthner.13

Mauthner’s critique of language is based less on its capacity to express the truth or essence of concepts or things in themselves, and more upon its interpersonal, communicative application. In the first volume of his Beiträge zu einer Kritik der

Sprache (1901), Mauthner rejects the idea that there can be real objectivity:

In Wahrheit ist die Tatsache, welche so großwortig als objektiver Geist auftritt, nichts anderes als die Abhängigkeit des Einzelmenschen von der Sprache, die er von den aufeinander folgenden Massen seiner Volksvorfahren geerbt hat, und die nur darum einen Gebrauchswert für ihn besitzt, weil sie Gemeineigentum aller Volksgenossen ist. (Mauthner 24)

In itself, language bears no meaning or practical value, except insofar as it common property among a group. The third stanza of Brecht’s poem “Vom Mitmensch” from his early collection Bertolt Brechts Hauspostille makes the same essential observation. The poem is a cynical view of the life of a human being, beginning at birth and progressing through life until the final stanza depicts the individual’s death. The third stanza portrays the acquisition of language at an early age:

Sie tun ihr Wort in seine Zähne. Er sagt’s. Sie haben’s schon gesagt. […] Und nennt er seine Wolken Schwäne So schimpfen sie ihn hungrig blind Und zeigen ihm, daß seine Zähne Genau wie ihre Zähne sind. (Brecht 11:59)

13 In 1921 Brecht wrote in his journal that he had read at least one of Mauthner’s major philosophical works, Letzter Tod des Gautama Buddha, which he refers to as “ein ausgezeichnetes Buch des großen Schriftstellers” (Brecht 26:227). While reading it, Brecht also expressed his intention to read another of Mauthner’s works, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendland. 34

Like Mauthner’s critique, these lines portray language as a Gemeineigentum, passed on from one generation to the next. The value of the words exists only to the degree that they are collectively used for common purposes, and any attempt at language that does not conform to its communally established use is not recognized as valid and even results in punishment. The poem thus suggests that language is not only a common possession, but even a means of regulating conformity. These lines critically question the validity of any claims made to objectivity through language, showing that the reason clouds are called clouds and not swans has nothing to do with the meaning of the word in itself, but rather simply because those imparting their language to the child do not recognize this as valid.

Mauthner also writes that objective communication is impossible even within a group that speaks a supposedly common language, because the subjectivity of individual experience, perception, and expression forms an interpersonal gap that language cannot entirely span: “Gemeinsam ist die Muttersprache etwa, wie der Horizont gemeinsam ist; es gibt keine zwei Menschen mit gleichem Horizont, jeder ist der Mittelpunkt seines eigenen” (Mauthner 19). Mauthner’s criticism focuses on language’s struggle to create objective meaning when it can only be used to relate subjective experience. This critique is also present in Brecht’s work. Indeed, at the core of his treatment of language and, for that matter, his work in general is the individual in relation to other individuals, to a collective, or to society as a whole. In these relationships the individual appears to sit separated from others, as illustrated in an unpublished poem written in 1922:

Jeder Mensch auf seinem Eiland sitzt Klappert mit den Zähnen oder schwitzt […] Doch von seinem Zähneklappern Kann man nichts herunterknappern.

Jeder Mensch in seiner Sprache mault Und kein Mensch versteht es, was er jault Ist er mal im Kopfe licht Dann versteht’s auch er wohl nicht. (Brecht 13:251)

The poem emphasizes the individual’s state of isolation like that on an island. Brecht’s early work argues that subjectivity separates the individual from others, and that an individual’s language, as a subjective creation meant to communicate subjective experience, cannot bridge the interpersonal gap; rather, it reinforces the subjectivity it is intended to negotiate. The poem criticizes language as an inadequate tool for fostering any kind of transcendent or objective understanding between people. The third and fourth lines of the second stanza suggest that language’s deficiencies render it indecipherable even to the speaker, alienating it from the original experience and thought it is meant to relate.

The foreignness of language even to the self recalls a seminal text written by one of Brecht’s literary forerunners, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Hofmannsthal’s text Ein Brief, written in 1902, is a fictional letter from Philip, Lord Chandos, to his friend Francis

Bacon in 1603. In the letter, Chandos explains that for him, words have become unreliable as bearers of meaning:

Es gelang mir nicht mehr, [die Menschen und Handlungen] mit dem vereinfachenden Blick der Gewohnheit zu erfassen. Es zerfiel mir alles in Teile, die Teile wieder in Teile, und nichts mehr ließ sich mit einem Begriff umspannen. Die einzelnen Worte schwammen um mich; sie gerannen zu Augen, die mich anstarrten und in die ich wieder hin einstarren muß. (Hofmannsthal 52)

Chandos complains that the words he has always so easily employed have suddenly begun to crumble, unable to contain an authentic sense of the things they are meant to

capture. This collapse of language’s ability to relate meaning has brought Chandos, once an avid writer, to a point where he is hardly able to compose a letter to his friend.

There has been scholarly disagreement regarding the degree to which Brecht’s early critique of language corresponds with Hofmannsthal’s as illustrated in Ein Brief.

Some critics see the same absolute doubt in Brecht’s critique of language as in

Hofmannsthal’s Sprachkrise. Voigts argues, for example: “Das Erlebnis des

Sprachzerfalls hat Brecht mit Hofmannsthal gerade gemeinsam, Brecht ordnet sich hier ganz in die moderne Linie der bürgerlichen Literatur ein” (Voigts 65).14 Others, however, maintain the opposite; Olivia Gabor writes that “Brecht did not experience the early

‘Sprachkrise’ that brought young Hofmannsthal’s poetic years to an end. He never suffered from a struggling relationship with language so clearly expressed by Lord

Chandos” (Gabor 122). I agree with Gabor’s assessment: although Brecht exhibits a similar critique and skepticism of language, he nevertheless displays an optimism which is absent in Hofmannsthal, and which keeps his Sprachkritik from falling into a hopeless

Sprachkrise. Chandos despairs at language’s inefficacy in expressing a coherent judgment in any case, whether transcendent or mundane. Brecht lightens the burden of his skepticism by disposing of any notions of transcendent truth to which language should be held accountable. For the materialist Brecht the existence of such a truth is irrelevant and should not be the target of language. Rather, he writes, “Die Sprache ist

14 Voigts also sees in Brecht’s early critique of language “eine starke Tendenz zur Autonomisierung der Kunst, die einige Ähnlichkeit mit Hofmannsthals l’art pour l’art hat” (Voigts 65). Jan Knopf disagrees with such claims, arguing instead that “Brecht durchbricht die Scheinsicherheit der Wörter, er sucht den Kontakt zu einer als zugänglich gedachten Wirklichkeit, die sich bei ihm als stärker erweist, als die Sprache und ihre Erfahrungen. Dies verhindert die »Autonomie der Kunst«, ihre Abkehr von der Wirklichkeit, es garantiert gerade ihre Desillusionierung” (Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch 39). I agree with Knopf that Brecht’s critique of language stems from a desire to access authentic experience through language as opposed to the need to flee from reality within art. In addition, Brecht’s particular suspicion of the written word, as I discuss in this chapter, implies a fundamental doubt in the autonomy of art at all and argues against any suggestion that he would seek refuge within such autonomy. 37

dazu da, um die Taten zu verurteilen. Dies ist ihre einzige Rolle. Aber sie füllt sie nicht einmal aus” (Brecht 26:116). Language’s concern should be with material reality and deeds, and how their interactions and relationships make up the world. Brecht is interested with material reality, to which ideas, for him, are subordinate. His criticism arises from the concern that conventional language fails on this level. Although he shares

Hofmannsthal’s doubt, then, it is only regarding the material, and, as I will demonstrate, he still maintains an optimism that language can be fashioned to effectively access this reality.

Brecht’s Sprachkritik also recalls, in part, his immediate literary precursors, the

German expressionists, for many of whom problems of language were a central concern.15 In the 1918 essay “Revolution der Sprache,” expressionist dramatic theorist

Oswald Pander criticizes the traditional process of linguistic concept formation as

“Evolution der Sprache”: “Als wachsendes Wissen Welt in Schubfächer zwängte,

Bewegtes im Geist hemmte, Farbiges schwarz-weiß sah, Heißfließendes kühl erstarren hieß, ward Sprache mechanisiert, schablonisiert […] – Evolution der Sprache!” (Pander

612). Brecht’s accusation that the word is the thing’s corpse echoes Pander’s claim that

15 The term “expressionist” is problematic due to the diversity of the literature it connotes. Within German expressionism, works differ greatly from each other in their aesthetic and philosophic approaches. Scholars have attempted to further classify and qualify categories within expressionism. Walter Sokel’s seminal study The Writer in Extremis divides German expressionist literature into two groups roughly corresponding with Schiller’s notions of naive and sentimental poetry. These two main categories are based primarily on their aesthetics; the first he calls naive, or rhetorical expressionism and the second he refers to as modernist, or cubist expressionism. However, more recent scholarship has sought alternative modes of categorization. Frank Krause, for instance, sees problems in Sokel’s classification and argues that certain texts belonging in Sokel’s two categories frequently reach across the divide to incorporate aspects of the others’ camp into themselves. As it is not my objective here to examine German expressionism, I use the term to refer generally to German expressionist literature in its broad sense. Brecht’s response to expressionism was as diverse as the different camps included under the term; he generally disdained it as “Vergröberung” and “Freude an der Idee, aber keine Ideen” (Brecht 21:48-49), but he also found literary role models in writers commonly considered to belong under (or at least near) the rubric of expressionism, such as Frank Wedekind, Carl Sternheim, and Georg Kaiser, whom he often openly praised (although whether an author like Sternheim considered himself an expressionist was another matter). 38

knowledge has removed color and movement from life by capturing it in conventional language. Pander illustrates his argument using the concept Löwe to exemplify how the evolution of language has led to its expressive inadequacy:

Erinnerungsschäle für den jungen Löwen, für den alten Löwen, für den kämpfenden Löwen, den fressenden Löwen, den brüllenden Löwen, den schlafenden Löwen, den zeugenden Löwen, den verendenden Löwen schmolzen in westlichen Sprachen zum einen Wort – Löwe, als Begriff, Abstraktionshülse. Begriff hat die Nabelschnur des Erlebens abgerissen. Worte sind aus tönendem Erleben leise Zeichen und stumme blasse Bilder für kärglich Gedachtes geworden. (Pander 612)

Pander’s use of the terms Erinnerungsschäle and Abstraktionshülse to describe concepts resonates with Brecht’s later image of the crusts that things develop in being crystallized in language. Brecht’s critique agrees with Pander’s view that the word or concept strips the thing of its vitality, tearing out the umbilical cord of experience in Pander’s words and leaving only “die Leiche des Dinges,” as Brecht puts it.

Pander’s essay argues that the formation of concepts, exemplified by the use of the concept Löwe to include a lion in all its possible manifestations and activities, robs things of their individuality and actuality. Our capability to communicate experience is, according to this criticism, greatly reduced by the use of concepts. In a journal entry from

September 6, 1920, Brecht considers the relationship between things and words in a way that recalls Pander’s critique:

Viele Dinge sind erstarrt, die Haut hat sich ihnen verdickt, sie haben Schilde vor, das sind die Wörter. Da sind Haufen toter Häuser, einmal Steinhaufen mit Löchern, in denen abends Lichter angezündet werden und in denen Fleischpakete herumwandeln, unter Dächern gegen den Regen des Himmels und die Verlorenheit des grauenhaften Sternenhimmels, gesichert gegen dies alles und den Wind, und nachts liegen die Pakete erstarrt unter Tüchern und Kissen, mit offenem Mund, Luft aus- und einpumpend, die Augenlöcher zu. Dies alles ist totgeschlagen durch das Wort Häuser, das uns im Gehirn sitzt und uns sichert gegen den Ansturm des Dinges. (Brecht 26:157) 39

As with Pander’s Löwe, the dead word Häuser covers the vibrant material reality that exists behind it. In blocking this reality, words also function as shields (Schilde), securing us against the onslaught of the thing (Ansturm des Dinges). Instead of granting access to authentic experience, language protects us from it and acts as a kind of “metaphysischen

Beruhigung” (Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch 39). Pander’s essay sees a similar psychological function of language: “Bequemlichkeit fertiger Denkformen für unfertig Gedachtes.

Fertige Denkformen machen das Krumme gerade, das Vielfache einfach, geben dem

Gestaltlosen Gestalt. Und der Dumme spricht gelehrt” (Pander 612). Pander is critical of this function, namely to foster comfortableness (Bequemlichkeit) in labeling, and thereby supposedly comprehending, phenomena which are in reality much more complex.

Pander’s essay reflects a conviction shared by many expressionists that language must undergo an extreme structural revision to make up for its representational inadequacies. Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, a founding thinker of Italian futurism and an influence on many German expressionists, proposed an overthrow of conventional language use through the end of syntax. He argues that syntax serves as a prison for words and dilutes their potential meaning through conjugation, declension, conjunctions, punctuation, adverbs, adjectives, and articles, which lock language within fixed logical and causal constructs. Futurist literature was a literature in which, at least on a theoretical level, nouns were scattered in chains of increasingly new and obscure analogies: “To catch and gather whatever is most fugitive and ungraspable in matter, one must shape strict nets of images or analogies, to be cast into the sea of phenomena” (Marinetti 94).

Syntactical elements of language tie words together within the boundaries of a set grammar and logic, thereby limiting the possible associations between them. The removal 40

of syntax, Marinetti argues, will allow these nets of images, woven together analogically instead of syntactically, to harvest in new associations between and understanding of the objects of experience.

Expressionists like Pander followed suit, removing syntactical elements from their writing to allow the reader to subjectively determine new relations and meaning among concepts. His essay approves of the expressionist linguistic revolution through which conventional understanding is subverted:

Expressionismus brachte [der Sprache]: Revolution. Beweis: jedes radikal expressionistische Gedicht, das in der bunten Ecke der Zeitungen auf den Scheiterhaufen öffentlicher Lächerlichkeit gezerrt wird: seht! kein Subjekt, kein Objekt, kein Prädikat, keine Deklination, keine Konjugation, keine Grammatik und, ach! keine Logik; wir verstehen das nicht, es hat keinen Verstand! (Pander 612-13)

Although many expressionists praised such revolution, this is a point where Brecht’s

Sprachkritik takes another path. Even in his poetry, Brecht generally maintains conventional linguistic structures. While he was critical of language, he did not see the necessity of demolishing it as a prerequisite of fixing it. This reveals, beneath his criticism, an underlying faith in language’s potential for expressive efficacy, which I will discuss below.

Carl Sternheim’s 1917 essay “Kampf der Metapher!” is critical of the extreme measures taken by many expressionist writers to revise language, arguing instead that those who apply them succeed merely in exaggerating and overusing the same traditional metaphors and concepts that have always been available: “Noch immer hatten mit aller

Welt [die Expressionisten] gleiche Begriffe, die sie nur mit vollen Backen bis zum

Platzen aufgeblasen hatten” (Sternheim 65).16 What results, Sternheim concludes, is that

“[bei fast allen heutigen Dichtern] das scheinbar sich Empörende, Verschiedenartige sich immer auf ein großes Allgemeines noch zurückbezieht, der Autor im Dunstkreis zentraleuropäischer Gemeinplätze bleibt” (66). Sternheim’s criticism of the expressionists is that in their efforts to escape the confines of the concept (Begriff), they actually reinforce its prominence.

Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Sternheim, and expressionists like Pander are explicitly critical of the notion of concept, a term of central importance to Hegel’s idealism. The term Begriff itself presents problems for the skeptic: it is related to the German verb begreifen, which entails understanding and comprehension. In an intellectual tradition that questions human capability to perceive reality, the very term itself appears to present an insurmountable obstacle to its accurate application. For Nietzsche, a concept-centered epistemology is inadequate because concepts succeed only in designating things that are similar to and can be categorized with each other due to a perceived common trait. He defines Begriff in these terms:

Jedes Wort wird dadurch Begriff, daß es eben nicht für das einmalige ganz und gar individualisierte Urerlebnis, dem es sein Entstehen verdankt, etwa als Erinnerung dienen soll, sondern zugleich für zahllose, mehr oder weniger ähnliche, daß heißt streng genommen niemals gleiche, also auf lauter ungleiche Fälle passen muß. Jeder Begriff entsteht durch Gleichsetzen des Nichtgleichen. (Nietzsche 2:610)

This passage suggests that, even if we are able to overlook the limits of human perception and the word’s status as a metaphor of a metaphor, a concept is still incapable of

16 Daniel Frey maintains that Brecht’s designation of Wort as “die Leiche des Dinges” is a continuation of Sternheim’s essay: “1917 gibt Carl Sternheim seine “Kampf der Metapher”-Parole aus, Aufruf zu einem Kampf, den Brecht drei Jahre später fortzusetzen scheint” (Frey 127). This may have some truth to it – Brecht certainly admired the language in Sternheim’s plays (Brecht 21:49) – but it cannot be ignored that in his early work Brecht makes abundant use of metaphor, the rhetorical device against which Sternheim’s essay declares war. 42

expressing an identifying quality of a thing. As an equalizer of what is essentially unequal, a concept can only define something to a certain point, collecting under the same label what is similar based on some arbitrarily determined criterion. The concept can neither provide access to the original experience (Urerlebnis) to which it owes its initial usage, nor to any individual instance of what it is meant to represent.

Pander’s application of the concept Löwe illustrates his dismissal of the notion that the world can be represented through language. He argues instead that the word petrifies a living, flowing reality, and he is specifically critical of the concept’s role, as he observes it in this process:

Sprache liegt so in Begriffen versteint. […] Verständige Sprache, Verstandessprache setzt eine ruhende, erstarrte Welt, eine übersichtliche Mosaik voraus […]. Aber Welt ist nicht starr, sondern fließt. Erlebnisse sind durchaus vieldeutig. Begriff erdrosselt Schauen und Wollen im Schraubstock; die Leiche heißt Klischee. (Pander 612-13).

Again, the similarity between Brecht’s critique and the expressionist view of Pander is apparent, particularly in both writers’ image of the word as the corpse (Leiche) of reality.

Although the criticism leveled against concepts in Pander’s expressionist critique of language differs from Nietzsche’s by focusing on the concept’s inability to negotiate reality’s fluidity rather than its multiplicity and variety, both men’s conclusions share a common critique that a concept can ultimately only generalize objects, and in its inability to access the particular, language fails as a means of truly communicating either materialist or idealist notions of reality.

While they attack the efficacy of concepts, which is such a central point of

Hegel’s philosophy, these modernist critics fail to see that Hegel is both keenly aware of and unapologetic for this characteristic of language. For them, Begriff no longer signifies

the rational concept itself as it does for Hegel, but rather conventional language in its unsuccessful attempt to capture an aspect of reality, an attempt in which, they argue, the

Begriff fails. In this regard, their critique of Begriff is not unlike Hegel’s attitude toward language. Like Nietzsche, Hegel recognizes that words cannot accurately depict specific, particular things:

Sage ich: ein einzelnes Ding, so sage ich es vielmehr ebenso als ganz Allgemeines, denn alle sind ein einzelnes Ding; und gleichfalls dieses Ding ist alles, was man will. Genauer bezeichnet, als dieses Stück Papier, so ist alles und jedes Papier ein dieses Stück Papier, und ich habe nur immer das Allgemeine gesagt. (Hegel 3:92)

Hegel argues that words are only able to signify ideal, absolute forms, of which particular phenomena are, to varying degrees, instances. He, too, rejects the positivist notions that

Nietzsche and Pander denounce, at least at the level of sensory perception. He is critical of attitudes that would posit that singular, specific objects of sensory perception can be accessed and described through language. He writes regarding those with such an attitude:

Sie sprechen von dem Dasein äußerer Gegenstände, welche, noch genauer, als wirkliche, absolut einzelne, ganz persönliche, individuelle Dinge, deren jedes seines absolut gleichen nicht mehr hat, bestimmt werden können; dies Dasein habe absolute Gewißheit und Wahrheit. (Hegel 3:91)

Such claims, Hegel continues, cannot be correct, “weil das sinnliche Diese, das gemeint wird, der Sprache, die dem Bewußtsein, dem an sich Allgemeinen angehört, unerreichbar ist” (Hegel 3:91-92). Hegel both argues and accepts that because language can only be general and never particular, it cannot be effectively used to illustrate the nature and certainty of a unique object. Although this lies at the root of the other critical views of language discussed here, it is not a problem that Hegel strives to resolve.

Hegel’s idealism sees the realm of rational concepts as the primary determinant of the nature of the world, and language thus has the task, for him, to communicate the absolute, rational concepts that dictate – at least ideally – the nature of reality, and not the myriad contingencies and variations of these concepts that arise within the material world. The universal reason which attains absolute truth does so in stages: just as Spirit progresses within time and space in Hegel’s philosophy, so does reason primarily unfold itself and develop at an ideal level, gradually approaching absolute knowledge of true concepts and reality. As reason dialectically progresses toward absolute knowledge, language, too, must undergo similar revision through rational supersession in order to be able to maintain its efficacy as an instrument for relating rational concepts. Jim Vernon argues that for Hegel, the key to this lies in “stripping language of all vestiges of subjective or contingent peculiarity, creating the material requisite for a truly objective deduction of the form of content-determination” (Vernon 16). Vernon’s study leads him to reason that Hegel was confident that language, properly utilized, had the potential within itself to accomplish this.

The modernists did not share this optimism: Hofmannsthal’s Brief offers no solutions for Chandos’ crisis, and neither does Nietzsche’s essay; instead, Nietzsche supplies a nihilistic ending to the tale of the intelligent beasts who invented Erkennen:

“Es war die hochmütigste und verlogenste Minute der »Weltgeschichte«: aber doch nur eine Minute. Nach wenigen Atemzüge der Natur erstarrte das Gestirn, und die klugen

Tiere mußten sterben” (Nietzsche 605). This perspective offers no solution to the problem of language, finding instead contentment in the fatalistic view that after the relatively few moments of the existence of humans and Erkennen, these will essentially

have never existed in the first place. On the other hand, some modernist critics anticipated a potential redemption of language either by means of a thorough reassembly or a messianic new language based on much more than linguistic structures, as Pander prophesies: “Die neue Sprache ist noch nicht da, aber sie ist auf dem Wege. Sie wird

Musik und Gebärde sein, vielleicht einmal Tanz und Weissagung” (613). Writers like

Marinetti called for an analogical language, freed from syntax and liberated from fixed traditional associations and logic. Though Sternheim was critical of such efforts, his solution’s aim was essentially similar: these thinkers sought a revision of language by developing a new mode of linguistic communication fostered by extreme subjectivity.17

Brecht’s solution is not to seek refuge in such subjectivity, likely because in his writing, the issue of Erkennen is generally not a problem. Material reality is the only reality with which he concerns himself, and which language should address. Jan Knopf writes that the reason why Brecht, as opposed to other modernist critics, does not look to subjectivity as his solution is that modern experience has eliminated the subject:

während Hofmannsthal (vorher ist Nietzsche zu nennen) und die Expressionisten aus dem Sprachzerfall, seiner Erfahrung schließen, die Wirklichkeit sei dem Menschen prinzipiell unzugänglich, man müsse dem Sprachzerfall die neue Vision des Subjekts gegenüberstellen, es müsse die Welt neu bauen, stellt Brecht gerade den Wirklichkeitsbezug her, zeigt er, wie die Wirklichkeit […] dem Menschen die Mitte nimmt, aus der heraus er sich vielleicht eine neue, aus dem Sprachzerfall hervorgehende Welt bauen könnte […]. (Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch 39)

Brecht’s critique is not a continuation of the other modernist approaches to language, which retreat into an extreme subjectivity. This is because reality removes the center

17 The exception that he notes among the expressionists is Gottfried Benn, whose work Sternheim sets up as a model for others. According to Sternheim, Benn’s works provide a legitimate reconfiguring of language and perception not through syntactical manipulation or the pretense of uncovering new metaphorical relations between concepts, but through a novel, truly subjective and sovereign representation of experience that speaks “an Klischee und Metapher vorbei, aus sich selbst ursprünglich” (Sternheim 66). 46

(Mitte) from the subject, a process that Brecht treats with marked ambiguity.18 With the removal of the subjective core, the ultra-subjective vision of the expressionists loses its significance. Language’s task is not to relate a new, subjectively constructed reality, but to foster intersubjective communication. And although the material primacy of Brecht’s notion of reality differs from Hegel’s idealism, Brecht, like Hegel, appear optimistic that language, properly fashioned, possesses the tools to accomplish this.

This optimism that language, as a creation of human consciousness, has the potential to communicate reality is what most decidedly separates Hegel’s view of language from those of Nietzsche, Mauthner, Hofmannsthal, and the expressionists. And while Brecht is critical of language’s shortcomings in a way that recalls established modernist critiques, his writing likewise demonstrates an optimism that fundamentally sets his view apart from the Sprachkritik and Sprachkrise of many modernists and resonates much more with Hegel, who saw the solution to language’s inadequacies within the bounds of language itself and sought to fashion an effectively objective mode of communication. Even though language is contingent and subjective according to individual sensory experience and perception, Hegel’s idealist belief that the same reason which organizes external reality is also present in the human mind enables a solution within his system of thought.

Brecht also works toward a solution within traditional structural boundaries of language.19 Beneath his sharp criticism of language there remains an abiding belief in its

18 I will further discuss this in chapter 4 and my conclusion. 19 This is not to say that Brecht did not make use of non-linguistic means to foster greater communication of meaning. In his theater Brecht certainly used music and physical gesture (specifically his notion of Gestus), and these were key elements of the Verfremdung he sought in his plays, even before he had developed an explicit theoretical framework for his epic theater. My focus here is on his approach to language itself, as indicated in all genres of his work. 47

expressive potential. In his journal he writes that words are “keine spanischen Wände um die Betten, worin das Leben gezeugt wird. Es sind nicht die Lakaien der Ideen, sondern ihre Liebhaber, ihre ironischen Liebhaber” (Brecht 26:147). This metaphor suggests that words should not be viewed as subservient or secondary to thought, nor should they act as mere veils covering some authentic thing-in-itself. Rather, language should have and maintain a living, dynamic connection to material reality. Brecht’s faith in the potential of language to accomplish this appears, for example, in a journal entry from September 4,

1920, written after he attended a passion play in the Metropol-Theater in Augsburg:

Abends in der »Großen deutschen Passion« der Brüder Faßnacht. Elender Text, geschmacklose Aufmachung. Aber gewisse Bibelworte nicht totzukriegen. Sie gehen durch und durch. Man sitzt unter Schauern, die einem, unter der Haut, den Rücken lang herunterstreichen, wie bei der Liebe. (Brecht 26:153)

Obviously unimpressed by the play, Brecht nevertheless acknowledges the power of certain biblical words.20 The effects that these words have upon the listener are expressed in a decidedly physical description that likens them to sexual experience. This is notably similar to the visceral nature of Brecht’s own language, as the critic Herbert Ihering describes in his article “Zu dem theatergeschichtlichen Verdienst der Münchener

Kammerspiele,” printed in the Berlin Börsen-Courier on October 5, 1922. In the article

Ihering champions the theater of the newcomer Brecht: “Der vierundzwanzigjährige

Dichter Bert Brecht hat über Nacht das dichterische Antlitz Deutschlands verändert.”

(Ihering 4-5). Ihering comments on the power of Brecht’s theatrical language: the young

Brecht is, he continues, a writer who “den nackten Menschen reden läßt, aber mit einer

20 Despite his clear rejection of its theology, Brecht nevertheless was profoundly influenced by the language of Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible. In a 1928 survey the magazine Die Dame posed the question to a number of authors, “Welches Buch hat Ihnen in Ihrem Leben den stärksten Eindruck gemacht?” (Brecht 21:697). Brecht’s famous response was simply, “Sie werden lachen: die Bibel” (Brecht 21:248). 48

Sprachgewalt, die seit Jahrzehnten unerhört ist. […] Diese Sprache fühlt man auf der

Zunge, am Gaumen, im Ohr, im Rückgrat” (5).

Of course, Ihering’s evaluation is based on the spoken language he heard in

Brecht’s theatrical work. Written language provided a further challenge for Brecht, as it lacks even the physical, material aspects of auditory words. Brecht addressed this problem, on the one hand, through the form of his literature; his primary output invited live performance, either in the theater or through recitation and song, as many of his poems were set to music. This performative element of his work, as well as the frequent revision that much of his work underwent, reflect an attempt to employ language in a way that it may adapt to the constant change that Brecht observed in the world. Brecht’s

Sprachkritik appears to be directed most pointedly against written language, which lacks the living adaptability of “performed” language. Like language in general, the written word petrifies a flowing reality by covering dynamic things with static words. Literature takes this a step further, however, increasing the stasis of the word through fixed orthography and establishing a greater permanence in print. Brecht frequently criticizes his own creative medium, as in the following unpublished fragment from 1920 or 1921:

Mein Geschäft zur Zeit sind Papierverkäufe Das ist abenteuerlicher, kühner und hochstaplerischer Als das des Marquis von Keith.21 Ich könnte geradesogut den Rauch meiner Zigaretten verkaufen. […] Ich muß früh aufstehen, denn Natürlich habe ich es schwerer wie die andern Die gute Ware vertreiben. (Brecht 203-204)

21 The titular figure in Frank Wedekind’s 1901 play Der Marquis von Keith is a confidence man. Tellingly for Brecht’s reference, Keith consistently uses art as his means of choice for swindling others into financing his pursuits. 49

Brecht does not write that he sells poems or plays, but rather paper. This poem reduces all of the possible forms of literature, as well as any value – intellectual, cultural, historical, etc. – to its strictly material element, paper. Like the smoke of his cigars and the crusts of words, this paper is a sensory residue that only hints at the nature of what it signifies. The material essence of the cigar, its flavor and aroma, is fleetingly summarized and trivialized by its smoke, just as the most fertile thought that inspires artistic creation is sterilized through the written word. Thus the poem indicates his need to get up a bit earlier in the morning to make a living selling this paper, as opposed to “gute Ware.”

Brecht’s criticism of written language thus brings him to critique “die vernichtende und irrsinnige Bedeutung bedruckten Papiers,” as he puts it in his journal

(Brecht 26:258). While writing Trommeln in der Nacht, he records his struggle to compose a satisfactory final section of the play. He complains in his journal that the fourth act “ist zu Papier geworden, verakademisiert, glatt, rasiert und mit Badehosen usw.

Anstatt erdiger, unbedenklicher, frecher, einfältiger! Jetzt mache ich nur mehr feurige

Dreckklöße!” (Brecht 26:129). The text, he writes, has become paper. This echoes the above poem in implying that the value of the literature is reduced to the material on which it is written. As the journal entry continues, this reduction of the fourth act to mere paper reflects a trivialization of the content’s potential, as well as the absence of the living, material nature of the action it is meant to portray. In becoming paper, the act loses its elemental rawness and simplicity. At a later point, Brecht voices a similar dissatisfaction with the writing of Im Dickicht der Städte: “Die Aktion im »Dickicht« kam ins Stocken; es ist zuviel Literatur drin. Das Gewäsch zweier Literaten” (Brecht

26:251). Again, the danger that written language poses is indicated here, namely to hinder the play’s substance, its action, by reducing it to impotent literary nonsense.

As Brecht argues in a May 1921 journal entry, this tendency of the written word to sterilize artistic potential arises because conventional writing suffers from excessive unambiguousness:

Die Kunst des Schreibens ist die vulgärste und gewöhnlichste aller Künste. Sie ist zu offen, eindeutig und überprüfbar. Sie faßt selbst die fruchtbarsten Gedanken so, daß sie eo ipso platt werden und aussichtslos. Sowohl die Stellungnahme des Schreibers wie seine Bemühungen, jene auch dem Leser aufzudrängen, liegt offen am Tag. Es gibt kein Geheimnis, und wo es kein Geheimnis gibt, gibt es keine Wahrheit. (Brecht 26:214)

The vulgarity of literature, this entry argues, is a result of its clarity. The transparency of written language assumed by positivism is detrimental to any truth the work attempts to relate, and whatever life may have existed in the fertile thought behind the language is sterilized and deadened as it is frozen in written words. Written language’s stasis and lack of ambiguity hinders mystery (Geheimnis) in literature, and where there is no mystery, he writes, there is no truth. When read in this context, a journal entry from March 1921 acquires further meaning:

Jeder weiß: ein Baum ist ein Holz. Aber man wird müd. Das Spielen ist es nicht. Lügen ist schön, wenn einem was einfällt. Dann gehen ihm Bedeutungen von Beziehungen auf, es zeigen sich Geheimnisse. Wieviel geschieht mit dem Baum, wie ist das verborgen, wie beherrscht er sein Gesicht, daß es gleichbleibt! (Brecht 26:186)

Here Brecht prescribes a playful approach to language, which uncovers interaction among words that is not immediately apparent, and avoids the unambiguousness of written language. Through this playing, which Brecht designates as lying, the relations between things are exposed, mysteries are uncovered, and it is through ambiguity and

mystery that truth is exposed. This echoes, to some extent, the futurist desire of inviting new associations and relations between words, but Brecht ultimately differs in both theory and practice: he rejects an abstract reconstruction of language, and instead of gathering in new images from the sea of phenomena, as Marinetti puts it, Brecht’s essentially dialectic way of thinking leads his play with language to uncover contradiction in reality.

In accordance with his critique of the written word, Brecht often employs paper as a derogatory metaphor in his writing. As will be discussed in more detail in the chapters that follow, images of paper, books, identification papers, wanted posters, and newspapers arise throughout his early work, and consistently with negative implications reflecting his critique of language. In the same journal entry criticizing the word as “die

Leiche des Dinges,” Brecht uses the image of newspaper reports to illustrate insufficient descriptions of reality: “Wir haben von den Dingen nichts als Zeitungsberichte in uns.

Wir sehen die Geschehnisse mit den Augen von Reportern, die nur bemerken, was interessieren könnte, was verstanden wird” (Brecht 26:157-58). Brecht argues that attempting to view and record reality as a newspaper reporter, namely by pointing out only what is interesting and comprehensible, is writing entirely without Geheimnis. To write so clearly and purposefully is to sterilize language, “deren ganzer Reiz verblaßt, wenn sie absichtlich wirkt und willkürlich,” as Brecht puts it in his 1920 essay “Zur

Ästhetik des Dramas” (Brecht 21:95). And in an unpublished poetic fragment called

“Zwei Dinge geziemen dem Mann” (1920/21), Brecht writes regarding clear language’s failure to express what it is meant to:

Aber das Deutliche Stirbt schnell wie ein Pferd 52

Das einhält in einem Rennen: Es wird überrannt. (Brecht 13:302)

Language that is too clear (das Deutliche) entails no Geheimnis. It is static and cannot flex or adapt to the flux of reality, and therefore petrifies what it signifies, becoming the corpse of the thing. Ambiguity, or das Undeutliche, on the other hand, resists a fixed meaning and fosters the Geheimnis that Brecht sees as a prerequisite of truth.

Like Brecht, Hegel also values ambiguity in language, as it resists the Verstand of mere consciousness that must be overcome with the speculative, self-conscious Vernunft.

The language of Verstand, which presumes to attribute certain, fixed meaning to a clear reality, is unable to acknowledge and reconcile the countless inherent contradictions in that reality. In order to progress along with speculative reason, language itself is and must be contradictory, reflecting the dialectical movement of reason as contradictions are superseded. Jere O’Neill Surber explains why this is so in Hegel’s thought:

The very restless and dynamic character of language turns out to be more “truthful” than any attempt of consciousness to articulate and fix the meaning of what it takes to be its object in some simple predicative form; rather, consciousness, in its very statement of its “certainty,” always ends up saying something other and more than it actually intends, and it is this intrinsic unruliness and restlessness of language itself that fuels the moves from one attitude of consciousness to another. (Surber 12)

In his Phänomenologie des Geistes, Hegel observes in language “die göttliche Natur […], die Meinung unmittelbar zu verkehren, zu etwas anderem zu machen und so sie gar nicht zum Worte kommen zu lassen” (Hegel 3:92). 22 Hegel does not mean this ironically; because our recognition of reality develops dialectically as reason pits contradictory theses against each other until they are superseded, this “divine nature” of language, its

22 Note that Meinung here indicates meaning and not opinion (which the term would normally be presumed to suggest). See Kainz (1994), p. 31. 53

apparent slipperiness and fluidity, allows it to move and evolve as Spirit progresses from one stage of knowledge to the next.

Hegel believed himself fortunate to be a native German speaker, as he felt that the

German language possesses a naturally contradictory nature which makes it more fit than other languages to accomplish its purposes:

die deutsche Sprache hat […] viele Vorzüge vor den anderen modernen Sprachen; sogar sind manche ihrer Wörter von der weiteren Eigenheit, verschiedene Bedeutungen nicht nur, sondern entgegengesetzte zu haben, so daß darin selbst ein spekulativer Geist der Sprache nicht zu verkennen ist; es kann dem Denken eine Freude gewähren, auf solche Wörter zu stoßen und die Vereinigung Entgegengesetzter, welches Resultat der Spekulation für den Verstand aber widersinnig ist, auf naive Weise schon lexikalisch als ein Wort von den entgegengesetzten Bedeutungen vorzufinden. (Hegel 5:20-21)

Brecht and Hegel both see ambiguity as a necessary component of language when it is used to communicate reality. Although Brecht’s materialism and Hegel’s idealism bring the two to view the nature of reality differently, they still each view it as full of contradiction and opposition that clear language fails to address. For both of them, a contradictory language that eschews das Deutliche is a language that is not fixed and static like Hegel’s language of Verstand or Brecht’s Zeitungsberichte. Such a fluid language is able to negotiate the flux of reality, whether this flux is rational and teleological, as is the case with Hegel, or chaotic and material, as with Brecht.

Despite their opposing respective views of what constitutes reality, Brecht and

Hegel share the perspective that language’s limitations in addressing reality result from the residual meaning that words collect as their meaning is petrified through popular usage. In addition to this, they both display an optimism that these limitations can be negotiated within the structural bounds of language. Thus neither of them resorts to

radical reconfiguration, such as an expressionist demolition of language, which Brecht criticizes in “Zur Ästhetik des Dramas”:

Ich weiß nicht, warum die Jüngsten so kramphaft an ihrem Material herumneuern und mit der Reform bei der Sprache anfangen […]. Das sind Bemühungen eines kleinen Geschlechts. Wozu neue Steine wählen, wo die Architektur so unendlich viel Platz für neue Ideen hat! (Brecht 21:95)

Brecht criticizes the need some felt to change the building blocks of language, suggesting that instead of new tools, one should seek new ideas. He calls not for a syntactical reformulation of language, but rather for a conscientious cleansing of words, to remove the crusts they develop over time. He notes in his journal: “Man hat seine eigene Wäsche, man wäscht sie mitunter. Man hat nicht seine eigenen Wörter, und man wäscht sie nie”

(Brecht 26:158). Whereas dirt and residue are periodically washed off of a person’s clothing, Brecht complains that although we use words as if they were our own, we never wash off their crusts, because they are not our possessions, and subsequently not viewed as our responsibility. They develop a residue that fixes their meaning while the material reality that they are meant to signify is in continuous flux. Petrified in their crusts, they lose their ambiguity and become nothing but Zeitungsberichte, only able to point out what is immediately noticeable or comprehensible. With no Geheimnis, they lose of the potential for truth.

Thus Brecht suggests that, like our laundry, we regularly wash our words. He gives some indications of what he means by this, writing that words “müssen aufgestachelt werden, enthäutet, bös gemacht, man muß sie füttern und herauslocken unter der Schale, ihnen pfeifen, sie streicheln und schlagen, im Taschentuch herumtragen, abrichten” (Brecht 26:158). The notions of skinning words and coaxing them out of their shells correspond with the metaphorical crust they develop. The verb abrichten has 55

several possible meanings, and each casts a significant light on its application in the present context. Some English equivalents include to train, trim, straighten, and plane.

All of these indicate that an adjustment is made; three of the four suggest that physical manipulation is applied, so that the object is made to fit where it belongs. In the case of words, these adjustments restore the word to signify its intended object, free of the crust that has kept its meaning from adapting with reality. Words must be washed regularly in order to continue to adapt to a material reality in constant flux.

In this regard, Brecht’s proposed solution is a material reflection of Hegel’s. Both see the limitations in language, but both also recognize the necessity of its use in communicating their notions of reality. Instead of leaving conventional language behind and turning to extreme abstractness or a radical syntactical revision, both find their solution within the conventional bounds of language. They each set out to adjust

(abrichten) language lexically, as opposed to syntactically, by trimming away superfluous or contingent residue that results from common usage, which interferes with the things or concepts that the words are meant to express. What ultimately inverts the courses of their approaches in respect to each other is the primary nature of their respective notions of the reality that language should represent. The idealist Hegel seeks to use language in a way that despite its natural contingency, it may be able to objectively communicate universal, rational concepts. The problem that presents itself here, as

Vernon writes, is that “it is in language that our ideas gain some semblance of objectivity, but in language as commonly experienced that doubt surrounding their objectivity re- arises” (Vernon 14). Although Hegel does not address language as a major theme of his philosophy as explicitly as he does other topics such as logic or history, Vernon asserts

that a consistent Hegelian philosophy of language can be drawn by examining the topic as it arises across Hegel’s entire work, and that the philosopher’s thought as a whole posits a solution to the contingency of language:

By investigating language […] in isolation from its communicative senses (i.e. from the contingency of particular expressions of subjective intention), we can determine what formal relations necessarily adhere between words qua words. These senseless words form the material through which a truly universal form of content-determination can be demonstrated. (Vernon 14)

The ideal refashioning of language for Hegel is thus a process in which words are made

“senseless,” as Vernon puts it. In order to create such a lexicon for addressing the absolute, Hegel trims sense off of the word in two ways: his ideal process of abrichten removes the subjective perceptions caused by arbitrary interpretation of a word based on differing individual experience, and words are rendered senseless as they are isolated from the common sense (Verstand) that Hegel views as an obstacle to the speculative reason necessary for dialectical progression toward absolute knowledge.

Brecht’s abrichten of language is a reflection of Hegel’s, parallel yet inverted. His advice to wash our words like our laundry is a call to remove the encrusted residue that becomes attached to language and crystallizes it within a static meaning. Like Hegel,

Brecht sees the superfluous crust of words as a result of language’s common use and accordingly trims down words so that they might suit the dynamic nature of reality.

While Hegel planes sense away from language to prepare it to be an adequate means of communicating rational concepts, however, Brecht planes away the ideal, the transcendent, and the supposedly permanent aspects of words. Because reality for Brecht is based on matter, he must fashion an appropriately material language, one that can

correspond to the flux of a living reality and which also attains the expressive potential that he sees in, for example, “gewisse Bibelworte.”

Whereas Hegel makes words “senseless,” Brecht’s materialization of language involves infusing it with sense and stripping away the ideal, leading to Ihering’s remark that Brecht’s language “ist brutal sinnlich und melancholisch zart” (Ihering 5). This materialization of language is accomplished largely through an abundant use of natural and corporeal imagery in Brecht’s early work. As the following chapters illustrate in detail, a constellation of images exists from which the young Brecht consistently draws in his language. Parts of the body, such as the face, mouth, throat, and skin, are frequently conjured as metaphorical materializations of thought, language, communication, and mutual understanding. He also makes regular use of natural imagery in ways that both recall and break from their traditional use in literature. Numerous texts from Brecht’s early work often use images of trees, forests, jungles, foliage, grass, rivers, rain, pools and puddles. Although these natural and bodily metaphors themselves already had a long history of use by the time Brecht wrote, the way that he employs them is different from their traditional use. These references materialize immaterial concepts like revolution, history, teleological progression, love, hostility, selfhood, and intersubjectivity, to name some examples. Materializing language in this way, Brecht breaks through the residual shells that words grow around things: as Müller and Kindt observe: “Brecht wollte die

Krusten der Dinge aufbrechen, um an sie selbst, an die ›Natur‹ der Dinge heranzukommen” (Müller and Kindt 18). They continue, arguing that in the early 1920s

Brecht developed the thought that nature should be the guideline for literary art, and that

as time passed this notion became increasingly important for the young writer (Müller and Kindt 18).23

Again, Hegel and Brecht demonstrate similar tendencies, although these tendencies take them in divergent directions. While Brecht tried to break through the shells of words to access nature, Hegel disdains the condition of nature as that of the schlechte Unendlichkeit of Verstand, contingency, and of reflective thought as opposed to speculative reason. Spirit, he writes, contains within itself the drive to break through the rind of nature and the common sense of Verstand. For Hegel, the contingency of nature, as Maybee observes, comprises “only the world’s superficial outer rind or appearance

[…], whereas rationality is the world’s inner principle” (Maybee 15). Thus, as Hegel’s language seeks to break out of the crust of the Naturzustand in order to access the true, rational essence of concepts existing beyond the material world, Brecht’s language tries to break through the crust of static assigned meaning back to the material nature of the things themselves. The following chapters will illustrate how Brecht goes about this in his early work, how his material language functions as a site of tension between corresponding points in his and Hegel’s thought, and how these points grant a more complete understanding of Brecht’s early materialism specifically and his thought as a whole.

23 The term “nature” in this sense is not limited to literal nature itself. For Brecht, it refers to reality and the “way of the world” in his materialist view. He draws frequently from the natural world to illustrate this reality metaphorically. 59

Chapter 2: “und dahinter die Fleischbank, die allein ist leibhaftig.”

History’s schlechte Unendlichkeit in Trommeln in der Nacht

In the fourth act of Trommeln in der Nacht (1922), the protagonist Andreas

Kragler recites the first stanza of a well-known ditty. In his 1953 revision of the play,

Brecht included both stanzas:

Ein Hund ging in die Küche Und stahl dem Koch ein Ei Da nahm der Koch den Hackbeil Und schlug den Hund entzwei. […] Da kamen die andern Hunde Und gruben dem Hund ein Grab Und setzten ihm einen Grabstein Der folgende Inschrift hat: Ein Hund ging in die Küche… (Brecht 1:236-37)

The song, which arises multiple times in works throughout Brecht’s career, is a roundelay, able in its repetitive structure to be continued ad infinitum. Hans Mayer calls it a “Schauerballade, die sich nicht von der Stelle bewegt und immer wieder zum komisch- grauslichen Anfang zurückkehrt” (Mayer, 1996 353). Kragler’s song tells a cyclical story with no culmination, but rather a repeated return to the dog’s violent end. It denies its listeners a traditional, linear model of narrative, and these repetitive and violent elements reflect the approach to history in Brecht’s early works.

Mayer references Hegelian language in his analysis of the song “vom Hund und vom Koch und von der Perspektive einer »schlechten Unendlichkeit«, mit Hegel zu reden” (Mayer, 1996 355). He continues:

Die Geschichte vom Hund und seinem Grabstein stellt sich als ein unendlicher Prozeß dar, denn zuerst ereignet sich die Geschichte, wird dann auf dem Grabstein berichtet, um immer weiter und endlos sich als Bericht eines Berichts eines Berichts zu präsentieren. Die Unendlichkeit ist auch hier eine reine quantitative. (356)

Hegel’s schlechte Unendlichkeit indicates a process that, like the song, repeats itself without a progressive supersession, and whose infinity is therefore, as Mayer puts it, merely quantitative instead of qualitative. Although change occurs, it is static and directionless, and the process returns to the same initial state over and over. In Hegel, such a lack of development occurs in periods of world history in which peoples and states do not contribute to Spirit’s self-actualization. In Brecht, on the other hand, where “das

Geistige […] ist nichts” (Brecht 1:493), there is no Spirit to actively guide historical progress, and all of world history is revealed as a schlechte Unendlichkeit.

Trommeln in der Nacht, among other early works such as the 1919 one-act play

Der Bettler oder der tote Hund (see below), presents such an approach to history: Brecht primarily negates the transcendental in history through his materialization of language, as illustrated in its corporeal and natural use. The possibility of progress is eliminated, and with no Spirit to guide it onward, history remains in Hegel’s Naturzustand; here, not

Entwicklung, but only Verwandlung is possible, and the cyclical, directionless changes occur through and result in a profound tedium. In the end, then, Brecht’s and Hegel’s approaches to history are clearly incompatible; nevertheless, this chapter will also expound important intersections between the two which illustrate that, while their

attitudes toward history are mutually exclusive, they still address significantly similar concerns with similar language, the key division arising out of their respective materialism and idealism.

A detailed treatment of the term history (Geschichte) lies outside this study’s scope. For my purposes, it should suffice to refer to the following lines from Hegel’s lectures: “Geschichte vereinigt in unserer Sprache die objektive sowohl und subjektive

Seite und bedeutet ebensowohl die historiam rerum gestarum als die res gestas selbst, die eigentliche unterschiedene Geschichtserzählung als das Geschehen, die Taten und

Begebenheiten selbst” (Hegel 12:65). Thus history, for this chapter, entails past events as well as the historiographic representation of these events as they are formed into narratives.

Brecht completed the first version of Trommeln in der Nacht in February 1919. In

1922, after some revision, the play was first performed and published. It begins in early

1919 in the living room of the middle-class Balicke family, which consists of Karl

Balicke, his wife Amalie, and their daughter, Anna. The family has grown wealthy as war profiteers, spending the past few years manufacturing shell casings for the German military (now that the war is over they will change production to baby carriages).

Kragler, who was Anna’s lover before he left in the war to fight in Africa, has been missing for years and is presumed dead. Although she claims that she still loves Kragler,

Anna has taken another lover named Murk, who spent the war years as a civilian, toiling his way up the social ladder from worker to successful Kleinbürger. In the first act Murk and Anna, who is pregnant, become engaged to marry. Kragler returns the same night, trying to win back Anna and facing humiliation at the hands of Balicke and Murk.

Kragler then wanders the city, eventually joining a group of workers determined to take part in the Spartakus revolution currently underway in Berlin’s newspaper district. Anna follows Kragler, however, and as he and the workers are on their way to fight he abandons the outraged revolutionaries to return home with her. Kragler’s ultimate decision to leave the revolutionaries is a disruption of their perceived Marxist telos of historical progression, based on Hegel’s dialectical model. In Trommeln in der Nacht and other early works, Brecht likewise rejects Hegelian notions of a unified historical narrative, regardless of their respective social or cultural contexts.

Hegel views world history as a progressive movement toward the actualization of

Spirit, which must culminate in the ideal moment of universal freedom. In his eyes this progression is the physical manifestation of Spirit’s self-actualization in time: “Die

Weltgeschichte, wissen wir, ist also überhaupt die Auslegung des Geistes in der Zeit, wie die Idee als Natur sich im Raume auslegt” (Hegel 12:96-97). The development is a repetitive, but ultimately progressive dialectical movement in which Spirit manifests itself increasingly in the body of humankind. However, as he presents the idealistic, spiritual trajectory of history in his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte,

Hegel takes a moment to briefly acknowledge its unavoidable material aspect, maintaining that “Die Weltgeschichte ist nicht der Boden des Glücks. Die Perioden des

Glücks sind leere Blätter in ihr; denn sie sind die Perioden der Zusammenstimmung, des fehlenden Gegensatzes” (Hegel 12:42). Only through dialectical tension and struggle does Spirit progress in history, and many fall under the wheels in this progression. Hegel admits that we are compelled to view history as a slaughter-bench (Schlachtbank) upon which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals are

sacrificed. Hegel maintains that passions (Leidenschaften), which he summarizes as “die

Zwecke des partikulären Interesses, die Befriedigung der Selbstsucht” (Hegel 12:34), far outweigh nobler virtues like goodwill as the driving force behind human activity.24 These selfish passions frequently lead to sorrow, even if the overall trajectory of history is progressive.

Altruistic intent, unfortunately, has a relatively insignificant impact on historical development and often falls by the wayside as individuals or groups who act out of these characteristics are sacrificed on the Schlachtbank of history. That Hegel sees these sacrifices in a spiritual context, as sacrifices made to a greater, transcendent cause, is apparent in his multiple uses of the phrase “[zum] Opfer gebracht.” The sacrifices are made for the overall progression of history toward its end goal: actualization of Spirit, or universal freedom: “[Der Endzweck des Geistes] ist das, worauf in der Weltgeschichte hingearbeitet worden, dem alle Opfer auf dem weiten Altar der Erde und in dem Verlauf der langen Zeit gebracht worden” (Hegel 12:33). Hegel’s inclusion of the image of an altar in conjunction with the Schlachtbank further establishes the spiritual nature of the sacrifices made there.

In addition to having this quasi-religious tone, Hegel’s language is also marked by artistic, representational terminology. He frequently uses the term Schauspiel, for instance, to describe modes of human activity. The first instance is in reference to activity in general (Schauspiel der Tätigkeit), and the following instances refer specifically to what Hegel views as the portion of human activity driven by the passions (Schauspiel der

24 Later in his lectures, Hegel provides a more detailed definition for his use of the term Leidenschaft: “Ich verstehe hier nämlich überhaupt die Tätigkeit des Menschen aus partikulären Interessen, aus speziellen Zwecken oder, wenn man will, selbstsüchtigen Absichten, und zwar so, daß sie in diese Zwecke die ganze Energie ihres Wollens und Charakters legen, ihnen anderes, das auch Zweck sein kann, oder vielmehr alles andere aufopfern” (Hegel 12:38) 64

Leidenschaften), and thereby much more directly relevant to historical progression.

Hegel’s reference to each of these arenas of human activity as a Schauspiel, or play, evokes the notion of theater in the reader’s mind. The term also connotes spectacle, a concept regularly linked with tragic drama since Aristotle’s Poetics. Called opsis by

Aristotle, the spectacle is, broadly defined, the aspect of theater that is perceived by the senses.25 When used appropriately by the dramatist, the spectacle evokes the fear and pity necessary for the intended catharsis to take place among the audience.

Hegel continues with his artistic metaphors, remarking that the spectacles of history collectively belong “zu dem furchtbarsten Gemälde” (Hegel 12:35). If left to reflect deeply on this terrible portrait, the observer is brought

zur tiefsten, ratlosesten Trauer […], welcher kein versöhnendes Resultat das Gegengewicht hält und gegen die wir uns etwa nur darurch befestigen oder dadurch aus ihr heraustreten, indem wir denken: es ist nun einmal so gewesen; es ist ein Schicksal; es ist nichts daran zu ändern; – und dann, daß wir aus der Langeweile, welche uns jene Reflexion der Trauer machen könnte, zurück in unser Lebensgefühl, in die Gegenwart unserer Zwecke und Interessen, kurz in die Selbstsucht zurücktreten, welche am ruhigen Ufer steht und von da aus sicher des fernen Anblicks der verworrenen Trümmermasse genießt. (Hegel 12:35)

Although the Trauer that the chaotic spectacle provokes is a normal response, Hegel warns us not to become lost in our reflection upon it, because such reflection results in the tedium (Langeweile) of seeing an endless cycle of the bloody spectacles of history.26

Whereas he warns against excessive reflection upon these, Hegel advises us not that we ignore them, but rather that, from a safe distance (“am ruhigen Ufer”), we find a gloomy enjoyment of the Gemälde that they comprise. We are ultimately to find solace in seeing

25 The definition of this term is ambiguous and somewhat disputed. For recent discussions of the tragic spectacle in drama, see for example Heeney and Dadlez. 26 This tedium is a manifestation of the Langweiligkeit Hegel describes in conjunction with schlechte Unendlichkeit (see my introduction) and applies as well to the individual self-consciousness as well when it undergoes repeated change without development (see chapter 3). 65

the overall progress of history that transcends them. Hegel suggests that, in order to avoid being swallowed up in sorrow over these sacrifices, we view such tragic events as means

“für das, was wir behaupten, daß es die substantielle Bestimmung, der absolute

Endzweck oder, was dasselbe ist, daß es das wahrhafte Resultat der Weltgeschichte sei”

(Hegel 12:35). These sacrifices are to be seen as having been made for the inevitable progression of history within Hegel’s idealistic dialectic.

In aestheticizing the historical spectacle, Hegel’s language suggests an attitude toward history similar to that of an audience of classic tragedy: events unfold out of the characters’ actions, which are driven by their passions. These actions inevitably lead to the subjection of the characters to catastrophe, which is depicted in the tragic spectacle.

The spectacle may be either arbitrary or predestined, but in either case it is presented as unavoidable. Instead of the Trauer and Langeweile that result from excessive reflection, the audience of tragic drama is supposed to be moved to cathartic feelings of fear and empathy, and ultimately to find solace in the restoration of the greater order against which the tragic figure has fought. The Hegelian historian likewise finds comfort from the historical spectacles by recognizing the greater progress of the overall spiritual historical order that remains intact beyond the Schlachtbank of history. Instead of feeling the Trauer and Langeweile that will result from unnecessary reflection, the observer of history should be emotionally cleansed through pity and fear, ultimately finding edification in history’s overarching dialectical progression toward the self-actualization of Spirit. We thereby avoid Hegel’s Langeweile, which results from a schlechte

Unendlichkeit, the repetitive, meaningless change found in nature without the guiding telos of Spirit. But Spirit does not enter into Brecht’s approach to history; where Hegel

looks past historical spectacles to the order behind them, Brecht’s work sweeps aside traditional notions of historical unity and progress in order to place its focus on the spectacles themselves, which are the only materially true results of the Schauspiel of human activity.

Hegel’s brief digression into the material suffering of history’s Schlachtbank appears to be something which he could not reasonably overlook, but also to which he did not devote much time explaining or justifying. What he merely acknowledges becomes a central focus of Walter Benjamin’s Über den Begriff der Geschichte, which outlines key differences between historicism and historical materialism:

Denn es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit, das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich nicht als in ihm gemeint erkannte. […] Dem historischen Materialismus geht es darum, ein Bild der Vergangenheit festzuhalten, wie es sich im Augenblick der Gefahr dem historischen Subjekt unversehens einstellt. (Benjamin, Illuminationen 270)

While historicism is content to view events as Hegel recommends (“es ist nun einmal so gewesen”), historical materialism recognizes the uniqueness of historical moments sacrificed at the slaughter-bench of history. The unique experience with the past that historical materialism fosters is an opportunity to rescue moments of the past that otherwise, as mere sacrifices on Hegel’s slaughter-bench, would fall into obscurity and be forgotten behind the facade of the artifice of historical narrative. Brecht’s early works show an attitude which, while lacking the theoretical framework that his later study of

Marx would provide, nevertheless focuses on the material in history and resonates with

Benjamin’s thinking. Brecht draws attention to the Fleischbank that exists behind the artificiality of the constructed narratives around it and upon which Benjamin’s picture of the past exists in moments of danger.

Brecht’s materialist approach to history is pointed to often in his works, for instance in the second stanza of his “Gesang von mir. 16. Psalm” (1918):

Ich spiele die Gitarre und die Vergangenheit der Saiten wacht wieder auf unter meinen großen Händen: es sind Därme von Vieh, die Gitarre singt viehisch, es ist ein großes Tier, das mir am Leib hängt wie eine Zecke, und es schreit wohltönend, wenn ich es würge. (Brecht 11:28)

The lyrical Ich calls forth the past by grasping and strangling its material remains; the guitar becomes the animal whose entrails are made into its strings. As the animal hangs attached to his body, the singer is connected materially to the past that he calls forth. The site of history is physical, illustrated here in the animal’s material remains as well.

In his Kleines Organon für das Theater, published 27 years after Trommeln in der

Nacht, Brecht’s later, more systematized theory outlines a theatrical parallel to

Benjamin’s philosophy of history. The treatise stresses that epic theater should show that while events did occur in a certain way, they could have easily happen differently, and that the audience should be brought to question why events occurred as they did.

Although this example of his later historical materialism critically questions the accepted narrative of history, this was no development purely out of his engagement with Marx.

Even before Brecht’s materialism became informed by Marxist thought, his works demonstrated an attitude toward history that places its focus on the materiality that Hegel only briefly passes over.

This is most clearly illustrated by a metaphor that arises in the play’s final act and signals an important intersection with Hegel’s Schlachtbank. When Kragler decides to abandon the revolution and return home with Anna, he reasons, “Es ist gewöhnliches

Theater. Es sind Bretter und ein Papiermond und dahinter die Fleischbank, die allein ist leibhaftig” (Brecht 1:228). While serving a similar purpose (from a materialist 68

standpoint) as the Schlachtbank, the butcher’s block (Fleischbank) stops at the material level. Whereas Hegel recommends that we view the deaths that take place on the

Schlachtbank as a sacrifice (Opfer) for a greater spiritual purpose, Brecht’s Fleischbank focuses only on the material aspect of the slaughter. There is no longer a metaphysical context in which the spectacles of history take place. Overlapping with the Schlachtbank in content, yet treating this content with absolutely no metaphysical consideration, the metaphor of the Fleischbank encapsulates Brecht’s material departure from Hegel.

In contrast to Hegel, who would look past the unfortunate spectacles on the

Schlachtbank to the greater backdrop of historical progress, Brecht’s play takes a reverse approach, sweeping aside the illusion of the Kulisse to focus on the material reality embodied in the image of the Fleischbank. The play contrasts the realness of the

Fleischbank against purposefully unrealistic stage scenery (“Bretter und ein

Papiermond”), and in Brecht’s Glosse für die Bühne that he provides for the play’s 1922 publication, he includes the following information regarding the stage’s scenery for the performance in Munich earlier that year:

Hinter den etwa zwei Meter hohen Pappschirmen, die Zimmerwände darstellten, war die große Stadt in kindlicher Weise aufgemalt. Jeweils einige Sekunden vor dem Auftauchen Kraglers glühte der Mond rot auf. Die Geräusche wurden dünn angedeutet, die Marseillaise wurde im letzten Akt durch ein Grammophon gespielt. (Brecht 1:176)

These instructions call for a production that is blatantly self-conscious of its nature as fabrication. The setting, which also includes a river with no water in it, does not allow the play’s narrative to be experienced on any level beyond that of obvious artifice. Through this early instance of what would later be famously termed Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, the play disrupts its audience’s emotional participation and alienates them from the

traditional theatrical experience of empathy. Instead, they are brought to see the ultimate artificiality of the stating and the material reality indicated by the metaphorical

Fleischbank behind it.

Kragler’s recognition of the artificiality of his surroundings serves a further purpose: exposing not only the unrealistic nature of the production, he also critiques as

“gewöhnliches Theater” the constructed nature of the various narratives in which he finds himself entangled. Brecht uses the characters of the Manke brothers in the play to satirize the idea of unified and progressive narratives. Each of these brothers is a waiter; one works in the fancy, bourgeois Picadillybar where the engagement party is to be held in the second act, and the other in the Rote Zibebe, a pub for the working class where

Kragler meets the revolutionaries in the fourth act. The Manke brothers function, at times, as narrators of the events taking place, but their created narratives romanticize, idealize, and ultimately trivialize the histories that they incorporate. In his narration, each

Manke brother becomes the proponent of a particular narrative, and each tries to impose his respective myth onto the play’s events. Picadillybarmanke, as Brecht refers to him, follows Anna in her pursuit of Kragler, narrating events as if they were elements of a

Wagnerian opera: “Der Liebhaber ist schon verschollen, aber die Geliebte eilt ihm nach auf Flügeln der Liebe. Der Held ist schon zu Fall gebracht, aber die Himmelfahrt ist schon vorbereitet” (Brecht 1:210). Guy Stern finds Wagnerian elements not only in

Manke’s words, but also in Brecht’s use of alliteration, as well as the title of the third act:

Walkürenritt (Stern 399). The play treats Picadillybarmanke satirically through the character of Babusch, a friend of the Balicke family, who responds to him: “Aber der

Liebhaber wird die Geliebte in den Rinnstein hauen und die Höllenfahrt vorziehen. O Sie

romantisches Institut, Sie!” (Brecht 1:210). Babusch rejects Manke’s narrative, Stern points out, by contradicting not only its tragic content, but also its elevated linguistic style

(Stern 399). Manke sees the makings of a great bourgeois tragedy in the events happening around him; as Jutta Kolkenbrock-Netz puts it, “Aus der sich andeutenden tragischen Verstrickung in die Ereignisse der Revolution wäre der kleinbürgerliche Held dann auf wunderbare Weise errettet” (Kolkenbrock-Netz 176). The play denies this potential, rejecting Manke’s chosen narrative.

The other Manke brother, Zibebenmanke, seeks to create a narrative that, at first glance, is fundamentally opposed to that of his brother. He is a Marxist revolutionary, viewing the events around him with a corresponding materialism and anticipating the overthrow of the bourgeois by the workers. He is not concerned with the potentially tragic love story underway, but rather, like the other revolutionaries in the Rote Zibebe, with the Marxist concern of historical progress through class struggle. Although their two worldviews seem to be in conflict with each other, the Manke brothers and their respective narratives represent two sides of the same coin. This is emphasized by

Brecht’s instruction that “Die Brüder Manke werden vom gleichen Schauspieler gespielt”

(Brecht 1:176). Whereas Picadillybarmanke impresses a tragic narrative upon the play’s events, Zibebenmanke places them within a utopian Marxist paradigm. In both cases,

Brecht’s early materialism portrays the narratives as illusions.

Kragler’s reasons to abandon the revolution and take Anna home with him are strictly material: “Das Geschrei ist alles vorbei, morgen früh, aber ich liege im Bett morgen früh und vervielfältige mich, daß ich nicht aussterbe” (Brecht 1:229). Physical survival, which Kragler chooses instead of promoting the utopian ideal of the revolution,

makes for a fundamentally biological interpretation of the purpose of life. His decision causes a rupture in the revolutionaries’ grand narrative. They assume that what he has previously told them – the story of his time in Afrika and his conviction to fight for their cause, for instance – was a lie, and accuse him:

AUGUSTE Dann war also alles, Afrika und alles Lüge? KRAGLER Nein, es war wahr! […] GLUBB Du hast nicht in die Zeitungen geschrien, nicht? KRAGLER Ja, das habe ich. […] MANKE Ja, das hast du, […] in die Zeitungen hast du geschrien. KRAGLER Und heim gehe ich. (Brecht 1:226-27)

Kragler does not deny that he intended to join the revolution; he has simply changed his mind. In doing this, he does not deny moments from the past, but rather the projection of history, through events like the revolution, as a teleological progression. He chooses survival over the narratives that others would have him live out, telling them before he leaves, “Fast ersoffen seid ihr in euren Tränen über mich und ich habe nur mein Hemd gewaschen mit euren Tränen! Mein Fleisch soll im Rinnstein verwesen, daß eure Idee in den Himmel kommt? Seid ihr besoffen?” (Brecht 1:228). The term Rinnstein surfaces here as it does in Babusch’s lines (see above) to indicate the hard material reality that outweighs the idealistic notions of tragedy or revolution. And in Kragler’s defiant lines where Fleisch is valued above Idee, the play’s materialist rejection of idealism is clearly present.

The play’s rejection of such narratives is illustrated by Brecht’s pervasive material language, which, with its corporeal and natural references, creates material fractures in continuity and narrative. Primarily, Brecht’s language places priority on the body; the word Kragler uses to describe the reality of the Fleischbank, for instance, is leibhaftig, meaning real or immediately present. A more literal translation of leibhaftig, 72

however, could be found in the terms “incarnate” or “in the flesh,” as the German term calls forth the image of the body (Leib) within itself. “Leibhaftig” literally materializes the non-material in general and specifically here as it invokes the immediacy of the physical body as the site of slaughter behind the march of history. The bodily aspect of the term leibhaftig is important, as it exemplifies Brecht’s early material language through which he excludes das Geistige from his worldview. 27

The term leibhaftig also arises as Kragler tells the others in the fourth act about his time as a soldier and prisoner in Africa:

Die Sonne, die brannte den Kopf aus wie eine Dattel, unser Gehirn war wie eine Dattel, wir schossen Neger ab, immer in die Bäuche, und pflasterten und ich hatte die Fliege im Kopf, meine Lieben, wenn ich kein Gehirn mehr hatte, und sie schlugen mich oft auf den Kopf. (Brecht 1:213- 14)

Responding to Kragler’s story, a patron of the Rote Zibebe named Bulltrotter remarks,

“Das ist eine leibhaftige Geschichte! Sie ist gut gemacht” (Brecht 1:214). His evaluation of Kragler’s story as leibhaftig is accurate in that it truly is “in the flesh”: the account of

Africa reflects no temporal progression, but is rather related in images that reduce the experience to the strictly organic.28 Kragler continues, “Wir glotzten die Zeit an. Sie ging nie” (Brecht 1:214). As in the recurring fate of the dog in the kitchen, time is lost in the physical, material focus of his account of Africa. Jutta Kolkenbrock-Netz observes here

27 The term Leibhaftig appears to have been an important concept in general for the young Brecht, including in his own dramaturgy, as indicated by journal entries dealing with his creative process, such as the following from August 20, 1920: “Dazu bin ich überzeugt, daß bei starker Leibhaftigkeit der Visionen wenn nicht Verstand, so doch Seele hineinkommt ohne mein Zutun” (Brecht 26:136). 28 Bernhard Malkmus reminds me of the potentially metaphysical connotation of this term, pointing out that in Christian tradition, “der Leibhaftige” is a term often used in reference to the devil. In addition, the doctrine of transubstantiation is sometimes referred to as “die Leibhaftigkeit Christi.” Brecht’s use may be making ironic reference to this tradition, with which he was likely aware; even within a Christian metaphysics, however, the term carries the same essential meaning that it does here, namely that an immaterial substance or principle that is assigned metaphysical significance (in the present context, history) is rendered carnal through the image of the body. 73

that “nun geht [jene] Dimension verloren, die für das Erzählen von Geschichten als

Wesentlich gilt: die Dimension der Zeit” (Kolkenbrock-Netz 179). With the disappearance of time, memory loses a crucial aspect of its activity, namely to supply meaning to events by temporally organizing them. Instead, the events of Kragler’s history are forced through a material filter in which they lose any teleological significance or coherence. His account emphasizes the primarily material importance of historical events, signified by the reality of the Fleischbank behind the constructed narratives that are retrospectively assigned structure and meaning.

Time is necessary for historical progress in Hegel’s historical model; it is the medium through which Spirit develops toward the self-actualization, or the realization of the Idea. Without time, historical progression in the world is impossible. Hegel illustrates time’s importance for progress with a mythological analogy:

So hat zuerst Kronos, die Zeit geherrscht […] und was erzeugt worden ist, die Kinder dieser Zeit, sind von ihr selbst aufgezehrt worden. Erst Jupiter […] hat die Zeit bezwungen und ihrem Vergehen ein Ziel gesetzt. Er ist der politische Gott, der ein sittliches Werk, den Staat, hervorgebracht hat. (Hegel 12:101)

Time alone is insufficient for real progress (the image of Chronos devouring his children brings to mind Hegel’s schlechte Unendlichkeit in its repetitive return to an unproductive original state), but it is still a necessary temporal arena through which Spirit achieves its self-actualization. Although Spirit must first subdue and impose a goal and a direction to time, it still needs time as a medium for ideal, dialectical historical movement. In Brecht, conversely, the end is neither the goal nor the summation of what has come before. Near the end of Im Dickicht der Städte (1927), Shlink says, “Die Etappen des Lebens sind nicht die der Erinnerung. Der Schluß ist nicht das Ziel, die letzte Episode nicht wichtiger

als irgendeine andere” (Brecht 1:490). Shlink denies a goal at the end of a long developmental progression and maintains that history did not occur as it exists in memory, namely as a linear progression with a cumulative result. “History” is not the sum of its parts or a product of repetitive sublations of which each preserves the traits of its former stages; history receives such meaning only after memory constructs a rational framework which makes sense of it by applying meaning to it within a contextual hindsight.

History then, as viewed by Hegel, Balicke, or the revolutionary workers in the

Rote Zibebe, corresponds more with memory, a creative process assigning meaning to a random mass of material events. In a short essay from 1926, Brecht elaborates on this idea:

Die Geschichte der Menschheit ist ein Haufen ungeordneten Materials. Schwer erkennbar ist es, wer immer die Verantwortung trug für seine Zeit. Das Hervortreten der großen Typen, die Kreierung der großen Ideen und jene Zusammenstöße zwischen den Typen und Ideen, die nicht immer in Schlachten und Revolutionen deutlich wurden, müßten zusammengefaßt werden. (Brecht 21:180)

Oesmann sees in this entry Brecht’s “recognition that coherent narratives can only be created when imposed upon a chaos of historical reality” (Oesmann 69). But Brecht, like

Benjamin, sees the need to look beyond a narrative of recorded history to determine, in his words, who was responsible for their times. He recommends a gathering together

(zusammenfassen) of historical material in order to construct an accurate representation of the past, outside of the context of memory. Memory collects and categorizes historical information, acting as a filter, in Denise Kratzmeier’s words, “der nur das zulässt, was in das bestehende oder zu konstruierende Bild integriert werden kann, und der alles andere vergisst bzw. aus Selbstschutz verdrängt” (Kratzmeier 97). Richard Geary adds: 75

Erinnerungen können bewahrt werden in dem Masse, wie ihnen eine Bedeutung verliehen werden kann und sie mit der Gegenwart verknüpft werden können. Das bedeutet, dass Erfahrung vor dem Hintergrund des Bekannten neu struktuiert und umgewandelt werden muss, damit sie zu Erinnerung werden kann. (Geary 127)

Memory, Geary suggests, cannot exist without an already present context which can be applied to historical experience. History is not memory, and memory is history that has been altered to conform to a preexisting contextual framework. Shlink’s comment certainly supports this idea, and Brecht’s treatment of history in Trommeln in der Nacht accordingly denies it any intrinsic meaning. Rather, historical moments arise arbitrarily; their primary significance is found not in their status as steps toward a culminating goal, but in their material implications, which are born on the bodies of history’s sacrifices.

Like the Därme strung across the guitar, Kragler’s body is a material remnant of his past, invoking the Schlachtbank by his very presence. Oesmann takes note of this, remarking, “Brecht’s articulation of the past through the body bypasses meaningful representations of history” (Oesmann 83). Kragler has physically taken on the material conditions of this past; he is even said to have an “afrikanische Haut” now (Brecht

1:193). He also tells Anna, “Ich habe eine Haut wie ein Hai, schwarz” (Brecht 1:193).

Others notice his bodily transformation as well: in the Picadillybar, Babusch exclaims,

“Sehen Sie doch sein Gesicht an! […] Das war einmal wie Milch und Äpfel! Jetzt ist’s eine verfaulte Dattel!” Balicke agrees, seeing “Ein Gesicht wie ein, wie ein verkrachter

Elefant!” (Brecht 1:192). And Anna also notices the physical change that Kragler bears the first time she examines him closely:

ANNA nimmt eine Kerze auf, steht ohne Haltung, leuchtet ihm ins Gesicht: Haben dich nicht die Fische gefressen? KRAGLER Ich weiß nicht, was du meinst. ANNA Bist du nicht in die Luft geflogen? 76

KRAGLER Ich kann dich nicht verstehen. (Brecht 1:192-93)

Kragler’s body is a spectacle incarnate, a physical presence of the realities of Hegel’s

Schlachtbank and Brecht’s Fleischbank: Balicke suggests as much before Kragler’s return, remarking that “Sein Tod hat aus ihm einen fürs Jahrmarktpanoptikum gemacht”

(Brecht 1:178). By condemning Kragler’s remains to a carnival’s collection of oddities,

Balicke quite literally labels Kragler as a spectacle, something shocking that is regarded from a safe distance for a morbid enjoyment, just as Hegel treats the spectacles on history’s Schlachtbank.

The bourgeois crowd at the Picadillybar sees Kragler in the way Hegel views the

Schlachtbank, namely as an unpleasant but ultimately trivial detail that disrupts the narrative they have constructed for themselves as they have affixed meaning to the chaos of the First World War. Balicke, for instance, invokes the image of the Fleischbank to justify his profiteering: “Der Sau Ende ist der Wurst Anfang!” (Brecht 1:182). He invents a logical progression, based on a historical causality, in which supposed necessity is justified through the activity on the Fleischbank. Although not as cynical, Hegel’s philosophy of history shares Balicke’s self-assured faith in the meaning of a retroactively constructed historical progress. Other characters in the play, comfortable in their own perception of history, react to Kragler, a material remnant from the Schlachtbank of history, by assimilating his past into their own chosen narratives. Balicke and his wife attempt to dismiss Kragler once and for all from the Picadillybar in the second act by smothering his past within an array of nationalist rhetoric.

BALICKE Es ist Ihnen also schlecht gegangen? Sie haben für Kaiser und Reich gekämpft? Es tut mir leid um Sie. Wollen Sie was? FRAU BALICKE Und der Kaiser hat gesagt: Stark sein im Schmerz. Trinken Sie davon! Schiebt ihm Kirschwasser hin. 77

BALICKE trinkend, eindringlich: Sie sind im Granatenhagel gestanden? Wie Eisen? Das ist brav. Unsere Armee hat Gewaltiges geleistet. Sie ist lachend in den Heldentod gezogen. Trinken Sie! Was wollen Sie? […] Sie haben keinen roten Heller? Sie liegen auf der Straße? Das Vaterland drückt Ihnen eine Drehorgel in die Hand? Das gibt es nicht. Diese Zustände dürfen nicht mehr vorkommen. Was wollen Sie? (Brecht 1:196)

The couple denies Kragler’s past as their patriotic words repaint the events in Africa into a history that conforms to their ideals. In addition to Balicke, the revolutionaries in the

Rote Zibebe exploit Kragler’s history for their vision of the future by using his past to further their teleological narrative of the revolution. Likewise, Picadillybarmanke sees in

Kragler not the spectacle he endured, but the aesthetic potential of a great tragedy.

Regardless of their attitude toward Kragler, these parties all assimilate his past into their respective worldview, and the play is as critical of them as it is of Balicke, who callously chooses to see in Kragler’s past only “der Wurst Anfang.” Brecht’s materialism, on the other hand, focuses on the slaughter-bench that was, but did not necessarily have to be, the pig’s end.

Balicke also appropriates Kragler’s past by calling on historical “truths” that have been established by having been written down, emphasizing Brecht’s critique of written language: “Halten Sie Ihren Rand! Die Sonne war heiß, wie? Dafür war’s Afrika. Steht im Geographiebuch. Und Sie waren ein Held? Wird im Geschichtsbuch stehen. Im

Hauptbuch steht aber nichts” (Brecht 1:203). The written language in the books to which

Balicke refers freezes events and assigns them a fixed meaning from a specific perspective, which, in this case, calcifies history into the narrative that justifies people like Balicke and awards victims of history’s spectacles with honorary titles like “hero.”

Most important for Balicke is his verdict that Kragler has no claim regarding the ledger

(Hauptbuch), the documentation of material conditions as they exist presently. The past is thus neatly categorized within Balicke’s history, but its implications are removed from both his present and his conscience as he rids himself of the responsibilities of

Benjamin’s historical materialist.

Stage directions for the fourth act indicate that as the act opens, the bartender

Glubb is playing a guitar and singing “die Moritat vom toten Soldaten” (Brecht 1:211).

This song, referring to Brecht’s poem “Legende vom toten Soldaten” (1918), tells the story of a soldier, already killed in battle and buried, as he is dug up from his grave in order to be sent back to the battle front for Germany. The eleventh, seventeenth, and eighteenth stanzas of the poem show the soldier, a victim of the violent historical spectacle of war, as those around him obscure this material reality and appropriate his past by covering him with elements of their own constructed narrative:

Sie malten auf sein Leichenhemd Die Farben schwarz-weiß-rot Und trugen’s vor ihm her; man sah Vor Farben nicht mehr den Kot. […] Und wenn sie durch die Dörfer ziehn Kommt’s, daß ihn keiner sah So viele waren herum um ihn Mit Tschindra und Hurra. […] So viele tanzten und johlten um ihn Daß ihn keiner sah. Man konnte ihn einzig von oben noch sehn Und da sind nur Sterne da. (Brecht 11:114-15)

The national colors painted onto the soldier obscure the filth on his shirt, hiding it from view. The crowds surrounding him with their cheers likewise conceal him, a rotting corpse representing an aspect of their history that they hide from view. Like Balicke’s patriotic rhetoric, these elements construct a narrative that organizes the “Haufen 79

ungeordneten Materials” of history, creating a context in which the past can be given meaning and the disturbing realities of the Schlachtbank can be obscured.

Kragler’s physical presence is an interruption in the constructed narrative of the

Balicke’s wealth, Murk’s success, and Anna’s engagement to Murk. Interruption is a key component of Brecht’s theater, as examined by Benjamin. He argues that the uncovering of real conditions, which is the goal of epic theater, is accomplished through the interruption of onstage processes. The more frequently a process is interrupted, the more often critical moments are produced in which real conditions are revealed. These moments are instances of Benjamin’s understanding of Brechtian Gestus, through which the audience is astonished at, rather than merely entertained by, what they are witnessing; this astonishment ideally leads to social change (Benjamin, Versuche 17-29). Although the emphasis on social change was less pronounced in his earlier works than his later production, Brecht still used theatrical techniques to interrupt historical continuity. An instance of this is found in the stage instructions for Trommeln in der Nacht that call for signs bearing the titles of each act to be hung above the stage for their respective acts.

The first act is called “Afrika,” and its corresponding sign “imports Kragler’s fragmented past into the bourgeois present” of the Balicke’s living room (Oesmann 52). With this technique, Brecht creates doubt in the possibility of a unified narrative by superimposing conflicting narratives over each other. Kragler’s body itself is a material example of this technique.

In addition to his use of Kragler’s body as a material disruption of history in the play, Brecht also utilizes individual bodily elements to disrupt contexts of language, meaning, and continuity. This can be seen most clearly in the nature of Kragler’s voice,

as well as its bodily points of origin, his throat and mouth. At certain points in the play, the stage directions describe his voice as “heiser” and “lautlos” (Brecht 1:191, 200). The hoarse or silent quality of his voice at these times negates the unity and meaning of his language, and these instances are compounded by the frequent moments of silence in

Kragler’s dialogue:

Warum siehst du mich so an? Seh ich so aus? Stille. Er schaut zum Fenster. Ich bin wie ein altes Tier zu dir gekommen. Stille. Ich habe eine Haut wie ein Hai, schwarz. Stille. Und ich bin gewesen wie Milch und Blut. Stille. Und dann blute ich immerfort, es läuft einfach fort von mir …. (Brecht 1:193)

The silence interspersed within his speech fragments his dialogue, providing further interruption in its attempts at coherence. In his Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, Hegel argues that “die menschliche Stimme [läßt] sich als das Tönen der Seele selbst vernehmen, als der Klang, den das Innere seiner Natur nach zum Ausdruck des Innern hat und diese Äußerung unmittelbar regiert” (Hegel 15:175). Hegel’s notion of “das Innere” does not factor into Brecht’s dramas; this is reflected in Kragler’s voice, which is frequently interrupted by silence or broken by hoarseness. Thus through Kragler’s voice, the play breaks up Hegel’s notions of Seele and das Innere.

Kragler’s voice is silenced because he is often described, either by himself, others, or the stage directions, as having something stuck in his throat, usually some residue from his past in Africa. As he struggles in the second act to communicate with

Anna, he tells her: “Ich kann nimmer gut reden mit dir. Ich habe eine Negersprache im

Hals” (Brecht 1:193). Only shortly later, he exclaims, “Eine Negerkutsche, das bin ich!

Dreck im Hals!” (Brecht 1:194). In the same act, Murk attacks Kragler verbally in the

Picadillybar: “Wollen Sie ins Tabernakel gestellt werden, weil Sie die afrikanische

Sonne verschluckt haben?” (Brecht 1:199). And in the Rote Zibebe in the fourth act,

Kragler tells the revolutionaries, “Ich bin heiser. Das Afrika wächst mir zum Halse heraus” (Brecht 1:221). “Das Afrika” from Kragler’s past, along with its “Negersprache” and “afrikanische Sonne,” is stuck in his throat like “Dreck.” They act as material remains of Africa, as his past interrupts and decontextualizes his attempts to construct coherent meaning in the present with language. This interruption is seen when Kragler seeks to communicate his feelings with Anna in front of the others in the Picadillybar:

KRAGLER ist aufgestanden: Da ich es fühle, daß ich hier kein Recht habe, bitte ich dich, aus dem Grunde meines Herzens, mit mir zu gehen an meiner Seite. BALICKE Was ist das für ein Geschwätz? Was sagt er da? Grund meines Herzens! An meiner Seite! Was sind das für Redensarten! Die anderen lachen. KRAGLER Weil kein Mensch ein Recht hat … Weil ich ohne dich nicht leben kann … Aus dem Grunde meines Herzens. Großes Gelächter. (Brecht 1:196-97)

Kragler’s attempts to express his feelings emerge as impotent fragments that only draw laughter from those around him. His words are reduced to “Geschwätz”; their connection to the past and future are severed. His ability to express the things of his Seele, or even to create a meaningful, coherent series of phrases, is impaired by the historical debris in his throat. As Kragler struggles to produce spiritual meaning, his language is dissolved as it passes through the material filter of his past, signified by the afrikanische Sonne and

Negersprache lodged in his throat.

The laughter of the others in the above passage functions as a type of Gestus, interrupting Kragler’s attempts at producing coherent meaning. Gestus is physical in its nature; it comprises, in Rainer Nägele’s words, “the sum of concrete bodily gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice, and rhythm and figures of speech, but it is not identical

with any of these” (Nägele 113). Laughter acts as a central, recurring bodily Gestus in

Trommeln in der Nacht; it often arises very much outside of context, acting as a material caesura and interrupting the onstage process. Anna gives an example of this in the

Picadillybar. In response to Murk’s verbal attacks on him, Kragler says, “Ich kann ihn nichts ansehen […]! Anna, liebst du den, liebst du den?” In response, Anna “lacht und trinkt” (Brecht 1:199). Anna’s laughter seems inappropriate for the situation around her; her laugh is a sharp interruption of the emotional process initiated by Kragler’s desperate question.

Earlier in the same act, Kragler also produces a similarly alienating laugh after the waiter, Manke, suggests that the most important thing to consider is whether Anna has remained chaste during Kragler’s absence. In response to this comment, Kragler simply

“wiehert” and calls the waiter a “Romanleser” for his romanticized claim (Brecht 1:194).

Kragler’s laughter here is as abrupt as Anna’s. In addition, the German term used can be understood not only as a snicker, but also a whinnying. This animalistic element of his laugh adds a further alienating effect as it breaks down the idealized bourgeois values of chastity and virtue, as addressed by Picadillybarmanke.29 Laughter in this function is a key gestic component of Kragler’s decisive monologue at the play’s end, in which the moments of laughter, as well as the instance when he pauses to draw in breath, provide breaks in his speech similar to a caesura in a poem. This acts in a manner congruent with

Benjamin’s understanding of Brecht’s use of gesture in that it interrupts the action into moments, likewise bringing the audience to moments of astonishment and cognition.

29 In a journal entry from August 22, 1920, Brecht records an experience involving Paula Bahnholzer that gives a real life instance of the gestic effect of laughter that his plays employ: “Sie ist gerade Hausfrau und muß ihren kleinen Bruder erziehen. Wenn sie schimpft, dreht sie sich schnell um und läuft hinaus, weil sie lachen muß” (Brecht 26:138). 83

KRAGLER […] trollt sich herum, langt sich an den Hals: Ich hab’s bis zum Hals. Er lacht ärgerlich […]. Er zieht den Atem ein. Ich ziehe ein frisches Hemd an, meine Haut habe ich noch, meinen Rock ziehe ich aus, meine Stiefel fette ich ein. Lacht bösartig. […] Ihr Halsabschneider! Aus vollem Halse lachend, fast erstickend. Ihr blutdürstigen Feiglinge, ihr! Sein Gelächter bleibt steckend im Hals, er kann nicht mehr[.] (Brecht 1:228-29)

Kragler practically chokes on his laughter, which has a material presence itself within the text as it “bleibt steckend” in his throat. As the laughter functions as Gestus within

Kragler’s diatribe, the language in which his laughter is imbedded likewise contributes to the play’s overall interruption of the telos of a unified, progressive notion of history and progress. Hegel maintains that in order to aesthetically and immediately express das

Innere, the voice “muß denn vor allem […] rein sein, d. h. neben dem in sich fertigen

Ton muß sich kein anderweitiges Geräusch geltend machen” (Hegel 15:176). Kragler’s voice is never pure: he is always hoarse, silent, or choking, either on his laughter or some material remnant of his past. His voice cannot be the carrier of interiority and meaning.

Instead, it disrupts the unity of these things. Through Kragler’s “Dreck im Hals,” Brecht

“brings together flesh and language,” in Oesmann’s words (53). Brecht focuses on the voice, traditionally a carrier of meaning, communication, reason, and inner experience, strictly in its corporeal existence, as a physical byproduct of Kragler’s throat and mouth.

Brecht thereby creates a truly material language within the play, simultaneously reflecting his early historical materialism and his critique of language in their application to his view of history.

The material quality that the text lends Kragler’s laughter, both here and elsewhere, is important. Responding to Kragler’s animal laughter, Babusch remarks,

“Was haben Sie denn für ein fleischernes Gelächter? Für eine »fleischfarbene Lache«?”

(Brecht 1:194). The Gestus of laughter, which interrupts continuity and unity of onstage processes, is itself made material by the viscerality of Babusch’s chosen adjectives

“fleischernes” and “fleischfarbene.”30 Moreover, although the term “Lache” in German means laughter, it can also refer to a pool or puddle. Kragler’s “fleischfarbene Lache” thereby takes on new meaning: the wording suggests a formless and undefined fleshy mass, perhaps referring to Kragler’s open mouth, a material site where unified narrative and notions of das Innere dissolve into obscurity. That Brecht had this dual connotation in mind is suggested by other occurrences of the word Lache, both within the play’s text as well as in his other works. The most notable of these instances occurs in the fifth act, when Babusch comments on the revolutionaries, whose actions are only vaguely perceivable in the background of Kragler’s story: “Sie trommeln schon wieder drunten.

Sie fetzen Zeitungen in die Regenlachen, schreien Maschinengewehre an, schießen sich ins Ohr, meinen, sie machen eine neue Welt” (Brecht 1:220). My dual reading of Lache is strengthened by the significance of the newspapers as a representation of the notable physical absence of the revolution in the play. We never see the revolution, but only hear unclear reports. The only location connected with it is the newspaper district, referred to in the play as “die Zeitungen.” In addition, two men in the Rote Zibebe in the fourth act symbolically enact the revolution by throwing paper at each other. The association of the ideal of revolution with printed paper places it within Brecht’s critique of written language in general as immaterial and insubstantial. That newspapers are being shredded

30 That the term “»fleischfarbene Lache«” occurs in quotation marks within the play’s text suggests, first of all, that Brecht borrowed the phrase, as he was more careful to designate such passages in the printed versions of his earlier plays than he was in his later work. The young Brecht was particularly fond of quoting Rimbaud, as is much more apparent in Im Dickicht der Städte. This phrase certainly would not be out of place in a text by Rimbaud, but it is even possible that Brecht invented it and inserted quotation marks to lend the words greater poetic appearance, as is the case in several passages recited by Garga in Im Dickicht der Städte that cannot be located in Rimbaud, but nevertheless convey a very Rimbaudian feel. 85

in the rain puddles reiterates the material dissolution of perceived historical progress; as the meaning of language becomes lost and obscured in Kragler’s “fleischfarbene Lache,” so does the revolution become blurred and its ideals of progress destroyed in the material

Lache of water.

This same idea is reiterated shortly thereafter as the red Papiermond disappears into the river. The river, often a literary metaphor for history and memory, has a key presence in other early plays by Brecht, in which it refers to but also departs from this traditional role.31 Stage directions indicate that after his monologue at the end of the fifth act, Kragler “tirkelt herum, schmeißt die Trommel nach dem Mond, der ein Lampion war, und die Trommel und der Mond fallen in den Fluß, der kein Wasser hat” (Brecht

1:229). Regarding this action, Oesmann writes, “When the red moon – Brecht's overwrought symbol of the revolution – sinks into the river (archetypal emblem of memory), the conventional picture of revolution as the culmination of human progress disappears from the play” (68). The river, acting both as a representation of natural history and as one of Brecht’s primary natural metaphors employed in his material language, effectively swallows up and dissolves the idealism of the revolution.

Bulltrotter’s approval of Kragler’s account as “eine leibhaftige Geschichte” reminds the audience of a further meaning of Geschichte that is also important for my study: in addition to referring to history, it can also be used to indicate a story.32 This dual meaning is a focus of Brecht’s 1919 one-act play, Der Bettler oder der tote Hund, which

31 See chapter 4. 32 In her article, Kolkenbrock-Netz examines Brecht’s use of stories and storytelling in Trommeln in der Nacht and Der Bettler oder der tote Hund as a means of presenting history independent of any unified narrative: “Tatsächlich wird in diesem Stück – durchaus vergleichbar dem Einakter Der Bettler oder der tote Hund – durch Geschichtenerzählungen die literarische Illusion, daß historisches Geschehen seine Wahrheit in einer individuellen Lebensgeschichte finden könne, komisch verfremdet und systematisch zerstört” (Kolkenbrock-Netz 174). 86

portrays a brief conversation between a beggar and an emperor. Having just vanquished a mighty foe on the battlefield, the emperor begins the short scene accompanied by soldiers and heralded by bells and cannon fire as he makes his way to triumphantly address his celebrating subjects. Passing by the beggar, he stops to briefly speak with him, reasoning that “Zwischen den großen Ereignissen aber ziemt es sich, mit dem Nichts zu sprechen”

(Brecht 1:271). History, for this emperor, consists of the great events in which historical individuals (like himself) participate. In his view, as far as history is concerned, people like the beggar and the events in their lives comprise “[das] Nichts”: their lives and their deeds fall outside of great historical events, and they are the sacrifices on Hegel’s

Schlachtbank of history.

Near the beginning of their conversation, the emperor asks the beggar if he is aware why the bells are ringing on this day. To this the beggar responds, “Ja. Mein Hund ist gestorben” (Brecht 1:271). This response defies the emperor’s traditional view of history in two ways: first, the death of the dog, certainly no great historical event, but rather minutia from “dem Nichts,” is presented as equally valid next to the emperor’s great military triumph. The dog’s death is a historical moment that the play, like

Benjamin’s historical materialist, rescues from being obscured by the emperor’s seemingly grand deeds. Second, linear causality, necessary for the construction of past events into a historical narrative, is called into doubt as the beggar claims that the bells are ringing that day for the death of his dog.

The emperor asks the beggar to leave the premises, for “hier darf kein Aas faulen und kein Geschrei laut werden” (Brecht 1:271). In accordance with Hegel’s comments regarding the sacrifices made at the altar of history, the emperor finds the beggar, “[das]

Nichts,” out of place among the unfolding historical progress. Death and misery are unwanted intruders at the palace, where the history being made should be one unsullied by the unfortunate spectacles of the Schlachtbank. Just as Hegel urges his listeners not to become distracted from history’s overall progress by these spectacles, the emperor does not want the ugly realities of death and grief to soil his idealized position in history, represented in the play’s setting of his palace and victorious celebration. His understanding of Geschichte is conditional and selective:

KAISER […] Der Mais steht nicht gut. BETTLER So war es vor achtunddreißig Jahren. Der Mais verkam in der Sonne und ehe er kaputt war, kam der Regen in solchen Mengen, daß Ratten entstanden und alle anderen Felder verwüsteten. Dann kamen sie in die Dörfer und fraßen Menschen an. An dieser Speise verreckten sie. KAISER Davon weiß ich nichts. […] In der Geschichte steht nichts davon. (Brecht 272-73)

As it is not recorded in the annals of great historical events, the history that the beggar describes falls outside of the emperor’s comprehension. Through his ignorance, the emperor illustrates one of Benjamin’s fundamental criticisms of traditional historicism, namely the categorization of historical events according to perceived importance.

Benjamin maintains that “Der Chronist, welcher die Ereignisse herzählt, ohne große und kleine zu unterscheiden, trägt damit der Wahrheit Rechnung, daß nichts was sich jemals ereignet hat, für die Geschichte verloren zu gehen ist” (Benjamin 269). The beggar acts as such a chronicler as he places “[das] Nichts” on equal footing with “den großen

Ereignissen.”

Like the emperor, Hegel uses the term Geschichte in a similarly restrictive context: “Der philosophischen Betrachtung ist es nur angemessen und würdig, die

Geschichte da aufzunehmen, wo die Vernünftigkeit in weltliche Existenz zu treten 88

beginnt” (Hegel 12:81). For Hegel, history begins with the presence of reason, which itself can only take place within the social setting of the state. As another condition, he maintains that history must exist in written form, thereby excluding oral tradition from consideration. These parameters for his concept of history (as far as his philosophy of history is concerned) exclude the majority of the world’s past. Hegel readily acknowledges this, designating such sections of the past as prehistory:

Völker können ohne Staat ein langes Leben fortgeführt haben, ehe sie dazu kommen, diese ihre Bestimmung zu erreichen, und darin selbst eine bedeutende Ausbildung nach gewissen Richtungen hin erlangt haben. Diese Vorgeschichte liegt nach dem Angegebenen ohnehin außer unserem Zweck. (Hegel 12:82)

Such prehistory corresponds with the Naturzustand to which Hegel often refers, which is marked by continuous change without direction. The element of Spirit, which guides these changes to promote historical progress, is missing in this setting. However, in removing Spirit from the formula, Brecht’s works place their focus on such natural history, favoring it over teleological models. We see this present in Trommeln in der

Nacht and Der Bettler oder der tote Hund, as the histories and stories are natural histories, material in their focus on life and death. In accordance with Brecht’s suspicion of the written word, the histories told in the plays are also related orally, placing preference on this prehistoric aspect. The Naturzustand that Hegel disregards in his philosophy of history thus becomes an emphasis in Brecht’s approach to history.

In Der Bettler oder der tote Hund, the emperor is troubled by the beggar’s remarks, especially on this day, where, according to the emperor, “das Land meinen

Namen mit schwarzem Weihrauch zusammenmischt” (Brecht 1:271). This mythical heroization of the emperor and the sanctification of his name should canonize his

position, he suggests, in history among Hegel’s world-historical individuals

(welthistorische Individuen), through whom Spirit fulfills its purposes toward self- actualization. The most relevant of such people in Hegel’s time was Napoleon, whom

Hegel viewed on the level of other world-historical individuals like Alexander and Caesar

(Hinchman 150). After the Beggar confuses him with the claim that “Es gibt keine

Geschichte,” the emperor specifically cites these three individuals as exemplary historical figures: “Und Alexander? Und Cäsar? Und Napoleon?” The beggar’s response to this question further frustrates the emperor: “Geschichten!” (Brecht 1:273). Regarding the beggar’s claim that there is no history, Kolkenbrock-Netz remarks, “Aber warum gibt es sie nicht? Doch wohl, weil Geschichte in Geschichten erzählt wird und es die eine für alle verbindliche Geschichte, die privilegierte Erzählung nicht gibt” (Kolkenbrock-Netz 173).

In addressing the dual meaning of Gechichte, Brecht’s work simultaneously critiques history as a story and presents storytelling as a valid form of history.

Given Hegel’s specific mention of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon as significant world-historical individuals, it is either ironic or revealing that in Brecht’s play, the history of precisely these three is rejected by the beggar as Geschichten, and that

Napoleon becomes a particular target of the beggar’s historical skepticism, as he relates his version of Napoleon’s Geschichte:

BETTLER […] Wen meinst du mit diesem Napoleon? KAISER Der die halbe Welt eroberte und an seinem Übermut zugründe ging! BETTLER Das können nur zwei glauben. Er und die Welt. Es ist falsch. In Wirklichkeit war Napoleon ein Mann, der in einer Rudergaleere ruderte und einen so dicken Kopf hatte, daß alle sagten: Wir können nicht rudern, weil wir zu wenig Platz für die Ellbogen haben. Als das Schiff unterging, weil sie nicht ruderten, pumpte er seinen Kopf voll Luft und blieb am Leben, er allein, und weil er festgeschmiedet war, mußte er weiterrudern, er sah nicht wohin von da unten aus, und alle 90

waren ertrunken. Da schüttelte er den Kopf über die Welt und weil er zu schwer war, fiel er ihm ab. (Brecht 1:273)

This humorous and nonsensical retelling of Napoleon’s life, while historically applicable and ironically insightful on a symbolic level, frustrates the emperor, who associates with the name a world-historical individual whose great flaw culminated in a tragic fall. The emperor is further frustrated when, in response to the question, “Aber was denkst du vom

Kaiser?”, the beggar answers, “Es gibt keinen Kaiser. Nur das Volk glaubt, es gibt einen, und ein einzelner Mensch glaubt, er sei es. Wenn dann zuviel Kriegswagen gebaut werden und die Trommler eingeübt sind, dann gibt es Krieg und es wird ein Gegner gesucht” (Brecht 1:273). Like his statement that the palace bells ring for his deceased pet, the beggar’s assessment of the emperor subverts traditional causality, cheapening the emperor’s great victory and denying his claim to a place in history. The beggar’s words clearly disturb the emperor, who eventually tells him, “Du hast mir den schönsten Tag verdorben” (Brecht 1:276). The beggar’s presence at the palace, his assessment of history, and the lingering memory of his dog amidst the celebration all serve as reminders of “[das] Nichts” among the great events. The emperor is troubled as these unpleasant details stain his idealized history, just as Kragler’s presence perturbs Balicke as a breach in the narrative he chooses to accept.

Before the emperor leaves, he asks the beggar why he was willing to speak to him for so long despite the fact that the beggar so clearly dislikes him. The beggar answers,

“Weil du nicht zu stolz warst, mein Geschwätz anzuhören, das ich nur brauche, um meinen toten Hund zu vergessen” (Brecht 1:276). The beggar admits that his stories are mere chatter, told specifically so he can temporarily forget his dead dog. The play suggests, then, that historiography, as storytelling, lacks inherent meaning, but is rather 91

practiced primarily to distract from “dem Nichts,” or the spectacles of the Fleischbank.

The beggar, the emperor, Balicke, and as Brecht’s early plays might suggest, Hegel himself, find vindication and comfort in the aesthetic process of narrative construction for the purpose of escaping harsh material reality. In the final lines of the play, the stage directions indicate, for the first time, that the beggar is actually blind. This further calls his views into question, as it is now apparent that he did not know that he was speaking with the emperor, which is a likely reason for his disdainful tone (Kolkenbrock-Netz

174). These two late revelations suggest that the historian, who only writes history which confirms his or her own worldview, is blind to the reality of what he or she records, seeing events instead through his or her immediate subjective experience.

The historical materialism evident in Brecht’s early works leads to a condemnation of figures like Balicke, the Manke brothers, and the emperor, who assign history convenient meaning according to the cohesive narratives to which they choose to adhere. I venture to say that Brecht’s materialism would also criticize Hegel for the same reason, despite the latter’s claims that his analysis of history avoids such mistakes; in fact, in his Vorlesungen, Hegel expresses concerns very similar in nature to those of historical materialism:

Als die erste Bedingung könnten wir somit aussprechen, daß wir das Historische getreu auffassen; allein in solchen allgemeinen Ausdrücken wie treu und auffassen liegt die Zweideutigkeit. Auch der gewöhnliche und mittelmäßige Geschichtsschreiber, der etwa meint und vorgibt, er verhalte sich nur aufnehmend, nur dem Gegebenen sich hingebend, ist nicht passiv mit seinem Denken und bringt seine Kategorien mit und sieht durch sie das Vorhandene […]. Aber die unterschiedenen Weisen des Nachdenkens, der Gesichtspunkte, der Beurteilung schon über bloße Wichtigkeit und Unwichtigkeit der Tatsachen, welches die am nächsten liegende Kategorie ist, gehören nicht hierher. (Hegel 12:23)

Like Benjamin, Hegel is wary of assigning degrees of importance to historical facts, and he also shows that he is conscious of the danger of applying present perspective when studying, interpreting, and recording the past. He maintains that his approach to history is purely scientific, and that the progressive trajectory of history is a phenomenon that he has objectively observed. However, from a materialist perspective, Hegel’s view of history is guilty of the same mistakes against which he warns, as it organizes and finds meaning in history in hindsight.

Although Brecht’s understanding of history in his early works is in direct opposition to Hegel’s, the two approaches intersect at numerous points, the most noteworthy being their similar, yet fundamentally different metaphors of the

Schlachtbank and the Fleischbank. All of these moments of collision between the thought of the two men show that they shared significant insights, although Hegel’s idealism and

Brecht’s materialism would take the two on ultimately different paths. The historical materialism Brecht adopted would view Hegel’s interpretation of world history simply as one cast through the lens of another constructed narrative. From this perspective, Hegel is not unlike the priest who appears in the eighth stanza of “Legende vom toten Soldaten”:

Und weil der Soldat nach Verwesung stinkt Drum hinkt ein Pfaffe voran Der über ihn ein Weihrauchfaß schwinkt Daß er nicht stinken kann. (Brecht 11:113)

The priest swings the incense, representing the Holy Spirit, about the soldier to cover up the stench of a freshly exhumed corpse. Similarly, Hegel covers the Fleischbank of history, stinking of decay, with his own metaphysical notion of Spirit in order to cover the horrors of the historical spectacles that take place there.

Chapter 3: “Alles war so leicht. Sie zerfleischten sich einfach.”

Intersubjectivity and Conflict in Im Dickicht der Städte

In 1921 Brecht spent an extended period of time in Berlin, and this experience revealed the modern metropolis in a new light for the young writer. The Großstadt became a focus of a number of his works over the next several years. Although Trommeln in der Nacht takes place in Berlin, the next play that Brecht wrote, first titled Im Dickicht and later Im Dickicht der Städte, was his first true theatrical treatment of the metropolis, and his time in Berlin certainly provided an impetus for this. He writes in a journal entry from September 1921 that he has come

zu der epochalen Entdeckung, daß eigentlich noch kein Mensch die große Stadt als Dschungel beschrieben hat.33 Wo sind ihre Helden, ihre Kolonisatoren, ihre Opfer? Die Feindseligkeit der großen Stadt, ihre bösartige steinerne Konsistenz, ihre babylonische Sprachverwirrung, kurz: ihre Poesie ist noch nicht geschaffen. (Brecht 26:236)

Brecht wanted to create a Großstadtpoesie to adequately address urban existence: “Eines ist im »Dickicht«: die Stadt. Die ihre Wildheit zurückhat, ihre Dunkelheit und ihre

Mysterien. […] Hier wird eine Mythologie aufgeschnuppert” (Brecht 26:261). The metaphors in the play draw upon images and themes already common in earlier works, but they take on new nuances of meaning here, due largely to the play’s setting “in der

Riesenstadt Chicago” (Brecht 1:437).

33 Brecht’s “discovery” was hardly accurate and he must have been aware of this, having read a German translation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle at least a year before, and in addition to its common setting, Brecht’s play would bear several thematic similarities to Sinclair’s novel (Brecht 1:586).

The connection between the city and the jungle is apparent from the play’s title alone; what is often overlooked, however, is the role of images related to trees throughout the entire play and within a wider selection of Brecht’s early work. In addition to the jungle, Brecht conjures metaphorical trees, forests, foliage, and logs, which inform a reading of the conditions depicted in the play beyond its immediate metropolitan setting.

The connection Brecht often draws between this imagery and his frequent bodily references illustrates a dilemma that renders authentic interpersonal connection seemingly impossible and dooms human beings to an existence of utter isolation.

Drawing from James Lyon’s brief reading of trees as anthropomorphized figures in

Brecht’s early work, as well as the frequent metaphorical connections Brecht makes between trees and bodily images, this chapter uses a constellation of the metaphors tree, forest, jungle, etc., in order to elucidate Brecht’s approach to modern intersubjectivity and a mutual understanding designated numerous times by the German term

Verständigung.

Brecht’s chosen term Verständigung is very important here, as it conveys not only the meaning of understanding as mere comprehension, but also entails elements of communication and agreement. As a mutual understanding based on communication, it resonates with Hegel’s idealistic notion of mutual Anerkennen, which requires both reciprocal recognition and acknowledgment. As Hegel’s Anerkennen connotes reciprocity between subjects, so do the mutual implications in Verständigung suggest an interpersonal relationship. Verständigung is a goal sought in Im Dickicht der Städte, but contrary to Hegel, Brecht’s materialism will not allow this ideal stage to be reached.

However, in continuing my investigation of Brecht’s materialization of language, this

chapter shows that while Brecht’s materialism puts the worldview of Im Dickicht der

Städte at odds with the ideal Hegelian Anerkennen, Brecht’s writings again overlap at key points with Hegel before ultimately diverging from his idealism. These points are principally found in Hegel’s progression of the self as found in his Phänomenologie des

Geistes and Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften. In particular, common ground can be seen in the presentations of self-consciousness and models of intersubjectivity like Hegel’s master/slave dialectic.

Brecht began working on what would eventually become Im Dickicht der Städte in autumn of 1921. The play was first performed in 1923 under the title Im Dickicht, which creates a direct comparison between city and jungle. The laws of survival in the city mirror those of the forest, although modern civilization has altered them. This is made more apparent by the title of the 1927 version of the play, which Brecht changed from Im Dickicht to Im Dickicht der Städte. With the small addition of two words to the title, Brecht changed the relationship of the terms Dickicht and Stadt to a more ambiguous connection than that of mere comparison; this is indicated by the use of the genitive case. The title Im Dickicht der Städte brings to mind, on the one hand, the image of the city as a jungle, but on the other, the jungle as something belonging to and having been appropriated within the environment of the metropolis. Instead of simply comparing the city to the wild jungle, the title now conveys the effects of civilization’s assimilation of the forest. It invites a contrast between the natural forest and this appropriated modern jungle, which the metropolis now epitomizes.

The play opens in a lending library where George Garga is employed. His family has left their home on the prairie for a new life in Chicago, and Garga earns a meager

wage working in a lending library to feed his family, which includes his indolent father

John, as well as his mother Maë and his sister Marie, both of whom work odd jobs to help support the impoverished family. In the first scene, Garga is challenged to a bizarre and seemingly meaningless battle by a wealthy and powerful Chinese immigrant and lumber dealer named Shlink. The play then follows the course of their fight, which Brecht calls in the prologue “den unerklärlichen Ringkampf zweier Männer,” advising his audience:

“Zerbrechen Sie sich nicht den Kopf über die Motive dieses Kampfes, sondern beteiligen

Sie sich an den menschlichen Einsätzen, beurteilen Sie unparteiisch die Kampfform der

Gegner, und lenken Sie Ihr Interesse auf das Finish” (Brecht 1:438). Brecht’s prologue reveals a greater interest in conflict in his theater. Whereas conflict was already an established element of dramatic theater, the young Brecht approached it from a very nonconventional perspective, dramatically speaking.

Conflict arises often in Brecht’s early writing in the form of sport; this is easily connected to his well-documented fascination with boxing,34 which was the subject of numerous poems and prose pieces he wrote in the 1920s. Take, for instance, his short unpublished poem “Boxkämpfe,” written in 1923:

Das ist ein guter Artillerist Der seinen Feind nicht haßt oder liebt Der den Feind nicht kennt, ob er braun oder blond Und der ihm Saures gibt (Brecht 13:272).

Brecht’s great interest in boxing parallels his early fascination with conflict as a key element of theater. He likely saw in boxing a conflict between two men that, like the battle between Garga and Shlink, does not stem from traditional causes. A good fighter is not motivated by causes such as passions, or issues of affiliation and otherness, as the

34 See, for instance, articles by Berg, Junghans, and Witt, respectively. 97

poem suggests. This conception of a fight without motives was one that had already occupied the young writer for years before Im Dickicht der Städte was published. In the essay “Das Theater als Sport,” written in 1920, he argues that attending the theater should not be like going to church, to court, or to school, as various aesthetic approaches might suggest. Instead he advises his audience to orient themselves toward the play as they would a sporting event. Brecht’s interest in boxing is surely an extension of his early interest in the theater as Sportfest, as well as his fascination with conflict, as seen in numerous works.

In the same essay, Brecht observes that in the theater, “Es sind immer mindestens zwei Leute auf der Bühne, und es handelt sich meistens um einen Kampf. Man muß genau zusehen, wer gewinnt […], man muß nur scharf zugucken, es ist wie bei

Ringkämpfen: die kleinen Tricks sind das Interessante” (Brecht 21:57-58). Brecht refers to Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts as an example of this. He is fascinated by the widow Alving, for whom he sees the play as a series of verbal duels. He admires her technique in “fighting” her opponents, just as he later advises his audience to do in viewing his own play. Brecht even sees sport as a new and, for the conditions of modernity, more valid tragic passion to drive dramatic action. In a 1928 text intended to be included in a theater program for a performance of the play, he writes:

Hier wird Sport als Passion einfach den für das Theater schon zur Verfügung stehenden Passionen angereiht. Wahrscheinlich wird diese Passion erst durch ihre durch mindestens fünf Jahrzehnte fortgesetzte Übung auf mindestens zwei Kontinenten gefühlsmäßig zu jenen großen und tragischen Passionen gerechnet werden, die Katastrophen sowie Triumphe von Ausmaß zur Folge haben können. (Brecht 24:28)

The fight between Garga and Shlink should not, Brecht argues, find its reasoning in traditional tragic passions, but in what Brecht sees as an emerging valid passion, namely 98

sport. Along with reinforcing the playwright’s rejection of bourgeois drama and its respective themes, motives, and forms, this passage illustrates his interest in battle without conventional or clear motives.

Brecht’s interest in conflict as sport and as an essential part of theater converges with his treatment of the metropolis, addressing conflict as an inevitable element of human existence and interaction. Although it finds its most detailed treatment in Im

Dickicht der Städte, Brecht’s other early texts further expound the prominence of this theme. The 1925 poem “Sonett vom Sieger,” for instance, describes a traditionally motivated fight that is disrupted by a non-traditional participant:

Wo nicht der Platz für eines Ölbaums Schatten war Entstand ein Kampf von Männern, nicht zu zähmen Und um ein Feldchen, allen Lebens bar Zu klein, um ihre Leichen aufzunehmen.

Doch einer kämpfte mit ganz ohne Zweck Unkenntlich durch Gewalt! Dem alle fluchten! Als sich die Schlächter nachts zu retten suchten Stand er noch kämpfend und ging lang nicht weg.

Die meisten waren tot und lagen da Als er noch stand und mähte in der Runde Bis er gar nichts mehr fand, es zu besiegen

Er ging in schlechtem Licht weg, doch ich sah: Er hatte auf dem Rücken eine Wunde! Er konnte auf dem Rücken nicht mehr liegen. (Brecht 13:321)

In the poem a group of men fight with a traditional purpose: they fight out of greed over possession of an insignificant piece of land. The combatant whom the title identifies as the victor, on the other hand, fights entirely “ohne Zweck.” In his fighting the text suggests a passion and vitality that is absent in the other combatants and confirmed as he leaves the place of battle victorious. This vitality, stemming from the pure desire for

battle, likely fascinated Brecht in the raw nature of boxing, and he wished to confer it onto the characters in his play. Brecht’s creative occupation with the nature of boxing brings his thought to one of the collisions with Hegel that this study traces. As the playwright depicts interpersonal conflict in Im Dickicht der Städte, an interaction emerges which bears, in surprising detail, the structure of Hegel’s various models of intersubjectivity in the fourth chapter of his Phänomenologie des Geistes.

As the “Sonett vom Sieger” tells of the victor’s participation in the fight, so does the prologue to Im Dickicht der Städte suggest of the play’s conflict that it originates without discernible motives. Despite Brecht’s claim, however, it appears that he was not able to present a conflict fought for no other reason than the sport of it. Gisela Bahr believes, for example (and there is certainly enough evidence from the play itself to support this claim): “Für Shlink kam es darauf an, […] den Zustand der Vereinzelung, in dem sich alle Menschen befinden, für sich zu durchbrechen” (Bahr 75). This interpretation is generally agreed upon in scholarship, but in drawing from many of

Brecht’s other early texts, as well as examining the implications of the playwright’s use of bodily and arboreal images, my analysis of the play undertakes a more nuanced reading of its characters and conflict, drawing significant connections between their relationships and the models of intersubjectivity found in Hegel’s Phänomenologie.

To establish a context for the significance of the tree imagery in Im Dickicht der

Städte, it is necessary to first examine the roles that trees play in Brecht’s other early works. Trees are a frequent, even “near-obsessive image” (Lyon, “Auch der Baum” 155) in the young Brecht’s work, and they arise regularly in poems written as early as 1913.

Lyon notes that individual trees in Brecht’s poems are often portrayed as

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anthropomorphized beings, either possessing human qualities or representing humans themselves. The lone trees in poems like “Das Lied vom Geierbaum” (1917) and

“Morgendliche Rede an den Baum Green” (probably 1919 or 1920) represent individuals who are attacked, in Lyon’s reading, by “inimical elements in their social environment” that destroy them (164). In these poems, Brecht represents such hostile forces with vultures who strip the trees of their foliage. In “Das Lied vom Geierbaum,” the tree observes “Wie es den Geiern vor seiner Unsterblichkeit graust,” and mocks the vultures,

“dies sterbliche Volk” (Brecht 13:95). Nevertheless, by morning, we read that the tree did not survive the attack, but has died sometime during the night. In Lyon’s reading, lone trees like the one found in this poem likely signify great individuals who have grown and attained an air of immortality, but in so doing have alienated themselves from a jealous and parasitic society, represented in the vultures that feed off of them. Vultures in this metaphorical capacity are also present in Im Dickicht der Städte. In the play’s sixth scene,

Pat Mankyboddle goes through a wooded area, armed with a revolver, in a belated attempt to rescue or avenge Marie Garga, who, as a victim caught in the jungle of the city, has become a mere object to the men around her. Musing on Marie’s fate and his vengeance, he says: “Die Kanaille wird verschlungen mit der Federhaut, die Verdauung durch Gebete beschleunigt, die Geier werden standrechtlich erschossen und in den

Mankyboddleschen Musseen aufgehängt” (Brecht 1:473). Immediately thereafter, however, he loses his nerve and leaves. The Geier he intended to shoot are the people he thinks have exploited Marie and driven her to an existence as a prostitute.

Whereas the image of a lone tree in Brecht’s poetry often stands for an individual under attack from outside forces, groups of trees, on the other hand, frequently represent

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those very forces. This dual reading of trees both as victimized individuals and hostile collectives points to a tension between their singular and collective manifestations in

Brecht’s work. In poems such as “Das Lied von der Eisenbahntruppe von Fort Donald”

(1916) and “Ballade von des Cortez Leuten” (1919), forests are destructive masses that devour the humans trapped in them. Lyon writes, “It is not far-fetched, then, to see carnivorous forests that swallow up those within them as a foreshadowing of his thinking about the destructive forces of society, an idea that surfaces again strongly in Im Dickicht der Städte” (Lyon, “Auch der Baum” 158). Where they appear in prehistorical35 settings in Brecht’s plays or poems, hostile groups of trees take the form of forests, and in Im

Dickicht der Städte, within a modern, urban existence, they are manifested within the wilder topography of the jungle. The significance of this analogy is evident in its imagery: although the forest is a dangerous landscape that devours its inhabitants, it still retains a basic sense of order. The image of the jungle, on the other hand, suggests an overcrowded space where trees and branches grow over and strangle each other as they assert themselves to claim their share of space and sunlight. It is a wilder, more chaotic space than the forest, and it reflects the nature of human interaction in the densely populated city. The use of trees in such a collective role is immediately apparent within the title of Brecht’s play, which suggests an anarchic struggle in a hostile setting and the danger this wilderness poses to those who may become entangled therein.

35 The meaning of “prehistorical,” as I use it here, takes on multiple nuances as it refers not only to the primitive setting often represented by forests in Brecht’s work, but also to Hegel’s Naturzustand, namely an existence before, or outside of, his definition of history (see chapter two). In either case, the term indicates a pre-rational period, which for Hegel’s idealism is undeveloped and insufficient; Brecht’s works, on the other hand, while not ignoring the dangers of such a primitive existence, sometimes convey an acceptance of and even nostalgia for this simpler natural order. 102

Despite the dangers of such collective manifestations of trees, the prehistoric forest in Im Dickicht der Städte is looked upon almost as an ideal, innocent space when compared to its modernized counterpart, the jungle. Each wooded setting depicts human interaction at a different point in natural history. Conversing with Garga near the end of their long fight, Shlink recalls the distant past of humankind in the primeval forest:

Der Wald! Von hier kommt die Menschheit. Haarig, mit Affengebissen, gute Tiere, die zu leben wußten. Alles war so leicht. Sie zerfleischten sich einfach. Ich sehe sie deutlich, wie sie mit zitternden Flanken einander das Weiße im Auge anstierten, sich in ihre Hälse verbissen, hinunterrollten, und der Verblutete zwischen den Wurzeln, das war der Besiegte, und der am meisten niedergetrampelt hatte vom Gehölz, das war der Sieger! (Brecht 1:491)

The nature of existence and interaction in this ancient forest was straightforward, as combatants simply tore each other to pieces. A Verständigung was simple to come to, and identities of self and other were easily attained: one was der Sieger and the other der

Besiegte. Shlink laments the loss of this simple order, as modern civilization has convoluted the laws of the forest and the rules of engagement. The forest is a primal, prelingual space that reflects a prehistoric human existence. Identity is determined on a material basis; the victor survives, and the loser bleeds to death. Survival of the fittest is the rule, and interpersonal relations, although brutal and merciless, are simple to understand. The jungle, as a representation of the modern city, poses as much danger to the individual as did the forest. Embodied in its extreme form in the metropolis, however, human civilization has warped the primitive order of the forest.

Brecht’s anthropomorphic treatment of trees also highlights his critique of language, and particularly that of written language. At the beginning of the play Garga works in a library lending out books which are, essentially, dead trees. These books

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contain the thought of writers like Rimbaud, whose poetic language Brecht genuinely admired, but the fertility and vibrancy of this thought has been sterilized, crystallized, and commodified in printed form. As the word, for Brecht, is “die Leiche des Dinges”

(Brecht 26:58), the books that Garga lends out and quotes from are coffins containing the corpses of artistic creation. That the play demonstrates such an attitude is apparent in the many times when Garga quotes Rimbaud. He does this, generally, in order to assert the validity of his subjectivity, identity, and freedom from oppressive external circumstances, as observed by Franz Mennemeier: “Immer wenn Garga seine vermeintlich innersten

Beweggründe, seine subjektiv-authentische Wahrheit zu artikulieren sucht, erfährt er sich offenbar als stumm; er flüchtet in – schon vorgeprägte – Literatur” (Mennemeier 266). It is ironic in itself that Garga seeks to establish his individuality by quoting another, and each passage quoted is treated in the play with increasing irony and cynicism, culminating near the play’s end when, after reciting lines from Rimbaud for the final time, Garga then remarks, “Was für Dummheiten! Worte, auf einem Planeten, der nicht in der Mitte ist!” (Brecht 1:492-93). Garga recognizes the futility of such words due to the ultimate relativity of reality: there is no center or core from which truly meaningful language, signifying sovereign selfhood, can emerge.

The cynicism that Garga develops in the face of such a metaphysical void is already the standpoint of Shlink and his cohorts at the play’s outset, and this is also reflected in their attitude toward written language. One of Shlink’s companions, a hotel owner named Wurm, rants upon entering the library:

Das sind also Bücher? Ein schmieriges Geschäft. Wozu gibt es das? Es gibt genug Lügen. »Der Himmel war schwarz, nach Osten zogen Wolken.« Warum nicht nach Süden? Was dieses Volk alles in sich hineinfrißt. […] Bücher! Wozu helfen sie? Wurde das Erdbeben von San 104

Francisco aufgehalten durch Bibliotheken? […] Ich bebe am ganzen Leib wie Espenlaub, wenn ich solche Tagediebe sehe. (Brecht 1:442-43)

According to Wurm, words and books serve no practical purpose. His fellows agree with him, as does the play in general, and this echoes Brecht’s overall critique of language as discussed in chapter one. A further instance occurs in the same scene when the pimp

Pavian, another of Shlink’s cronies, says, “Tun Sie Ihr Gesicht Weg! Ich kann Papier nicht sehen. Und nicht Zeitungen” (Brecht 1:443). And in the 1923 version of the play,

Wurm exclaims, “Die Schriftsteller! Sie rächen sich am Leben durch ein Buch. Das

Leben rächt sich dadurch, daß es anders ist” (Brecht 1:353). Oesmann writes that the revenge that Wurm describes here

arises out of this tension that is produced by an author’s attempt to reduce social life in its material complexity […] to the abstract thought embodied in print. Material life takes revenge on the intellectual life of print by contradicting its narrative presentations of coherent meaning. (Oesmann 73)

Reinforced by the play’s use of trees in connection with humans and books, Brecht’s skepticism of language criticizes the incompatibility of language and life. This incompatibility leads to a failure of Verständigung through language and, reflected in

Pavian’s comment “Lieber mit einem Rasiermesser arbeiten als mit faulen Papieren”

(Brecht 1:449), a turn to conflict as an effort to foster a connection with another individual.

In Brecht’s early writing, something of a middle ground between the forest and the jungle appears in the form of the prairie or the savanna, which appears to indicate a pre-modern space.36 In his poem “Lied einer Familie aus der Savannah,” composed

36 This could include early modern settings as well. This distinction does not appear important in Brecht’s writing, because his works, as examined in this chapter, address essentially similar issues recurring in human interaction which, although intensified in urban modernity, appear to be historically ubiquitous. 105

around 1925, Brecht gives a fictional first-person account of a family that moves from their simple life on the prairie to increasingly complicated and urban variations of metropolitan existence. The narrator’s family moves first to San Francisco, then to

Massachusetts, and finally to Chicago. At every location they are dissatisfied with their situation and assume that life will improve with their next move, but with each move their freedoms and possessions diminish further until the fourth and final stanza, where the narrator reports:

Wir haben kein Zimmer in Chikago Keinen Dollar und keine Aussicht, mein Gott Und: hier ist es schlecht, sagt jetzt Billy Aber nirgendwo wird es besser sein Und wir hatten einst Geld und Aussichten Arbeit die Woche und frei am Samstag abend Und an allen Orten war es uns zu schlecht (Brecht 13:317-18)

Chikago is a chiffre used regularly by the young Brecht to represent the cold, inhuman, modern metropolis. The metropolis is the extreme incarnation of civilization’s effects on social existence and is where the dilemmas of human existence and interaction reach their full complexity in the young Brecht’s works.

Although the “Lied einer Familie aus der Savannah” contrasts the idyllic savanna against the brutal metropolis, however, a wider reading of Brecht’s texts show that the conflict and animosity of the city are not absent on the prairie. After Shlink challenges

Garga to their fight, Garga accepts, asking his opponent: “Wollen Sie die Prärie aufmachen hier? Messer? Revolver? Cocktails?” (Brecht 1:444). Prärie is a term Brecht uses in early works to indicate “das Recht des Stärkeren” (Brecht 1:600); on the prairie, human civilization has removed some of the brutality of the primeval forest, but this is a facade, as violent conflict is also ubiquitous here. Brecht’s one-act play Prärie (1919)

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encapsulates this notion as it follows a feud between Zachäus and Polly the cook, which takes place among a small group of people on the prairie.37 Zachäus has lost a finger in a recent farm accident. He keeps the finger in a jar of oil in his room. The two men provoke each other, the conflict escalates, and finally Polly cooks Zachäus’ finger into his dinner and serves it to him. This leads to a confrontation on the prairie in which Polly stabs and kills Zachäus. Although the prairie suggests a pre-modern setting in Brecht’s early writing, conflict still persists, just as in the primal forest and the modern jungle.

The strange fight in Im Dickicht der Städte suggests that the seeming ubiquity of violent animosity, regardless of its setting, is a symptom of the universal isolation arising from what is referred to as the Entzweiung der Sprache. Whether in the prehistoric forest, the pre-modern prairie, or the modern jungle, the only enduring form of human interaction appears to be conflict, and in Im Dickicht der Städte, it is Shlink’s ultimate attempt to break out of his isolation by establishing this connection to another human being. In the forest, such a substantial connection with others was possible (seen in the description “wie sie mit zitternden Flanken einander das Weiße im Auge anstierten”), even if it was through violent conflict. Shlink’s need for Fühlung arises out of the solitude in which he finds himself in the world. Resulting from the seemingly unbridgeable gap of subjectivity, this profound isolation is an important theme in

Brecht’s early thinking, as indicated, for example, in the following journal entry dated

September 28, 1921:

Fast alle bürgerlichen Institutionen, fast die ganze Moral, beinahe die gesamte christliche Legende gründen sich auf die Angst des Menschen,

37 The two main characters of the short play are taken directly from Knut Hamsun’s 1903 novella Kratskog. Historier og Skitser, published in German in 1914 under the title Zachäus. Brecht changes the outcome of the feud and treats some of Hamsun’s story in the play’s exposition in order to focus the action specifically on the conflict between the two men. 107

allein zu sein, und ziehen seine Aufmerksamkeit von seiner unsäglichen Verlassenheit auf dem Planeten, seiner winzigen Bedeutung und kaum wahrnehmbaren Verwurzelung ab. (Brecht 26:242)

Brecht identifies the universal fear of being alone as the main problem that almost all human-made institutions, including bourgeois constructs of morality, religion, and as he continues later in the entry, aesthetics, seek to address. Im Dickicht der Städte adds conflict to this list: near the play’s end, Garga accuses Shlink of having succumbed to

“der schwarzen Sucht des Planeten, Fühlung zu bekommen,” and of having sought to attain this Fühlung “durch die Feindschaft” (Brecht 1:490).

This universal isolation Brecht’s journal refers to is another point where his thought intersects with Hegel, who observed a similar isolation in the world, as the following passage from his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte shows:

Damit tritt zugleich die Isolierung der Individuen voneinander und vom Ganzen ein, die einbrechende Eigensucht derselben und Eitelkeit, das Suchen des eigenen Vorteils und Befriedigung desselben auf Kosten des Ganzen: nämlich jenes sich absondernde Innere ist auch in der Form der Subjektivität – die Eigensucht und das Verderben in den losgebundenen Leidenschaften und eigenen Interessen der Menschen. (Hegel 12:102)

Again, the divergent paths that Brecht and Hegel take from this point are consequences of their respective idealism and materialism. Hegel sees this isolation develop only in states and peoples who have reached their developmental peak and are now in decline, as Spirit leaves them for the people through whom it further develops toward self-actualization.

Before this peak is reached, and as long as there is progressive dialectical struggle in and among a people, such isolation “voneinander und vom Ganzen” is not an issue. On the other hand, Brecht’s work suggests that as struggle is cyclical but ultimately directionless, no such peak can be reached in the first place, and there is no point at which people are not subjected to this profound isolation. 108

Brecht’s use of the term Verwurzelung in his journal is of particular interest in its comparison of human beings and trees. The image of roots goes hand in hand with

Brecht’s literary treatment of trees which we find illustrated more fully in the poem “Der

Geschwisterbaum” (1918). The poem follows the growth of two trees united at the roots:

In der Niedrung eines Flusses, tief, wo Haselstrauch und Erle hauste Wiegte Wind kaum spürbar zitternd sie in Ruh – Der Sturm, der manchmal oben furchtbar sauste Kam hier in diese Tiefe niemals zu. Auch hörten sie den Strom nie – weil der immer brauste…

Solange sie unten ins niedre Gehölze verbissen Hatten sie gleiche Freunde und gleichen Feind. Sie sagten zueinander: Ich. Sie waren in einem Stamme geeint Und wuchsen zusammen geschwisterlich. (Brecht 13:118)

Below the ground, the tree’s roots signify a pre-rational and pre-individuated state of primeval consciousness. The trees have no perception of the outside world – the storm outside never disturbs them. Despite being bedded as they are in its “Niederung,” they are unaffected by the flow of the river, which symbolizes change, history, and memory. The trees exist in a pre- and non-historic tranquility, not hearing the river precisely because it is all they hear (“weil er immer brauste”). They are embedded in nature and not yet aware of their distinction from it.

However, the trees grow out of the ground and begin to tear away from each other as they compete for sunlight. At this point where the trees emerge above ground, their roots become a site of conflict.

Und als sie dann oben sich voneinander gerissen Und sagten fremder zueinander: Du […] In jenen Jahren, wo sie auseinander strebten Begannen die Kämpfe der Wurzeln tief in der Erde. (Brecht 13:118)

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This space among the roots can be found elsewhere in the young Brecht’s writing: in

Shlink’s above description of the forest, for example, he says that the loser of the primal fight is the one who bleeds to death among the roots.38 The roles of Sieger and Besiegte are determined here, just as the trees in the poem recognize their distinctness from each other. An awareness of selfhood develops, as does a conception of others in the outside world.

“Der Geschwisterbaum” continues and the two trees compete for light and air, but as the storms around them grow fiercer, they again embrace each other. The fear of solitude proves greater than the desire for independence, and the trees reconcile, growing back together at top:

O das Gefühl, daß sie ganz allein sterben müßten! Der Sturm trieb sie aneinander. Sie küßten Sich zitternd und schmiegten sich enger und fühlten noch Freude Daß es hoch hinauf wirklich nur ein Körper war… (Brecht 13:120).39

The poem uses the images of trees to expound the meaning that they carry throughout

Brecht’s young career, and particularly in Im Dickicht der Städte. The development of the trees from their existence underground in “der Niedrung eines Flusses”40 suggests a

38 A journal entry from August 26, 1920 further establishes the roots as a site of conflict in the young writer’s thought: Brecht reports that he has begun “Balladen für die Jugend zu entwerfen,” one of which bears the title “Die Schlacht bei den Baumwurzeln” (Brecht 26:141). As far as has been determined, no copy of this ballad exists. 39 In 1920 Brecht wrote an unpublished poem that further (and more succinctly) establishes the significance the natural metaphors he uses to express themes discussed here: Ihr großen Bäume in den Niederungen Mit mildem Licht von Wolken in den Kronen Die finstern Wurzeln tief in sich verschlungen So steht ihr da, worinnen Tiere wohnen. Der Sturm peitscht eure nackten Äste finster Wir sind sehr einsam und es macht auch nichts. Wir haben nie ein Licht und nicht einmal Gespenster. Und hätten wir’s: was täten wir mit Licht? (Brecht 13:153) 40 The German term “Niederung” (spelled “Niedrung” in “Der Geschwisterbaum”) can prove difficult to translate and could correspond with a number of English words, including hollow, depression (in a landscape), lowland, low ground, or defile. I understand the term to refer a low place on the river’s bank, 110

parallel development of humankind from pre-rational, pre-individuated collectivity to the primitive brutality of the primordial forest, and on to the terrifying isolation of modern life. This metaphorical representation of natural history corresponds remarkably with the progressive stages of the individual self in Hegel’s philosophy, which he summarizes in his Enzyklopädie. He outlines the individual’s progression from being one with nature to becoming what he calls a natürliche Seele, which, like the sprouting trees, is vaguely aware of itself as an individual. From this point it develops into a consciousness

(Bewußtsein), existing in-itself (an sich), meaning that it recognizes only itself as a subject; the external world is entirely an object for it, and it does not yet see other consciousnesses as individual selves.

As it eventually begins to acknowledge that others are selves and that it itself is, from their perspective, an other, the individual turns its focus inward and has itself as its object, instead of the external world. At this point it is a self-consciousness

(Selbstbewußtsein) and exists for-itself (für sich). Hegel’s ideal is reached as self- consciousnesses progress dialectically in their relationships with others until they reach a stage of reciprocal Anerkennen, in which they coexist in-and-for themselves as well as for-each-other. In this ideal stage, individuals mutually acknowledge and recognize each other’s independent selfhood, and what is equally important, they acknowledge their dependence upon each other for a truth of their own self-certainty. The trees in “Der

Geschwisterbaum,” having reconciled by the poem’s end, similarly support and are supported by each other.

which the river has carved out in the landscape. The important aspect of its meaning for my study is the primitive, collective existence underground, among the roots and unaware of time (the river), space, or differentiation from nature. 111

While this progress within Hegel’s dialectic ideally leads the individual to attain independent selfhood and a meaningful, mutually reaffirming, interpersonal relationship with other individuals, Im Dickicht der Städte shows no hope for this possibility. In his analysis of the play, Ronald Speirs notes:

Evolution, by giving each man an individually differentiated spiritual life has also condemned man to become conscious of his emotional isolation within a relatively undifferentiated fleshy cell. Because man wants more than the animals, he has less. Although it is possible to gain control over the external circumstances of other men’s lives, neither love nor hatred can produce access to the existential centre of another self. Consequently, the struggle between Shlink and Garga peters out in frustration and ambiguity. (Speirs 84)

Teleological historical progress is replaced in Brecht’s play by a metaphysically barren natural history that denies humankind the potential of reaching Hegel’s ideal. As in “Der

Geschwisterbaum,” individuation separates us from the tranquility of the river’s hollow and drives us into an existence dominated by conflict. Unlike the situations in the poem and Hegel’s work, however, the inadequacy of communication through language, at least in its extreme form within urban modernity, makes reconciliation impossible. Like the trees in “Der Geschwisterbaum,” Shlink tries to find another to anchor himself to, but he seeks to do this not through linguistic communication or Anerkennen, but through conflict.

The image of the two trees clinging to each other to survive the storm finds a kind of precedent in Brecht’s earlier play Baal. In his examination of natural metaphors in

Baal, G. Ronald Murphy reads trees in the play as emblematic of life, sexuality, and fertility. He also sees in Brecht’s trees a depiction of the frailty of human existence and a reminder of mortality and inevitable death against which humankind struggles in vain. A

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story told by a beggar in Baal employs trees in its illustration of this existential dread. He tells of a man he once knew:

Er stammte aus einem Wald und kam einmal wieder dort hin, denn er mußte sich etwas überlegen. Den Wald fand er sehr fremd und nicht mehr verwandt. […] An einem Abend […] ging er durch die große Stille zwischen die Bäume und stellte sich unter einen von ihnen, der sehr groß war. […] Er lehnte sich an ihn, ganz nah, fühlte das Leben in ihm, oder meinte es und sagte: Du bist höher als ich und stehst fest und du kennst die Erde bis tief hinunter und sie hält dich […], aber ich stehe nicht fest und kann nicht in die Tiefe und nichts hält mich. […] Der Wind ging. Durch den Baum lief ein Zittern, der Mann fühlte es. Da warf er sich zu Boden, umschlang die wilden und harten Wurzeln und weinte bitterlich. (Brecht 1:121-22)

The man leans against the great tree to feel its strength, but when he feels that even it is subject to the forces of the storm, he despairs and clutches its roots as he cries.

Regardless of the tree’s strength and durability, the man is brought to desperation when he realizes that “the space between the trees, with the cold moving wind, is older yet, and will be there a long time after the old tree shall have fallen” (Murphy 37). As with the wind between the trees, the gulf between humans, or the Entzweiung der Sprache, appears permanent and impenetrable. Additionally, the phrase “weinte bitterlich” uses the same wording as the biblical account of Peter’s reaction after denying his association with Christ, as found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This allusion adds significance to the man’s reaction upon recognizing the tree’s mortality, and implies a sudden loss of faith in the face of overwhelming nothingness. Sinking to the tree’s roots suggests a desire to return to an earlier, pre-rational state to escape the dread of a meaningless existence.

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This theme continues in a later scene as Baal sings a variation of “Vom Tod im

Wald,” a poem that Brecht composed in 1918 and would later publish in his Hauspostille.

The poem begins:

Und ein Mann starb im ewigen Wald Wo ihn Sturm und Strom umbrauste. Starb wie ein Tier im Wurzelwerk verkrallt Starrte hoch in die Wipfel, wo über dem Wald Sturm seit Tagen über alles sauste. (Brecht 1:129)

The dying man’s friends try to convince him to let them take him to a more peaceful place to die, but he refuses, clinging instead to the tree’s roots while the storm rages above. His fellows see “ihn sich am Baume halten” and crying “Leben will ich!” (Brecht

1:129). The man dies and is buried “In des Baumes dunkelstes Geäste” (Brecht 1:130).

We see here a similar setting as that of “Der Geschwisterbaum,” particularly in the elements of Sturm and Strom. His desire to live and his insistence upon staying by the tree in its Wurzelwerk mirror the desires of the man in the beggar’s story, and this poem even foretells Baal’s own death, which he is determined to suffer outside in the forest, as opposed to indoors on a bed.

The fight in the forest between the primates in Im Dickicht der Städte finds a striking parallel with the first intersubjective scenario that Hegel addresses as he follows the initial stages of self-consciousness in his Phänomenologie. In its most primitive manifestation, a self-consciousness simply differentiates between that which it is and that which it is not. It recognizes itself as subject, and everything else is, to it, mere object

(Gegenstand): “Das Selbstbewußtsein ist zunächst einfaches Fürsichsein, sichselbstgleich durch das Ausschließen alles anderen aus sich; […] Was Anderes für es ist, ist als unwesentlicher, mit dem Charakter des Negativen bezeichneter Gegenstand” (Hegel

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3:147-48). In this early phase, the individual sees its environment as a sum of objects of what Hegel terms “desire” (Begierde). The individual asserts its selfhood by comprehending and appropriating these objects, bringing them to fit into its perception of the world.

When the individual confronts another self-consciousness, though, it finds an independent other who, unlike objects of desire, can reject being appropriated or assimilated: “Aber das Andere ist auch ein Selbstbewußtsein […]. Jedes ist wohl seiner selbst gewiß, aber nicht des anderen, und darum hat seine eigene Gewißheit von sich noch keine Wahrheit” (Hegel 3:148). Thus, the self-consciousness turns its attention to the other self-consciousness in order to gain external recognition and confirmation of its own selfhood. To prove its selfhood, both to itself and to another, a self-consciousness must demonstrate its independence from its external circumstances. It must negate its own status as perceived object, and strives “zu zeigen, an kein bestimmtes Dasein geknüpft, an die allgemeine Einzelheit des Daseins überhaupt nicht, nicht an das Leben geknüpft zu sein” (Hegel 3:148). The individual seeks to assert its independence from any and all external circumstances including life itself. The ultimate assertion of independence from Leben is found, then, as an individual willingly places its life on the line by proving its selfhood through a fight to the death:

Das Verhältnis beider Selbstbewußtsein ist also so bestimmt, daß sie sich selbst und einander durch den Kampf auf Leben und Tod bewähren. – Sie müssen in diesen Kampf gehen, denn sie müssen die Gewißheit ihrer selbst, für sich zu sein, zur Wahrheit an dem Anderen und an ihnen selbst erheben. […] Das Individuum, welches das Leben nicht gewagt hat, kann wohl als Person anerkannt werden; aber es hat die Wahrheit dieses Anerkanntseins als seines selbständigen Selbstbewußtseins nicht erreicht. (Hegel 3:148-49).

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This fight to the death serves multiple purposes for its participants. In voluntarily putting its own existence in danger, each self-consciousness reaffirms its selfhood to itself. It also proves its independence to (and receives the same proof from) the other; thus the other’s recognition of its self-certainty is validated, as the other has likewise proven its own selfhood.

In the prehistoric setting of the primeval forest in Im Dickicht der Städte, as in

Hegel’s writing, two primitive self-consciousnesses encounter each other; in Hegel’s words, “Es tritt ein Individuum einem Individuum gegenüber auf” (Hegel 3:148). Each individual sees the other as something to be conquered, and in order to establish selfhood, identity, and independence, one kills the other. Their identities (der Sieger and der

Besiegte) are established on a strictly material basis in this pre-rational Naturzustand.

Their interaction with the world and with each other is not yet mediated by language, but rather by their actions, whether it be conquering or being conquered. Initially, the fight to the death appears to produce the supersession required for the dialectical progression toward independent selfhood. However, there is no sublation that appropriates and preserves necessary elements of the opposing extremes, but rather a mere destruction of one of them:

Es verschwindet aber damit aus dem Spiele des Wechsels das wesentliche Moment, sich in Extreme entgegengesetzter Bestimmtheiten zu zersetzen; und die Mitte fällt in eine tote Einheit zusammen, welche in tote, bloß seiende, nicht entgegengesetzte Extreme zersetzt ist […]. Ihre Tat ist die abstrakte Negation, nicht die Negation des Bewußtseins, welches so aufhebt, daß es das Aufgehobene aufbewahrt und erhält und hiermit sein Aufgehobenwerden überlebt. (Hegel 3:149-50)

Ironically, the loser of the fight is the only one who receives external recognition as a self. This recognition is of course meaningless, now that the vanquished individual no

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longer exists. On the other hand, the victor makes no progress toward the truth of self- certainty, and therefore toward independent selfhood, because in destroying the other, it has also eliminated the potential source of independent recognition necessary for external verification of its independence.

While this situation is insufficient in Hegel’s thought, Shlink longs for its simple and clear Verständigung because Hegel’s ideal Anerkennen is not available to him. Like the tallest tree in the forest, he has climbed to the top of the urban jungle through ruthless conflict and begins in Im Dickicht der Städte atop the social hierarchy with other characters at his disposal, like his servant Skinny, the hotel owner Wurm, and the pimp

Pavian. At his height, Shlink, like the “Geschwisterbaum,” is struck by his “unsäglichen

Verlassenheit” and the fear, “allein zu sein,” as Brecht writes in his journal. In his need for Fühlung, he seeks a connection to another person as a comfort against the storms of existence.

Shlink seeks to establish contact with Garga “durch die Feindschaft,” as was the case among the primitive combatants in the forest. Love and intimacy, Shlink later tells

Garga, were never sufficient to bridge the gulf between individuals, which has been brought about by die Entzweiung der Sprache:

Die Liebe, die Wärme aus Körpernähe, ist unsere einzige Gnade in der Finsternis! Aber die Vereinigung der Organe ist die einzige, sie überbrückt nicht die Entzweiung der Sprache. Dennoch vereinigen sie sich, Wesen zu erzeugen, die ihnen in ihrer trostlosen Vereinzelung beistehen möchten. Und die Generationen blicken sich kalt in die Augen. (Brecht 1:491)

Shlink believes that physical love only overcomes physical separation, and others can at best merely commiserate with us in our comfortless isolation. As physical intimacy is insufficient, Shlink turns to conflict, the means for Verständigung that succeeded in the

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primeval forest. From his initial position of power, he finds Garga, whom he has closely observed and evaluated to be “ein guter Kämpfer” (Brecht 1:448).

Through what Brecht calls “ein geistiger System scheinbarer Passivität” (Brecht

24:25), Shlink continuously absorbs Garga’s strikes in whatever form they come, and his counterattack is never aggressive, but rather an attempt to provoke Garga to take further action against him. When he is confronted by Garga after their initial altercation in the lending library, Shlink surprises his young opponent by handing over his lumber business and thereby his wealth and power. He then tells him:

Von heute ab, Mister Garga, lege ich mein Geschick in Ihre Hände, Sie sind mir unbekannt. Von heute ab bin ich Ihre Kreatur. Jeder Blick Ihrer Augen wird mich beunruhigen. Jeder Ihrer Wünsche, auch die unbekannten, wird mich willfährig finden. Ihre Sorge ist meine Sorge, meine Kraft wird die Ihre sein. Meine Gefühle werden nur Ihnen gewidmet, und Sie werden böse sein. (Brecht 1:448)

Shlink and Garga essentially switch roles with each other. As the play progresses, they also become more like each other in their personal philosophies. Shlink, who both rose to his position of power through brutal material conflict, now seeks an inner connection with Garga. In the tenth scene, looking back over the course their fight has taken, he tells

Garga, “Du hast begriffen, daß wir Kameraden sind, Kameraden einer metaphysischen

Aktion!” (Brecht 1:491). The Fühlung Shlink desires to attain through the fight he has orchestrated with Garga must transcend not mere physical isolation, as would physical intimacy, but rather facilitate true Verständigung.41 He continues, “Nicht das Körperliche, sondern das Geistige war es,” to which Garga answers, “Und das Geistige, das sehen Sie, das ist nichts” (Brecht 1:493). Thus Garga moves away from his initial, idealistic views

41 There is general scholarly disagreement on whether the play implies that an erotic relationship exists between Shlink and Garga near the end of their acquaintance. I neither support nor contest this claim; the matter is not of particular interest for my study because the futility of physical intimacy in making a meaningful connection with another is ultimately dismissed by Shlink. 118

of individuality and selfhood toward a cold materialism focused only on domination and survival.

As Elisabeth Wright observes, in Shlink’s complete submission to Garga’s will and Garga’s unconditional acceptance of Shlink’s terms, the pair agree upon a master/slave relationship (Wright 106). Oddly, however, Wright makes no reference to

Hegel, whose famous master/slave dialectic would appear to be an obvious point of convergence between his and Brecht’s work here. In the Phänomenologie, when one self- consciousness encounters another, it becomes aware of the limitations of appropriating others as mere objects of desire. It is also aware of its need not only to be independent, but also for an independent other to recognize and thus confirm its selfhood; for this reason, the self-consciousness understands that to merely destroy its opponent would not be productive in working out its own selfhood. Thus, the next dialectical step of selfhood

Hegel outlines in his Phänomenologie is the famous master/slave model, which arises when two self-consciousnesses, each striving for external confirmation of its own selfhood, encounter one another, with the understanding that simply destroying the other is insufficient for this end.

In this scenario, the dominant self-consciousness does not destroy, but rather subdues its other, which is willing to give up its freedom in exchange for its existence. In conquering the slave rather than destroying it, the master has ostensibly established its independence from the natural world; in the eyes of its master the slave has, on the one hand, voluntarily relinquished its status as a self-consciousness and taken on the status of a mere consciousness in order to survive. In this way it is an object that the master has appropriated, and which now, in its servile role, mediates the master’s interaction with

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the natural world. Nevertheless, the slave is still in reality a self-consciousness, and through the living slave the master receives the required external verification of its own independence by an independent other.

However, like the warrior/warrior relationship, the master/slave relationship for

Hegel is, in itself, a false dialectic that must ultimately collapse. Hegel gives multiple reasons for this. First, he writes that “zum eigentlichen Anerkennen fehlt das Moment, daß, was der Herr gegen den Anderen tut, er auch gegen sich selbst, und was der Knecht gegen sich, er auch gegen den Anderen tue. Es ist dadurch ein einseitiges und ungleiches

Anerkennen entstanden” (Hegel 3:152). Michael Fox explains this point further: “The master, by treating the slave as a mere thing or means, also denies to himself or herself the sort of mutual recognition needed for fuller forms of selfhood” (Fox 124). The master exists in and for itself, and the slave exists for the master, but for true mutual

Anerkennen, each must exist in-and-for-itself as well as for-the-other, providing itself a sense of self-certainty and giving the other the truth of its own self-certainty. In order to reach his present wealth and power, Shlink has become a master, subduing others around him within the jungle of the city. He has thus enjoyed the recognition of the “slaves” around him; as Pavian describes him, “Er hatte nie die Spur eines Herzens. […] Seine

Hand lag dem ganzen Viertel am Hals” (Brecht 1:464). As in Hegel’s master/slave model, however, this recognition is not from a truly independent other, but from one who has relinquished this status.

This is not the only shortcoming that renders this model ineffective. Fox also notes that “in this configuration, the master becomes alienated from the very source of doing from which all selves derive (the self is a doer and is what it does; the master

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becomes a nondoer)” (Fox 124). Thus the master’s sense of selfhood as an agent, as well as the external verification of its independence that it receives from the slave, are both illusory. In addition, the master also has only a semblance of freedom; as the slave is dependent upon the master for its existence, so does the master’s existence depend on the fruits of the slave’s labor. The imbalanced relationship between the two is unsustainable; in George Kelly’s words, “In the master-slave situation, there is neither education, nor progress, nor history – only the repetitive fulfillment of the master’s wants” (Kelly 213).

The master has regressed to the earlier stage of merely appropriating external objects, except that now its interaction with the natural world is mediated by the slave, and so the master no longer even has the sense of selfhood that comes from immediate interaction with the material world.

These sentiments are echoed by Garga and Shlink about a month after their fight has commenced. As the “slave,” Shlink moves in with Garga’s parents and supports them through manual labor, while Garga spends his time around Shlink’s former underlings in the “Chinesisches Hotel” that Shlink previously frequented:

GARGA Es ist so, daß er wie ein Pferd arbeitet, und ich liege faul in meiner Absinthlache. SHLINK Die Eroberer der Welt liegen gern auf dem Rücken. GARGA Die Besitzer arbeiten. (Brecht 1:466)

Shlink and Garga seem to agree with Hegel’s critique of the master/slave scenario; they recognize that the masters, or conquerors of the world, enjoy lying on their backs while the slaves, or true possessors of the world, work. Shlink appears to choose the role of slave, at least in part, for the interaction with the material world that this role affords him.

This is also in accordance with Hegel’s explication of the master/slave model; he writes that in this relationship, the slave attains a dimension of self-certainty that the master 121

does not. This is a result of two elements of the slave’s existence, the first of which is the slave’s fear for its life, which is in the hands of the master; Hegel writes that the slave

hat nämlich nicht um dieses oder jenes, noch für diesen oder jenen Augenblick Angst gehabt, sondern um sein ganzes Wesen; denn es hat die Furcht des Todes, des absoluten Herrn, empfunden. Es ist darin innerlich aufgelöst worden, hat durchaus in sich selbst erzittert, und alles Fixe hat in ihm gebebt. Diese reine allgemeine Bewegung […] ist aber das einfache Wesen des Selbstbewußtseins, die absolute Negativität, das reine Fürsichsein, das hiermit an diesem Bewußtsein ist. (Hegel 3:153)

This fear enables the slave to become independent from its own life, but only if it is an absolute fear: “Indem nicht alle Erfüllungen seines natürlichen Bewußtseins wankend geworden, gehört es an sich noch bestimmtem Sein an” (Hegel 3:155). The slave’s fear for its life echoes the existential fear of the tree that has grown above those around it only to face isolation and an empty heaven. However, whereas the slave’s material fear spurs it on to a greater sense of selfhood through work, the realization of impenetrable isolation and metaphysical meaninglessness experienced by Shlink leads to a desperate attempt to settle for any kind of connection with another person.

Shlink’s development, as well as that of the self in Hegel, finds a corresponding development on the collective level of Volk in Hegel’s lectures on history. Hegel sees individual states and peoples as the vehicles by which Spirit progresses toward its actualization. When a people have collectively brought Spirit forward as far as possible, that people may yet exist for a long time, internally and externally, in war or peace; having fulfilled its respective intent with this particular people, however, Spirit ceases to strive with them: “es ist gleichsam die lebendige, substantielle Seele selbst nicht mehr in

Tätigkeit. Das gründliche, höchste Interesse hat sich darum aus dem Leben verloren: denn Interesse ist nur vorhanden, wo Gegensatz ist” (Hegel 12:100). Spirit goes on to

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find another people by which to continue its progression. Regarding the people with whom Spirit has ended its activity, Hegel writes:

Das Volk lebt so, wie das vom Manne zum Greisenalter übergehende Individuum, im Genusse seiner selbst, das gerade zu sein, was es wollte und erreichen konnte. […] Diese Gewohnheit (die Uhr ist aufgezogen und geht von selbst fort) ist, was den natürlichen Tod herbeiführt. Die Gewohnheit ist ein gegensatzloses Tun, dem nur die formelle Dauer übrig sein kann und in dem die Fülle und Tiefe des Zwecks nicht mehr zur Sprache zu kommen braucht – eine gleichsam äußerliche, sinnliche Existenz, die sich nicht mehr in die Sache vertieft. So sterben Individuen, so sterben Völker eines natürlichen Todes. (Hegel 12:100)

Shlink undergoes essentially the same process. On a collective level as well as for the individual, the master/slave scenario is ultimately a stage that must be superseded and transcended, because in itself, it produces only schlechte Unendlichkeit. At the play’s beginning, Shlink is bogged down in a routine of Gewohnheit like the people through which Spirit reached the master/slave situation and has now abandoned. Arguing against the presence of Spirit, however, Brecht’s text suggests that progression beyond the material domination of others is completely impossible. Shlink continues to exist and dominate others, but he will not progress beyond the stage that he has attained.

As activity without Gegensatz, Gewohnheit leads to decline. We see this reflected not only in Shlink, but also in the case of Garga, who, having been granted power over others, also grows bored and lethargic. By the play’s end, he notes that since gaining

Shlink’s wealth and power, “Ich habe mich lediglich beklagt, daß ich mich langweile”

(Brecht 1:493). Hegel’s notion of Gewohnheit recalls the Langeweile that arises due to repetitive, historical change without the guidance of Spirit to real development and progress. Shlink’s boredom, a result of an existence devoid of the opposition necessary for development, is the reason that he finds Garga, as he confesses, “mich

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hinunterzuschaffen, mir etwas Ekel oder Moder in das Maul zu stopfen, daß ich den

Geschmack des Todes auf die Zunge kriege” (Brecht 1:493). This reflects the making fluid of “alles Fixe” in the slave through a fear of death.

The second element contributing to the slave’s new sense of selfhood, also present in Shlink’s case, is its unmediated interaction with the external world. In feeling the fear for its life, the slave experiences the necessary “absolute Flüssigwerden alles

Bestehens” (Hegel 3:153), but this alone does not foster a sense of self-certainty: “Es ist ferner nicht nur diese allgemeine Auflösung überhaupt, sondern im Dienen vollbringt es sie wirklich; es hebt darin in allen einzelnen Momenten seine Anhänglichkeit an natürliches Dasein auf und arbeitet dasselbe hinweg” (Hegel 3:153). The slave establishes independence from external conditions by working in the face of its fear of destruction. It thus asserts its own independence in a way that the master cannot.

Like the preceding warrior/warrior relationship, though, the master/slave model is also ultimately doomed to collapse. Kelly reminds us that even though the slave attains this degree of independent selfhood, this condition in itself is by no means ideal: “Slavery cannot found the right of political communities any more than it can account for the free personality. But it is necessary for history as well as for the development of mind” (Kelly

215). In Hegel’s idealism, self-consciousness must continue to progress toward the ideal moment of equal and reciprocal Anerkennen. Where that ideal is unattainable, Shlink appears content with a modified, permanent existence in the role of slave in order to alleviate his isolation.

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As a metaphor for this isolation, Brecht makes frequent use of the bodily image of thick skin. Shlink has developed significantly thick skin to thrive in the caustic atmosphere of the urban jungle, but this condition has left him without feeling:

Mein Körper ist wie taub, davon wird sogar meine Haut betroffen. Die Menschenhaut im natürlichen Zustande ist zu dünn für diese Welt, deshalb sorgt der Mensch dafür, daß sie dicker wird. Die Methode wäre unanfechtbar, wenn man sie stoppen könnte. (Brecht 1:462)

Skin (Haut) also plays a prominent role in Brecht’s early works in general, and in his use of this trope, he alludes to a number of German idiomatic expressions. To have thick skin

(eine dicke Haut) in German, for instance, indicates an emotional callousness, which like

Shlink’s is two-fold in its nature: on the one hand, it protects an individual from being offended, but on the other, hinders emotional connection with others. In order to reverse the numbness caused by his think skin Shlink seeks Fühlung, which, when translated into

English means “contact,” but is also a cognate of the English “feeling.”

Shlink’s thick skin, which is referred to in the play as a disease, is a result of experiences beginning in his youth on the Yangtze River in China. He recalls the conditions there to Marie:

Der Jangtse marterte die Dschunken. Die Dschunken marterten uns. Ein Mann trat uns, sooft er über die Ruderbank ging, das Gesicht platt. Nachts war man zu faul, das Gesicht wegzutun. Merkwürdigerweise war der Mann nie zu faul. Wir hinwieder hatten eine Katze zum Martern; sie ersoff beim Schwimmenlernen, obwohl sie uns die Ratten vom Leib gefressen hatte. Solche Leute hatten alle die Krankheit. […] Wir lagen im Schilf in aller Frühe und fühlten, wie die Krankheit wuchs. (Brecht 1:462)

Shlink’s skin grew thick in a harsh social environment as a self-defense mechanism, not only as protection from the friction and discomfort caused by the relationships of power in his environment, but also against the human feelings that would normally accompany such hostile interpersonal relationships. It allowed him to endure interacting with the man 125

who kicked him in his face, but also enabled him to torment a cat the way the man tormented him. While his thick skin made his rise to power in Chicago possible, it resulted in numbness and isolation. Like the tallest tree in the forest, he experiences this isolation in the face of a metaphysical void and seeks solace in achieving Fühlung with another.

It is important to note that Brecht’s play does not present this disease as a result of any particular phenomena of the metropolis. Shlink developed his thick skin neither in a city nor in any other noticeably modern setting, but rather in rowboats on the Yangtze

River in China, a place that Brecht’s audience would not have associated with industrialization, modernity, or the metropolis. Although the “babylonische

Sprachverwirrung” of the city exacerbates this condition, Shlink’s story suggests that the disease is not solely a result of some condition of modernity or the metropolis, but that it is a universal condition wherever people interact. The common element among the

Yangtze of Shlink’s childhood and the Chicago of the play is the presence of a hierarchal power structure. Shlink came to Chicago as a youth and has spent the last 40 years becoming a rich and powerful lumber dealer. Over the decades he has risen to such power that he now holds a position similar to the man who regularly kicked the rowers in the face. At the bottom of this hierarchy, the innocent cat was the only one who showed any kind of helpfulness toward others, as it kept rats away from the rowers. Significantly, as the one who did not develop thick enough skin to endure, it was also the one who was destroyed in this power structure.

As he has built his fortune over the past few decades, Shlink has moved along the hierarchy from victim to tormentor. His profession reflects this as it draws a further

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parallel between humans and trees. Shlink’s business cuts down trees and brings them into the city to be stripped of their bark and sold to his customers, as Garga confirms when he confronts Shlink in the latter’s office: “Ihr habt geschälte Baumstämme am

Lager?” (Brecht 1:449). These trees are stripped like those in Brecht’s poetry whose foliage is devoured by vultures. The environment of the Großstadt exerts a similar influence on individuals who live there. In the hostile conditions of the metropolis, its inhabitants are also figuratively skinned and processed like Shlink’s lumber, as Garga says after his initial encounter with Shlink: “Ich bin hierhergekommen, abgeschält bis auf mein Gebein” (Brecht 1:454). After Garga quits his job at the library, Shlink’s servant

Skinny remarks, “Endlich ist er aus der Haut gefahren,” signifying not only that Garga has finally lost his temper as the idiom indicates, but that this Haut, specifically referring to his work uniform and this particular aspect of his social environment, has been removed. Shlink professionally removes trees from their natural context and shaves off their foliage and bark. He embodies the caustic nature of the metropolis, which also skins the individuals who have not developed thick enough skin to survive it. Those who develop the necessary callousness to survive in the city, in turn, appear destined to skin the new arrivals, all while growing more isolated from others.

Brecht often uses this metaphor of being skinned, which refers to another common German idiom that indicates being exploited. In his early works, it sometimes applies specifically to women that the narrative voice in certain poems has seduced and discarded. In an unpublished poem from 1921, for instance, this persona describes himself as “Den guten Frauen weisend, was Bestie ist / Und ihre Häute werfend auf den

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Mist” (Brecht 13:229). In another unpublished poem written in 1924 or 1925, the poetic narrator explains:

Was wir vom Weibe haben Wird mit Rauchen weggehext Dieweil die Häutesammlung wächst Die wir am Leibe haben (Brecht 13:296)

But being skinned does not only apply to sexual exploitation. In Trommeln in der Nacht, for example, Kragler, who has been exploited by the German military and the profiteering middle-class, has nothing to return home to. He is advised by the pragmatic bartender Glubb, “Dir ist ein kleines Unrecht geschehen. Sage ja und schlucke es. Halte dich ruhig, wenn sie dir die Haut abziehen, sonst geht sie entwei, es ist deine einzige”

(Brecht 1:218). Glubb’s counsel shows one possible reaction to being skinned, namely quiet acceptance. Shlink has chosen another option throughout his life, which has resulted in his thick skin, as well as his skinning of others. It is his hope that he can find an opponent strong enough to pierce his thick hide by connecting with him through conflict.

He gives his opponent all his power and wealth, securing for Garga endless resources and setting up their fight in such a way that it could conceivably last forever. Shlink hopes that Garga will be resourceful enough to find a way to pierce his thick skin in battle, and thereby establish the Fühlung he desires.

He initiates his fight with Garga in the lending library by offering to buy Garga’s opinion (Ansicht) from him after Garga expresses his view that a particular travelogue is a better book than a certain detective novel. Shlink’s offer is a direct assault on Garga’s romanticized perception of himself and his individuality, which is undermined by the suggestion that a part of his inner life (Seelenleben) can be bought with money. Garga refuses repeatedly, and with each refusal Shlink offers more money, which to Garga is 128

“eine neue Beleidigung” (Brecht 1:440). Garga insists on preserving his opinions as his own, because to him, these constitute his individuality and an essential component of his identity. They point to his mind’s freedom of action regardless of the external circumstances of his life. In his idealized concept of individuality, selling his Ansicht would amount to prostitution and surrender of his inner freedom. Orthographically,

Ansicht is nearly identical to Ansich, which Hegel uses multiple times in his Vorlesungen

über die Philosophie der Geschichte as a nominalization of the adjective an sich: “Hier ist nur anzudeuten, daß der Geist von seiner unendlichen Möglichkeit […] anfängt, die seinen absoluten Gehalt als Ansich enthält, als den Zweck und Ziel, das er nur erst in seinem Resultate erreicht” (Hegel 12:78). For Garga, his Ansicht represents an idealized

Ansich, something that is a part of his essence and a necessity for selfhood.

The word Ansicht is also close to a number of German words referring to a person’s outward appearance, such as Ansehen, Angesicht, and Gesicht. The image of the face, which Elisabeth Wright sees “as a likely index to identity” (Wright 107) and Gisela

Bahr notes is “in diesem Stück immer Ausdruck für das Wesen des Menschen” (Bahr

76), arises frequently in Im Dickicht der Städte. The linguistic proximity of Ansicht to

Gesicht connects the two as respective indicators of inner and outer identity. For Garga, having his own Ansicht is an indicator of his freedom and identity, and selling his opinion would result in a loss of identity tantamount to the loss of his own face. Like skin, the face is a recurring theme in Brecht. He often uses the face in his early work not to indicate stability of identity or individuality, but rather refers to its absence or transformation as symbols of transience and change. The loss of face is a process that occurs in a number of the characters who become casualties in the battle between Shlink

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and Garga, particularly among the play’s women. Jane, Garga’s girlfriend, becomes a mere plaything for the pimp Pavian, and upon seeing her at one point in the play, Garga remarks that her face looks “auseinandergeschleckt wie ein Zitroneneis” (Brecht 1:470).

Garga’s sister Marie goes through a similar transformation after coming to the realization

“daß sie in alle Ewigkeit ein Objekt ist unter den Männern” (Brecht 1:471) and eventually accepting her new identity as a prostitute. At one point, after Garga asks her if he may see her face, she replies: “Es ist keines mehr. Das bin ich nicht” (Brecht 1:471). And after

Garga’s mother Maë abandons the family in her desperation, Garga speculates of her:

“sie ist sogar aus der Erinnerung verschollen, sie hat kein Gesicht mehr. Es ist abgefallen wie ein gelbes Blatt” (Brecht 1:489).42 In likening the face to a leaf, Brecht further draws the connection between the body and trees. It is important to note, however, that the play provides another (and likely more objective) perspective of Maë, as Wurm describes having seen her in her new life as a cleaning woman: “Ich habe tatsächlich eines Morgens um sieben Uhr sie, eine Vierzigjährige, in einem Obstkeller reinmachen sehen. Sie hatte ein neues Geschäft angefangen. Ihr altes Gesicht war in guter Ordnung” (Brecht 1:485).

This leads Gisela Bahr to claim that “Mae Garga ist die einzige Gestalt in diesem Stück, die aus eigener Kraft eine positive Wendung in ihrem Leben herbeiführen kann” (Bahr

80). It is ironic, then, that Garga’s mother, “der Grundpfeiler des Haushalts” (Brecht

1:485), who has worked so hard for years to keep her family together, is able to do what

Garga tries to but cannot, namely to sever all ties in her social environment and determine

42 In likening Maë’s face to a leaf, Brecht reinforces not only the important metaphorical correlation between trees and humans, but, due to the possible meaning of Blatt as page, also reiterates his critique of written language. 130

her own identity. This also suggests that while Maë has lost her face as mother to her family, she has gained a new face and freedom in separating herself from this role.43

In addition to the skinning one is subjected to in intersubjectivity, the loss of face can also result from the thickening of skin one develops as a protection from this skinning. Shlink’s face appears indiscernible on several occasions in the play. Garga tells him, for example, “Endlich sehe ich einiges, wenn ich die Augen halb zumache, in einem kalten Licht. Ihr Gesicht nicht, Mister Shlink. Vielleicht haben Sie keines,” and shortly thereafter, “ich will noch Ihr Gesicht sehen, Shlink, Ihr milchglasiges, verdammtes, unsichtbares Gesicht” (Brecht 1:478). In adopting the necessary callousness to live in the modern city, Shlink has forfeited his face and with it the possibility of personal connection. Like the victor in the “Sonett vom Sieger,” he has become “Unkenntlich durch Gewalt” (Brecht 13:321). The loss of his face has made him opaque and indecipherable to others.

In Shlink’s efforts to develop a connection to Garga, he “[durchhaut] die Stricke, die den jungen George Garga mit der Umwelt verbinden,” as Brecht sketches in an early description of the plot (Brecht 24:25). His attack on Garga’s integrity in the lending library results in the termination of Garga’s employment, separating him from that aspect of his social environment. To further prove his independence from his environment,

Garga voluntarily separates himself from members of his family, even though this means that they become casualties in his fight with Shlink. Garga abandons these connections to prove that he is independent, but he soon discovers that he is reacting exactly as Shlink predicted he would, and his gestures of freeing himself only bind him more tightly to his

43 As I discuss below, Brecht’s work treats the ability to reject a fixed identity as imperative for survival in modernity. See also chapter four and my conclusion. 131

enemy. Even early on, he seems to recognize this, telling his sister, “Man hat mich harpuniert. Man zog mich an sich. Es scheint, stricke zu geben” (Brecht 1:447). We also see in a comment by Wurm that Garga is not free. A month after the initial confrontation in the lending library, Garga has not left the country for Tahiti as he had originally intended. Wurm observes, “Er ist doch nicht weggesegelt. Die Harpune sitzt fester, als wir glaubten” (Brecht 1:463). It appears, then, that Shlink is successful in securing his hold on Garga, isolating him from his social environment so that the two might cling to each other. In forging this connection, Shlink synthesizes a counterfeit of the interdependence found in Hegel’s ideal model of intersubjectivity.

In order to maintain his connection with Garga, Shlink does whatever he can to assure that the fight will continue. The play suggests, and Shlink seems to know as well, however, that his endeavor to foster Verständigung with another through conflict must ultimately fail. Late in the play as his fight with Garga is almost to an end, he acknowledges that “Die unendliche Vereinzelung des Menschen macht eine Feindschaft zum unerreichbaren Ziel. […] Ja, so groß ist die Vereinzelung, daß es nicht einmal einen

Kampf gibt” (Brecht 1:491). Thus he tries to extend the fight indefinitely, because the conflict itself is the closest connection he can make with Garga. He accordingly explains to Garga in the same conversation, “Sie haben nicht begriffen, was es war. Sie wollten mein Ende, aber ich wollte den Kampf” (Brecht 1:493).

As Shlink does what he can to pull his opponent closer to himself, Garga tries to sever any such ties. Not only does he wish to establish freedom from Shlink and their fight, but also from any external circumstances that could impede his personal freedom.

Regarding this topic in Hegel’s thought, Fox writes: “An individual’s search for selfhood

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is a development in which his or her independence is paramount” (Fox 127). Garga seeks to preserve his idealized freedom and selfhood; his first attempt to do so occurs when, after Shlink’s initial attack, he quits his job rather than acquiesce to Shlink’s humiliating offer:

Das ist die Freiheit. Hier meinen Rock! Er zieht ihn aus. Verteilt ihn! […] Hier meine Stiefel! […] Hier mein Taschentuch. […] Ich bitte um Virginiens Tabakfelder und um ein Billet nach den Inseln. Ich bitte um meine Freiheit. Läuft in Hemd und Hosen hinaus. (Brecht 1:445-46)

Garga tears off his work uniform in an attempt to prove his independence, not only from

Shlink, but also from the stifling material conditions of his life. He conjures up romanticized images (“Virginiens Tabakfelder,” “Inseln”) as a defense against Shlink’s intrusive proposition and leaves, self-assured in the sacrifice he has made to preserve his independence as he sees it.

Garga hopes to establish his independence with a decisive blow that will secure his victory and produce the Verständigung of the primal forest. He slowly comes to discover what Shlink already knows and what a destitute preacher from the Salvation

Army declares in the scene “Bar im Chinesenviertel”: “Der Mensch ist zu haltbar. Das ist sein Hauptfehler. Er kann zuviel mit sich anfangen. Er geht zu schwer kaputt” (Brecht

1:487). Shortly thereafter, the man proves his claim to be prophetic when he shoots himself in an attempted suicide but survives. This illustrates a dilemma of existence depicted in Im Dickicht der Städte: the Verständigung Shlink desires cannot be fully realized, even through combat. Because a person is too “haltbar,” there cannot be, as there was in the forest, a killing blow that produces authentic Verständigung. Garga comes to realize this, telling his mother, “Wie schwierig es ist, einem Menschen zu schaden, ihn zu vernichten, glatt unmöglich. Die Welt ist zu arm. Wir müssen uns 133

abarbeiten, Kampfobjekte auf sie zu werfen” (Brecht 1:477). Garga likewise eventually admits to Shlink: “Ich kann Sie nicht besiegen, ich kann Sie nur in den Boden stampfen”

(Brecht 1:494). In the primeval forest, the act of trampling signifies victory; the victor is the fighter who stamps down the most undergrowth. This is not the only time this image occurs in Brecht’s early writings. He uses it a number of times in order to depict victory in conflict. In “Der Geschwisterbaum,” it is seen as the trees begin competing with other trees and plants in order to grow: “Im Kampf des dunkeln Bodens, wo sie, um heraufzukommen / Fremde Stämme entwurzeln mußten, Wurzeln würgen, Sträucher niederstampfen” (Brecht 13:119). While this is synonymous with besiegen and thus

Verständigung among the trees and primates of the primal forest, however, it produces no such results in a world where the Entzweiung der Sprache dilutes interpersonal contact to the point of impotence.

At the play’s end, Garga finally understands that “Die Sprache reicht zur

Verständigung nicht aus” (Brecht 1:491). When Shlink then asks him, “Und niemals,

George Garga, niemals wird ein Ausgang dieses Kampfes sein, niemals eine

Verständigung?” Garga’s reply is simply, “Nein” (Brecht 1:492). Garga originally sought a Verständigung by dealing the blow that would bring Shlink to admit defeat. Seeing that this would never happen, he also tries to separate himself from Shlink by indirect means: he marries Jane, hoping that he can retreat into a bourgeois existence, and when it is apparent that Shlink will not go away, he even allows himself to be imprisoned for three years for committing fraud with Shlink’s old lumber business. Upon his release he then incites a racist mob to destroy Shlink. As these means do not elicit a surrender from his opponent, Garga simply walks away at the end, content to admit defeat if it means

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survival. With nothing left to live for, Shlink drinks poison shortly before the lynch mob arrives.

Garga quits the fight, essentially admitting his defeat. Before he leaves, though, he expresses his new cynical materialism that, over the course of the play, has replaced his initial idealism: “Es ist nicht wichtig, der Stärkere zu sein, sondern der Lebendige”

(Brecht 1:493). For a time, both Shlink and Garga appear to conform to Hegel’s master/slave paradigm. In his rise to power, Shlink became the master of his environment and others within it. He became aware of the unfulfilling nature of this relationship and bored with his existence, and like the tree that outgrows the others and stands alone in an empty sky, he seeks a Verständigung, not unlike Hegel’s Anerkennen, by making substantial contact with another. Fearing that language renders such authentic contact impossible, Shlink tries to produce and maintain a relationship of mutual recognition through endless conflict.

As he severs Garga’s ties to his environment, Shlink also works to secure the

Harpun that ties the two combatants to each other. One way he accomplishes this is by manipulating Garga’s family and their relationship with him. This is most notably seen in

Garga’s sister Marie, who falls in love with Shlink but is tormented as he repeatedly denies her advances. As he sees his loved ones at risk of becoming casualties in his fight with Shlink, Garga’s initial reaction is one of outrage, to which Shlink responds:

SHLINK Sie meinen diese Sache mit Ihrer Schwester? Ich habe nichts geschlachtet, worüber Sie Ihre Hand hielten. GARGA Ich habe nur zwei Hände. Was mir Mensch ist, verschlingen Sie als einen haufen Fleisch. Sie öffnen mir die Augen über eine Hilfsquelle, indem Sie sie verstopfen. Machen Familienmitglieder zu Hilfsquellen. […] Und Sie wagen es noch, mir dies alles ins Gesicht zu kotzen! (Brecht 1:467)

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Only shortly thereafter, however, Garga recognizes the leverage Shlink has over him through his family. Believing his independence to be restricted by his familial connections, he enthusiastically severs his ties to them and leaves them at Shlink’s mercy, going so far as to encourage Shlink and Marie to become lovers, which could only end disastrously for his sister. Shlink even warns Garga of the consequences of sacrificing his family: “Vergessen Sie auch Ihre Familie nicht, die Sie allein zurücklassen! Sie haben jetzt gesehen, was Sie opfern.” Garga’s answer to this is, “Ich will sie jetzt alle schlachten” (Brecht 1:471). Garga has no apparent difficulty sacrificing his job and his loved ones to assert his independence, yet he finds himself unable to separate himself from Shlink, something he attempts multiple times: he plans to move to

Tahiti, and later to move to the southern states to become a lumberjack. He also allows himself to be imprisoned, even though it could be avoided. For the majority of the play, though, Garga is unable to break the ties that Shlink has fastened to him.

In the fifth scene he seems to begin to see the difficulty of this task, telling Shlink,

“Ich gebe aber auf. Ich streike. Ich werfe das Handtuch. Habe ich mich denn in Sie so verbissen? Sie sind eine kleine, harte Betelnuß, man sollte sie ausspeien, man weiß, sie ist härter als das Gebiß, sie ist nur eine Schale” (Brecht 1:467). At the play’s end Garga has come to recognize the futility of his efforts to defeat Shlink, and, knowing that he cannot

“bite through” him, opts instead to spit him out. Like his opponent, he comes to see that a

Verständigung is impossible. Garga’s acceptance of his profound isolation follows the counsel given in the opening poem of Brecht’s collection Aus dem Lesebuch für

Städtebewohner, composed in 1926. Three of the poem’s stanzas advise the reader:

Wenn du deinen Eltern begegnest in der Stadt Hamburg oder sonstwo Gehe an ihnen fremd vorbei, biege um die Ecke, erkenne sie nicht 136

Zieh den Hut ins Gesicht, den sie dir schenkten Zeige, o zeige dein Gesicht nicht Sondern Verwisch die Spuren! […] Was immer du sagst, sag es nicht zweimal Findest du deinen Gedanken bei einem andern: verleugne ihn. Wer seine Unterschrift nicht gegeben hat, wer kein Bild hinterließ Wer nicht dabei war, wer nichts gesagt hat Wie soll der zu fassen sein! Verwisch die Spuren!

Sorge, wenn du zu sterben gedenkst Daß kein Grabmal steht und verrät, wo du liegst Mit einer deutlichen Schrift, die dich anzeigt Und dem Jahr deines Todes, das dich überführt! Noch einmal: Verwisch die Spuren! (Brecht 11:157)

In designating the collection of poetry with the term Lesebuch, Brecht ironically alludes to a genre traditionally associated with moral instruction.44 Instead of teaching morals, though, these poems make up a handbook for urban survival. Resonating strongly with the poems from Brecht’s Lesebuch, Im Dickicht der Städte can be seen to serve the same purpose.45 The poem advocates isolation and anonymity in the city, advising readers to cover their faces with their hats. In Shlink’s conquest his face has become unrecognizable, a condition he comes to accept after Garga deserts the fight. With the lynch mob moments away, Marie finds Shlink, who has just swallowed poison. He implores her, “Werfen Sie mir ein Tuch übers Gesicht, haben Sie Mitleid!” And as the mob arrives shortly after Shlink’s death, Marie tells them, “Gehen Sie fort! Er ist gestorben. Er will nicht, daß man ihn ansieht” (Brecht 1:495). He rose to his power in

44 The editorial commentary found in the critical edition of Brecht’s works states, “Im Gegensatz zum traditionellen Lesebuch vermeidet es Brecht, moralische Zwecke zu formulieren oder humane Werte zu propagieren” (Brecht 11:350). 45 Survival is a primary concern in Brecht’s thought, not only in his earlier work, but throughout his career (see conclusion). 137

Chicago by living in accordance with the poem’s refrain: “Verwisch die Spuren!” When he made his desperate effort to foster Fühlung and Verständigung to become part of another persons life, its impossibility led to his destruction. The dying Shlink follows the council of the poem’s final stanza, choosing to die anonymously in a shack in the forest near Lake Michigan and leaving “kein Grabmal […] / Mit einer deutlichen Schrift.”

Survival in the city requires the ability and willingness to shed any permanence of outer and inner individuality, or Gesicht and Ansicht (treated respectively in the poem’s second and fourth stanzas). Garga initially took up the fight with Shlink, eager to prove himself “als den besseren Mann” (Brecht 1:448), with an idealized notion of identity and freedom of thought, seen in his determination to maintain his opinion as something intrinsically his own. Garga comes to follow the poem’s advice, however, as he abandons his ideals of individuality and identity in exchange for survival. When the play ends, he has sold his possessions (which include his sister and father) and is preparing to move alone to New York, a jungle whose larger population will result in a greater isolation and anonymity. Whereas Shlink responds to his discovery of his isolation with a desperate attempt to facilitate contact, Garga eventually finds contentment in his isolation, telling his father in the play’s final scene, “Allein sein ist eine gute Sache” (Brecht 1:497).

According to Hegel, self-consciousness can attain true independent selfhood only when it participates in a social setting where there is universal Anerkennen among all self-consciousnesses, not just of each other’s rights and selfhood, but also of their interdependence for external verification of their own selfhood and freedom. Hegel sees this condition as possible only within his fully-realized ideal of the state. For Hegel, the ideal state embodies (in Fox’s words)

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the institutional framework that makes available to each person the maximum degree of independence and self-expression consistent with mature forms of reciprocal recognition. […] For [Hegel] freedom is the condition of independent selfhood, or rather independence within, and because of, a network of dependence relationships. (Fox 127)

At the dialectically less-developed stages of intersubjectivity, one individual seeks not freedom, but complete license at the expense of others. Hegel’s notion of independent selfhood, on the other hand, is ideally achieved in a setting where all individuals have the greatest possible freedom in equal standing with each other. Instead of der Staat, however, the culmination of human civilization in Brecht’s play is die Stadt, in which false notions of progress stall in a schlechte Unendlichkeit.

Of Brecht’s early plays, Im Dickicht der Städte is the most critical of language and presents none of the optimism, discussed in chapter one, in its communicative potential. Brecht appears to have found in the “babylonische Sprachverwirrung” of the urban jungle an intensification of the problems of language, perhaps to the degree that true communication really is impossible. Shlink therefore attempts to create the conditions that will allow him the closest thing to Verständigung: he orchestrates an inverted master/slave relationship that he tries to extend indefinitely. In this endless state of enmity, he also synthesizes elements from Hegel’s ideal Anerkennen, fabricating interdependence as he separates Garga from his external conditions and ties him to himself in their fight.

Although the conditions of modern existence have complicated and exacerbated the ubiquitous hostile tensions between individuals, these tensions already existed in the primeval forest, as well as on the Yangtze River of Shlink’s youth. The significant change in human relations is the Entzweiung der Sprache, a separation which prevents

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both the Verständigung available in the forest and Hegel’s ideal culmination of

Anerkennen. This gulf began to emerge when “Kampf als vorsprachliches

Verständigungsmittel” became diluted by language (Bahr 77). The cold inhumanity of the modern urban jungle has broadened the Entzweiung, interestingly enough, by bringing people into even closer proximity with one another, as Shlink relates to Garga with an unusual allegory: “Wenn ihr ein Schiff vollstopft mit Menschenleibern, daß es birst, es wird eine solche Einsamkeit in ihm sein, daß sie alle gefrieren” (Brecht 1:491). With

Brecht’s material metaphors and imagery, Im Dickicht der Städte overlaps with significant portions of Hegel’s ideas and ideals regarding intersubjectivity and selfhood.

Ultimately, though, because of their isolation, the characters of Brecht’s play will never attain Verständigung, or correspondingly, Hegel’s ideal of Anerkennen, which leads to fully-realized independent selfhood. The play, like Brecht’s early work as a whole, argues that any qualitative change is impossible, and the only option is Verwandlung without Entwicklung. When Shlink tries to find a metaphysical component of existence and break out of the material schlechte Unendlichkeit of repetitively conquering others, after all, it ultimately leads to his death.

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Chapter 4: “Mich kann man am Arsch lecken mit Charakterköpfen.”

The Precarious Dialectic of Identity in Mann ist Mann

As early as 1918, Brecht began developing plans and material that would eventually become elements of Mann ist Mann (1926). Notes, sketches, and short scenes exist, for example, for a planned play Galgei, which Brecht began writing in 1920 and would remain a fragment; the titular character was the prototype for Galy Gay, the protagonist of Mann ist Mann. While the setting and plot differ significantly between the sketches that exist of the Galgei fragment and the completed Mann ist Mann, the central problem remains the same: Brecht examines the basis of individual identity.

The play’s approach to identity can be summed up in Galy Gay’s lines, “Einer ist keiner. Es muß ihn einer anrufen” (Brecht 2:142). That a person must be called by another suggests the same requirement of an intersubjective setting for identity to be effectively determined that we find in Hegel, who in his Phänomenologie outlines a similar condition for an individual to attain fully actualized selfhood: “Das

Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem und dadurch, das es für ein Anderes an und für sich ist; d. h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes” (Hegel 3:145). In Hegel, selfhood requires a reciprocal, constructive relationship in which individuals recognize each other as selves and themselves as others. He follows the same pattern here as he does in his conceptual dialectics, in which knowledge of a concept is refined by moving out of it and into its opposite, before returning again to the concept with the added perspective gained 141

through the dialectical movement. In chapter three I elaborated how, within intersubjective settings, this process is reciprocal and individuals gain defined selfhood through their interaction with others.

Mann ist Mann examines similar issues, but with a particular change of focus, as

Müller and Kindt point out:

Als Ziel von Dichtung und Kunst galt der Brechtschen Ästhetik weiterhin, die tatsächliche Wirklichkeit hinter der scheinbaren freizulegen. Das bedeutete für Brecht seit der Mitte der zwanziger Jahre allerdings nicht mehr, die Welt in ihrer von der Natur geprägten ›Eigentlichkeit‹ zu zeigen; es hieß nun, die sozialen Realitäten in ihrer grundsätzlichen Veränderbarkeit zu präsentieren. (Müller and Kindt 19)

Shortly before his serious study of Marxism, Brecht’s work already demonstrated an eye for and an interest in the individual’s place not only in a social environment, but in one under the rule of a specific social institution. Mann ist Mann examines the individual’s position within an environment dominated by the British military. The relationship in question here is not interpersonal, as it is in Im Dickicht der Städte; rather, it is the relationship between Galy Gay and the social world in which he exists.

As I have demonstrated, Brecht’s materialism precludes Hegel’s ideal notion of mutual Anerkennen. Two self-consciousnesses in Hegel bring each other meaning; in

Mann ist Mann, such meaning, or identity, is also gained externally, but the process is neither reciprocal, nor does it reflect Hegel’s dialectical progress. Instead, the social environment assigns identity, giving a fixed meaning to the individual’s name. Even with the new attention to a ruling state apparatus, Brecht’s underlying materialism remains the driving force behind his thought as he investigates the question of the individual’s identity within a hegemonic social order. Brecht’s attitude in Mann ist Mann, as I discuss in this chapter, finds a number of points of engagement with the treatment of identity 142

found in Hegel’s philosophy. At times Brecht reveals his mode of thought to be quite compatible with Hegel’s. But against the materialist backdrop of Brecht’s thought, the possibility of progress through idealist Hegelian dialectics is ultimately excluded from the social order portrayed in Mann ist Mann.

Mann ist Mann takes place in British imperial India in 1925 and begins at the home of the benign dockworker Galy Gay, whose wife sends him into town to buy a fish for their dinner. In town he crosses paths with three British soldiers named Uria Shelley,

Polly Baker, and Jesse Mahoney, members of a four-man machinegun squad. They have lost their fourth member, Jeraiah Jip, due to a botched effort to rob a local temple for drinking money. A mishap in the operation has left Jip with a patch of hair missing from his head, which would certainly incriminate the group and lead to severe punishment at the hands of their sergeant, the inexorable Blody [sic] Five (der Blutige Fünfer),46 whose name refers to a notorious instance where he callously killed five unarmed Shiks. Having also earned the names der menschliche Taifun and der Tiger von Kilkoa, Blody Five is well-known for sadistic cruelty not only toward the enemies of the army, but also (and even especially) toward his own insubordinate soldiers.

The others have left Jip in a palanquin at the temple in order to find clippers to cut off the rest of his hair and thereby remove the incriminating bald spot. Returning to camp, they learn to their dismay that Fairchild is already searching for the criminals and plans to uncover them by their missing member at the imminent roll-call. When they see

Galy Gay, they convince him to stand in Jip’s place at the roll-call in order to buy them some time. However, they discover thereafter that the leader of the temple, a monk

46 In the 1926 version of the play Brecht misspells “Bloody” in the character’s name. The 1938 printed version of the play corrects this by referring to him as Fairchild. 143

named Wang, has discovered Jip, who by now has drunk himself into unconsciousness.

To compensate for the damage the soldiers have caused to his temple, Wang reasons,

“Wir können höchstens einen Gott aus ihm machen” (Brecht 2:110). He has Jip placed inside a prayer box (Gebetskasten) in the temple and proceeds to charge the visiting faithful a fee for admission to the shrine.

When the three soldiers discover that they will not be able to reacquire their missing comrade, they resolve to permanently replace him with Galy Gay, who, they have observed, is “ein Mann, der nicht nein sagen kann” (Brecht 2:102). The soldiers set out to change Galy Gay’s identity, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, into

Jeraiah Jip. Through bribery, deceit, and supposed mortal danger, Galy Gay is persuaded to take on the identity of Jip. This is evident in the play’s final scene, in which the good- natured Galy Gay has become “Jeraiah Jip, menschliche Kampfmaschine” (Brecht

2:157). The treatment of identity in the play is certainly nontraditional in its implication that an identity can be so easily dismantled and switched out. This approach is emphasized in Brecht’s material language, through which the positions of inner and outer indicators of identity switch roles: the inner element, traditionally viewed as the more important and permanent, becomes transient, while the body, or material aspect, is regarded as the more definitive (but also by no means permanent) factor of identity. This chapter positions the approach to identity found in Mann ist Mann against Hegel’s thought regarding identity and the definition of concepts. As in the other plays examined in this study, Brecht’s material language is a key to understanding his early materialism and the ambiguous relationship it develops with Hegelian philosophy.

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That identity is a prominent theme of the play is already apparent in the title, with its reference to a self-evident proposition in formal logic’s law of identity, namely that a thing is identical with itself (often formulated as “A = A” or “A is A”). While acknowledging the basic correctness of this statement, Hegel is also critical of it, writing in his Logik:

Wenn nämlich z. B. auf die Frage »was ist eine Pflanze?« die Antwort gegeben wird: »eine Pflanze ist – eine Pflanze«, so wird die Wahrheit eines solchen Satzes von der ganzen Gesellschaft, an der sie erprobt wird, zugleich zugegeben und zugleich ebenso einstimmig gesagt werden, daß damit nichts gesagt ist. Wenn einer den Mund auftut und anzugeben verspricht, was Gott sei, nämlich Gott sei – Gott, so findet sich die Erwartung getäuscht, denn sie sah einer verschiedenen Bestimmung entgegen. (Hegel 6:43-44)

The statement “A is A” is unproductive, as it says nothing beyond what is apparent.

Hegel’s emphasis on dialectics demands that the move from subject to predicate in the statement “A is –” provide an element that will give newer understanding by adding a movement to a different predicate. Regarding such statements, Hegel provides a further example in his Phänomenologie: “Es wird in einem Satze der Art mit dem Worte »Gott« angefangen. Dies für sich ist ein sinnloser Laut, ein bloßer Name; erst das Prädikat sagt, was er ist, ist seine Erfüllung und Bedeutung” (Hegel 3:26-27). For real meaning to emerge from the statement, Hegel argues, a movement needs to occur in the shift from subject to predicate, which therefore must be different terms. By Hegel’s reckoning, then, the title “Mann ist Mann” says nothing, the word “Mann” being reduced to what Hegel calls a meaningless sound (“sinnloser Laut”).

In the statement “A is A,” there is no development in the meaning and no progress is made toward a greater understanding of the nature of A. Hegel refers to the identity determined through such a proposition as abstract identity. For Hegel, this tautological 145

statement of abstract identity is a schlechte Unendlichkeit: “es wird nichts für langweiliger und lästiger gehalten werden als eine nur dasselbe wiederkäuende

Unterhaltung, als solches Reden, das doch Wahrheit sein soll” (Hegel 6:44). The boring

(langweilig) character of the statement “A is A” leads to the tedium of Hegel’s schlechte

Unendlichkeit, just like the repetitive conquering of others or the assimilation of external objects in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (see chapter three), as well as the directionless slaughter-bench of history in the Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (see chapter two). Hegel continues:

Näher diese Wirkung der Langeweile bei solcher Wahrheit betrachtet, so macht der Anfang, »die Pflanze ist«, Anstalten, etwas zu sagen, eine weitere Bestimmung vorzubringen. Indem aber nur dasselbe wiederkehrt, so ist vielmehr das Gegenteil geschehen, es ist nichts herausgekommen. (Hegel 6:44)

The circular, static nature of the schlechte Unendlichkeit, which ultimately produces no sublation, results when these situations occur in settings where the rational progression of

Spirit is absent. It seems fitting, then, that like the other plays I have examined, in which

“das Geistige […] ist nichts” (Brecht 1:493), Mann ist Mann is content to position itself within such a metaphysical stagnancy. The play accomplishes this through a treatment of identity and change that is circumscribed strictly within material experience and reflected in Brecht’s material language.

While recalling the law of identity, the play’s title also departs from it. “Mann ist

Mann” is similar to “A is A,” but not entirely, as the variable “A” suggests a degree of specification, whether in signifying a definite object (such as “this house is this house”),

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or at least an indefinite one (such as “a house is a house”).47 Brecht’s title, on the other hand, disregards all qualifiers (the title is not, for instance, “Ein Mann ist ein Mann” or

“Galy Gay ist Galy Gay”) and treats the subject as a quantitative substance. The phrase

“Mann ist Mann” and similar equations, such as “Tempel ist Tempel” (97), “Elefant ist

Elefant” (128), and “Weib ist Weib” (140), occur throughout the play. Whereas Hegel’s idealism focuses on qualitative change, the change in Brecht’s plays is strictly material, and thus quantitative. In the 1931 production of the play, this was emphasized by the use of mathematical equations that were projected above the stage before certain scenes

(Fischer-Lichte 354): for the second scene, the audience saw the equation “4-1=3,” signifying the loss of Jip to the group. Before the fourth scene, the projection showed

“3+1=4,” illustrating the possibility for the three soldiers to become a complete unit by adding Galy Gay to their numbers and avoiding their sergeant’s wrath. And before the eighth scene, the equation “1=1” was projected. These formulas make up a form of mathematical proof, with the latter projection deducing that, since Galy Gay’s material substance effectively replaces Jip’s, the one is the same as the other: 1 = 1, or man = man.

Because “Mann” here is reduced to a quantitative substance and not a definitive concept in the Hegelian sense, the term in Brecht’s language has no ultimate “true” meaning. It is instead a material space that allows for shifts and transformations in its content and reflects the fluidity and materiality of Brecht’s notion of personal identity, which he addressed in a 1926 interview, arguing that

der Mensch in zwei ungleichen Augenblicken niemals der gleiche sein kann. Das wechselnde Außen veranlaßt ihn beständig zu einer inneren

47 The latter instance, in which A represents an indefinite object, also has the potential to become problematic (see Moore). Because I am interested in this equation on a topical level and not based upon its logical integrity, this paper will not delve further into this differentiation. 147

Umgruppierung. Das kontinuierliche Ich ist eine Mythe. Der Mensch ist ein immerwährend zerfallendes Atom. (Schriften 270)

There are two principle notions in these comments that can be traced to the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus: the first is that a person at any two points of time cannot be the same, and the second is the idea of the constant flux of the world’s external conditions.

These ideas echo Heraclitus’ metaphorical use of the river in his Fragments, specifically fragments 49a and 12, respectively: “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not,” and “As they step into the same rivers, different and still different waters flow upon them (Heraclitus 35, 17).The Heraclitean notion of panta rhei (“everything flows”) is important for Brecht, naturally, on a material level. For Brecht, the ever- changing exterior, signified in the river, causes the inner changes within the individual, and the individual changes in order to adapt to external (material, social) conditions.

For his own idealist philosophy, Hegel acknowledges the importance of

Heraclitus, whom he credits with refuting the notion that being and nothingness are separate: “Der tiefsinnige Heraklit hob gegen jene einfache und einseitige Abstraktion den höheren totalen Begriff des Werdens hervor, und sagte: Das Sein ist sowenig als das

Nichts, oder auch: Alles fließt, das heißt, Alles ist Werden” (Hegel 5:84). The view that being and nothing are separate, which Hegel attributes primarily to the philosopher

Parmenides, does not allow for the constant change of becoming (Werden) that Hegel sees in all things. For him, every thing and concept contains within itself its own negation or limit, and is therefore being and nothingness. Thus each thing is in a constant state of becoming, changing, or working through its inherent contradiction, and “Es muß […] vom Sein und Nichts gesagt werden, daß es nirgend im Himmel und auf Erden etwas gebe, was nicht beides, Sein und Nichts, in sich enthielte” (Hegel 5:86). Hegel argues that 148

the philosophical view that being is only being, and that nothingness is only nothingness,

“verdient den Namen Identitätssystem” (Hegel 5:85). Limited to statements like “A = A,” this philosophy would be reduced to a series of abstract identities that bring us no closer to the true identity, or essence of things. Such an Identitätssystem would be stuck in the realm of understanding, perceiving objects’ meanings as fixed and static.

Hegel’s and Brecht’s respective affinities with the Heraclitean notion of panta rhei indicate a major point of confluence in their thought. Both saw constant change in things: Brecht’s critique of language focuses on the static word’s inability to reflect the constantly changing material nature of reality; Hegel’s entire dialectics serves the purpose of seeing the opposition within concepts, and the resulting flow, or becoming, inherent in all things. However, this point of convergence is simultaneously a point of divergence between Brecht and Hegel. Hegel’s idealism sees contradiction and opposition first in the realm of rational concepts as Spirit dialectically supersedes them one at a time. The material world, which is the manifestation of Spirit within time and space, slowly follows suit through the progression of history. The contradictions themselves, then, are rational, and reason works through them in its dialectical movement, first in the rational, and then in the material. For the young Brecht, who is not concerned with an ideal realm of rational concepts, the contradictions that arise in the material world and incite change are only material, and ideal, rational concepts do not enter the picture.

To illustrate the constant flow of material reality, Brecht adopts Heraclitus’ river as a metaphor, beginning as early as the Galgei fragment and the early poems. This metaphor is best understood, however, as it is used in a song that he added for the 1931

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production of Mann ist Mann. The song is sung by Leokadja Begbick, a profiteering widow who follows the army with her wares, selling the soldiers alcohol and supplies.

Begbick refers to the song as “Ein Lied vom Fluß der Dinge” (Brecht 2:203), and the stanzas all revolve around the central theme of change, and are followed by the refrain:

Beharre nicht auf der Welle Die sich an deinem Fuß bricht, solange er Im Wasser steht, werden sich Neue Wellen an ihm brechen. (Brecht 2:203)

The song’s title reveals an important aspect of this “river of things.” Although the river is a frequent literary trope that signifies history and memory, the constant change that the river in Begbick’s song illustrates is the flux of things, or of material reality.

Brecht’s river illustrates his materialism in that the flow of material, which is of secondary importance after ideas in idealist philosophy, is in reality what is actual and true. Despite their transient nature, things in their continual flow eventually shape and reshape thought, and not vice versa. The Fluß der Dinge erodes and reshapes constructs of illusory permanence, such as identity, which is suggested by the terms Name and

Meinung as Begbick continues the song:

Nenne doch nicht so genau deinen Namen. Wozu denn? Wo du doch immerzu einen andern damit nennst. Und wozu so laut deine Meinung, vergiß sie doch Welche war es denn gleich? Erinnere dich doch nicht Eines Dinges länger, als es selber dauert. (Brecht 2:210)

The constant material flux breaks down idealistic notions of permanence sometimes associated with selfhood such as name and opinion, as well as supposedly transcendent notions, as Brecht records in notes for the Galgei fragment, like the “Unverlierbarkeit der

Seele,” the “unveränderlichen Wert des Guten,” and that “Die Taten sind vergänglich, aber der Mensch bleibt” (Brecht 10:19). In the Galgei fragment, a butter dealer named 150

Pick accidentally drowns in a river, and his cohorts in the “Kaka,” a group of black- market profiteers, determine that they need to find someone who can replace him, not as a new member, but as Pick himself. They find a fitting candidate in Galgei, a good- natured carpenter. Before they try to change Galgei into Pick, they must first remove

Pick’s face in order to render the corpse unidentifiable. Ligarg, the leader of the Kaka, instructs fellow member Matthi how this is to be done:

LIGARG Picks Gesicht muß weg, Matt. Er braucht keins mehr. Wasch es weg, Matt! Dann kann Pick eine Ansichtskarte aus Hamburg schicken. MATTHI Schneiden? LIGARG Kolportage! Naturheilverfahren! Man hängt Pick ins Wasser. Hast du noch nie Fischkästen gesehen? Wozu bist du heut mittag in der Hitze den Fluß hinunter gestiefelt, bis du Picks Übriges hattest? Hol ein Fischkasten, Matt! MATTHI Und Pick hinein?! Das ist was, Li. Ich weiß nicht, was du willst. Aber den Fischkasten kann ich besorgen. So was braucht man immer. Bleibst du hier? LIGARG Konserviere Pick und geh beten, Matt! (Brecht 10:33)

As in the other plays I have examined in this study, Brecht uses the image of the face

(along with its removal or obfuscation) as a material metaphor illustrating the transience of identity. In Galgei, Matthi accordingly puts Pick in a Fischkasten, a large perforated box used to preserve caught fish, and places it in the river. Ligarg’s choice to let the flow of the river wear off Pick’s face gives this image further meaning; its flow becomes a means of wearing away Pick’s face, or identity. When placed within the context of the river as established in this chapter, identity becomes one of the seemingly transcendent, permanent constructs that the material flow of the Fluß der Dinge inevitably erodes.

Even before Galgei, Brecht used the river in this metaphorical role. In Baal, for instance, the titular character recites a poem describing the body of a drowned girl as she

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“hinunterschwamm / Von den Bächen in die größeren Flüsse” (Brecht 1:126).48 The final stanza of the poem reads:

Als ihr bleicher Leib im Wasser verfaulet war Geschah es, sehr langsam, daß Gott sie allmählich vergaß: Erst ihr Gesicht, dann die Hände und ganz zuletzt erst ihr Haar. Dann ward sie Aas in Flüssen mit vielem Aas. (Brecht 1:126)

Any aspect of the girl’s existence that could suggest an element of transcendence, permanence, or uniqueness (for example name, individuality, personality, soul, etc.) extending either before or beyond her current status as “Aas […] mit vielem Aas” has been blotted out in the river. The river’s flux erodes away any signifier of these things by removing the girl’s face, hands, and hair. A similar theme is found in the poem “Larrys

B” (1919), whose military setting relates it more closely to Mann ist Mann:

In den Flüssen schwimmt mancher Rekrut Vom lieben Gott schon vergessen Als ihn bei grauem Himmel und Mond Mutter, die feisten Fische gefressen. (Brecht 13:142-43) 49

In each poem, these figures are forgotten by God as they decompose in the river. That

God gradually forgets them is an erasure of any metaphysical quality within the flow of the river, leaving only its material nature, in which individuality and identity are dissolved.

Galy Gay is also swept along by a flow of events resulting in the dissolution of his identity. In the ninth scene of Mann ist Mann, shortly before the soldiers must depart for

48 The poem, written years before its incorporation into the 1922 version of Baal, was be published under the title “Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen” in Brecht’s Hauspostille (also published in 1922). 49 The table of contents in the 1922 edition of Brecht’s Hauspostille gives the full title of the poem as “Larrys Ballade von der Mama Armee” (Brecht 13:451). This adds significance to the poem’s connection with Mann ist Mann, as one of the soldiers refers to the army as “Mama” while trying to convince Galy Gay to become Jip: “Hauptsächlich fischen wir zu unserer Unterhaltung, wozu die Mama, wie wir die Armee im Scherz getauft haben, die Angelgeräte für uns kauft und wobei einige Militärkapellen abwechselnd spielen” (Brecht 2:118). 152

battle, Begbick uses the image of the river to illustrate the collective flow in which they march:

Heute nacht marschieren sechzigtausend in einer Richtung. Diese Richtung deutet von Kilkoa nach Tibet und nicht umgekehrt. Wenn ein Mann in einen solchen Strom gerät, schaut er, daß er zwei findet, die neben ihm marschieren, rechts einen und links einen, […] und eine Blechmarke um den Hals und eine Nummer auf der Blechmarke, daß man weiß, zu wem er gehört hat, wenn man ihn findet, damit er seinen Platz bekommt in einem Massengrab! (Brecht 2:141)

Begbick uses the image of river (Strom) to represent the irresistible social flow in which the soldiers find themselves. This current only moves in one direction, and its material flux swallows up individuality as the soldiers’ identities are reduced to numbers. Caught up in this motion, the individual is carried along as if by a river and reduced to anonymity. The current in which the soldiers find themselves, the material flow of reality or the Fluß der Dinge, erodes the ideal notions of self and identity, eventually throwing the individual into a mass grave as “Aas mit vielem Aas.”

To survive the material flux of the Fluß der Dinge, Brecht’s play posits that the individual must be able to adapt and change accordingly. Galy Gay begins to undergo such a shift when his external circumstances change drastically. With the help of

Begbick, the soldiers, knowing that they need a permanent fourth member, entice Galy

Gay to take part in a false business transaction; they convince him to sell Begbick an elephant that belongs to the army. In reality the elephant is a poorly constructed costume with Polly and Jesse inside, but in his eagerness to win a portion of the profits, Galy Gay does not notice. When the deal is completed, the soldiers arrest him and he stands trial, charged with a number of absurd and contradictory offenses including stealing an elephant from the army and selling Begbick a false elephant. Near the scene’s end he is

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lined up in front of a mock firing squad, and just before they fire, he faints. The soldiers fire into the air to complete the illusion that Galy Gay has been executed. It is in this process that Gay truly begins his transformation into Jip. 50

Disoriented upon regaining consciousness after his “execution,” he is informed by the soldiers that he is expected to give a eulogy for the dead Galy Gay, who supposedly lies in a closed box in front of him. Momentarily left alone by the soldiers, Galy Gay considers his own identity as he contemplates this task:

Ich könnt nicht ansehen ohne sofortigen Tod In einer Kist ein entleertes Gesicht Eines gewissen, mir einst bekannt, von Wasserfläch her In die einer sah, der, wie ich weiß, verstarb. Drum kann ich nicht aufmachen diese Kist. (Brecht 2:142)

Fearing the consequences of seeing Galy Gay’s corpse in the box, he makes the decision not to open it. Here is a material reflection and inversion of the Hegelian notion of being- with-self (Bei-sich-selbst-sein), which indicates the ideal condition of independent selfhood for Hegel:

Die Materie hat ihre Substanz außer ihr; der Geist ist das Bei-sich-selbst- Sein. Dies eben ist die Freiheit, denn wenn ich abhängig bin, so beziehe ich mich auf ein Anderes, das ich nicht bin; ich kann nicht sein ohne ein Äußeres; frei bin ich, wenn ich bei mir selbst bin. Dieses Beisichsein des Geistes ist Selbstbewußtsein, das Bewußtsein von sich selbst. (Hegel 12:30)

A sense of self-identity requires Hegel’s ideal Anerkennen, through which the self recognizes itself in the other, moving out of itself and thereby being with itself. Albert

50 Some critics argue that Galy Gay ultimately becomes Jip for economical reasons, as a soldier lives a better life than a poor dockworker (Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch 48; Müller, Mann ist Mann 96; Oesmann 94). The play provides enough evidence to the contrary to disprove this interpretation, as Galy Gay merely pretends to be Jip when it can benefit him financially, but returns to being himself. In contrast, only when he believes that his life is in jeopardy does he begin his substantial transformation into Jip. As Witzler correctly writes: “Die Entscheidungen sind völlig verschieden hinsichtlich ihrer Forderungen an Galy Gay und Fairchild, und es sind nicht wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse, die den Ausschlag geben” (Witzler 147). 154

Hofstadter writes, “Being-with-self is of the utmost significance. It is for Hegel the meaning of freedom and it is the ultimate form of self-identity. [… A]ccording to Hegel, freedom is self-identity in otherness, Being-with-self-in-the-other” (Hofstadter 682, 687).

The reflection of the self in the other leads to a more defined self-identity in Hegel. Galy

Gay, on the other hand, is terrified of recognizing himself in the other who supposedly lies in the box. He dreads the possibility of seeing himself reflected (“von Wasserfläch her”) in this other, as this discovery would lead to “sofortigen Tod.” He consequently elects not to open the box and risk, in a material sense, being-with-self.

It is important to recognize that Galy Gay’s transformation is not a mere ruse to avoid death. The play makes it clear that the eventual change is thorough, as indicated in a brief Zwischenspruch between the eighth and ninth scenes, just before the trial of Galy

Gay begins. Standing next to a picture of Brecht, Begbick addresses the audience: “Hier wird heute Abend ein Mensch wie ein Auto ummontiert / Ohne daß er irgend etwas dabei verliert” (Brecht 2:123). The image of such physical disassembly and reassembly as could be performed on an automobile takes on a rather visceral nature when applied to a human being. Already in August 1920 Brecht emphasized the violent, material character of Galgei’s transformation, describing Galgei as

Einfach die Geschichte eines Mannes, den sie kaputtmachen (aus Notwendigkeit) und das einzige Problem: Wie lange er’s aushält. Was sind seine Reserven, was unterscheidet ihn, was greift ihm an den Hals? Man stutzt ihm die Füße, man kegelt die Arme aus, man sägt ihm ein Loch in den Kopf, daß der gesamte Sternenhimmel hineinscheint; ist er noch Galgei? (Brecht 26:144)

The notion that a person can be so thoroughly and violently reassembled into a new identity departs from a European philosophical tradition that, since Plato, had been almost universally accepted (Witzler 149), namely that individuals possess some inner 155

essence, a core or spirit, which makes up a permanent, irreplaceable aspect of who they are.51

In Mann ist Mann the notion of such an inner quality of identity is rejected, in part, through the play’s treatment of opinion (Ansicht). In the previous chapter we have already seen this approach taken in Im Dickicht der Städte: Garga initially clings to his opinion, seeing it as an inner indicator of his identity, individuality, and freedom. This notion is eventually dismissed as Garga’s focus becomes not preservation of his identity, but physical survival. The transience of identity is reflected in the transience of opinion, which is most illustrated in Garga’s eventual abandonment of his views regarding his own opinions themselves. In its treatment of opinion, Mann ist Mann also posits the volatility of identity. As the three soldiers in Mann ist Mann discuss the possibility of transforming Galy Gay into Jeraiah Jip, Jesse expresses a similar view:

Man macht zuviel Aufhebens mit Leuten. Einer ist keiner. Über weniger als 200 zusammen kann man gar nichts sagen. Eine andere Meinung kann natürlich jeder haben. Eine Meinung ist ganz gleichgültig. Ein ruhiger Mann kann ruhig noch zwei oder drei andere Meinungen übernehmen. Mich kann man am Arsch lecken mit Charakterköpfen (Brecht 2:117).

The play eventually confirms Jesse’s sentiments; due to their own inconsistency, opinions cannot provide a stable basis for identity. In fact, in Mann ist Mann the possibility of any such inner, constant core on which identity is founded is explicitly absent. There are,

Jesse argues, no distinctive features (Charakterkopf) that determine an individual’s identity.

This materialist view of identity is by no means a disadvantage in Brecht’s play, however; because this core does not exist, Galy Gay is able to endure such a drastic

51 Witzler sees a strong resonance between Brecht’s notion of identity and Nietszche’s views of individuality and truth, but he is careful not to argue that there must necessarily be a causal relationship between Nietzsche’s and Brecht’s thinking in this regard. 156

change and ultimately profit because of it. This is reiterated in the play when, after Galy

Gay’s trial, Jesse and Uria discuss their success in producing a new Jip:

JESSE Ich kann ihn gar nicht sehen. Es ist schon ekelhaft, wenn ein Mammut, nur weil man ihm ein paar Flintenläufe unter die Nase hält, sich lieber in eine Laus verwandelt, als daß er sich anständig zu seinen Vätern versammelt. URIA Nein, das ist ein Beweis von Lebenskraft. (Brecht 2:151-52)

In Brecht’s materialism, where metaphysics play no role, the only survival worth note is material survival, or that of the body; no importance is placed on maintaining a consistent inner identity. The text regards Galy Gay’s ability to adapt, by changing who he is, as an affirmation of his vitality. He learns to disregard idealized assumptions pertaining to any inner indicators of self, which enables him to take on a new identity. Just as important as the fact that Galy Gay’s transformation is real is the understanding that it is a voluntary choice on his part. Despite the confusion caused by his trial and the ensuing events, his decision to abandon his identity and become Jip, which arises in response to a different traumatic experience altogether (see below), is deliberate.

In a journal entry from May 1920, Brecht uses the term Mittelpunkt in reference to an idealized, identity-defining core; he writes that Galgei is a story of a hunk of meat

(Fleischklotz) who is able to endure any change imposed upon him, “weil ihm der

Mittelpunkt fehlt” (Brecht 26:223). In describing the protagonist as a Fleischklotz, the entry focuses on the material nature of his existence, which, for the young Brecht, is the only meaningful aspect. Galgei and Galy Gay materially survive the harsh shifts in their external circumstances by allowing themselves to change accordingly. Witzler notes,

“Hätte er einen solchen erfaßbaren ‘Kern’, so könnte die Verwandlung des Galy Gay in

Jeraiah Jip nie vollständig vollzogen werden” (149). But Galy Gay does undergo a

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complete transformation, and this is possible, as Brecht writes, only because he has no core to which his sense of self must always gravitate, and he is able to switch his focus from inward, toward a supposed Mittelpunkt of self, to outward, at the material circumstances shaping him.

Brecht’s use of Mittelpunkt gains significance in this study when compared with

Hegel’s application of the same term in the following passage from his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte:

Die Materie ist insofern schwer, als sie nach einem Mittelpunkte treibt; […] sie besteht außereinander, sie sucht ihre Einheit und sucht also sich selbst aufzuheben, sucht ihr Gegenteil. Wenn sie dieses erreichte, so wäre sie keine Materie mehr, sondern sie wäre untergegangen; sie strebt nach Idealität, denn in der Einheit ist sie Ideell. Der Geist im Gegenteil ist eben das, in sich den Mittelpunkt zu haben; er hat nicht die Einheit außer sich, sondern er hat sie gefunden; er ist in sich selbst und bei sich selbst. (Hegel 12:30)

Here, Mittelpunkt indicates the ideal unity and balance that is achieved through dialectical progress, and also locates the difference between Spirit, which has its

Mittelpunkt within itself, and material, which strives for this center in seeking its opposite. Brecht’s work does not allow for Spirit, and thus the ideal Mittelpunkt, achieved through the qualitative development of dialectic sublation, is also absent. While the individual lacks the ideal unity of a Mittelpunkt in Brecht’s materialism, however, it is precisely because of this that Galy Gay is able to survive his violent personal rearrangement.

Galy Gay’s judgment that one (person) is none (“Einer ist keiner”) refers to the idiom “einmal ist keinmal,” which also arises in the play’s text: after the trial, Uria counts to three, at which point the firing squad will “execute” Galy Gay, who desperately seeks a way out of his predicament. He denies who he is, insisting in any case that he is not the 158

person who sold the false elephant. When they ask him, then, who he in reality is, he concludes, “Mindestens das: so ihr einen findet, der vergessen hat, wer er ist, das bin ich.

Und den laßt, ich bitte euch, noch einmal laufen.” To this, Uria replies, “Einmal ist keinmal! Drei! […] Feuer!!” (Brecht 2:136). Jan Knopf addresses the significance of the phrases “Einer ist keiner” and “Einmal ist keinmal” in their mathematical implication and the social context in which he understands them in Mann ist Mann:

Das zentrale Thema »Einer ist keiner« entwickelt sich aus der Sentenz »einmal ist keinmal«; sie besagt, daß das eine Mal eine Identifikation nicht möglich macht, daß der eine Fall noch keine Bestimmung zuläßt; erst die Reihe, analog der mathematischen Reihe, läßt Bestimmung und Bestimmtheit zu. Angewendet auf den Menschen: der einzelne ist ohne den sozialen Verband, ohne seine Mitmenschen unbestimmt und unbestimmbar. (Knopf, Brecht-Handbuch 50)

Applied to identity, the statement “Einer ist keiner” argues that one person cannot be accurately identified without existing “in einer Reihe,” or in a social context, and provides a material equivalent to Hegel’s conceptual dialectics. A concept in Hegel cannot be defined in isolation: Maybee writes that within Hegel’s system of thought,

“conceptual universals define themselves in relation to each other […]. Each concept develops out of earlier concepts, and their meanings are all fixed by their places in the development, and their relationships to each other” (Maybee 23).

In its consideration of the social applicability of the proposition that “Einer ist keiner,” Nikolaus Müller-Schöll’s analysis builds upon Knopf’s reading and also reinforces my own interpretation of Brecht’s early works in the context of this study:

»Einer ist keiner« oder »Einmal ist keinmal«, das ist das Gesetz der Beweislogik, die nur anerkannt, was sich wiederholen läßt. »Einer ist keiner« oder »Einmal ist keinmal«, das ist schließlich jedoch auch das alle anderen Gesetze entsetzende Gesetz des gesellschaftlichen Seins, das Galy Gay entdeckt, nachdem er von seiner »Erschießung« erwacht. Kriegs-, Wirtschafts- und Beweislogik können gleichermaßen als Formen einer geschlossenen Ökonomie gelesen werden, einer 159

Ökonomie ohne jegliche Transzendenz, ohne qualitative Differenzen. (Müller- Schöll 209)

When applied to Hegel, the phrases “Einer ist keiner” and “Einmal ist keinmal” recall, on the one hand, the interrelatedness of rational concepts. On the other hand, as Müller-

Schöll argues, there is no transcendence present in Brecht’s law. The equations “Einer ist keiner” and “Einmal ist keinmal” preclude qualitative progress and only entail quantitative change. Here Brecht’s materialism once again places limits on Hegel’s idealism in positing a natural and social law that restricts change and development to the repetition of Hegel’s schlechte Unendlichkeit.

The monk Wang clarifies this same principle in its social application, when, after

Galy Gay has impersonated Jip in the roll-call, the three soldiers return to the temple to retrieve their injured comrade. Wang is content with his arrangement and the money that his new god is bringing in, and when the soldiers forcefully demand Jip’s return, Wang in turn blackmails them by explaining the situation through a visual aid:

Damit Sie aber sehen, daß der Mann, von dem Sie sagen, daß er hier ist, und von dem ich nicht weiß, daß er hier ist, nicht Ihr Mann ist, erlauben Sie mir, daß ich Ihnen an der Hand einer Zeichnung alles erkläre. Gestatten Sie Ihrem unwürdigen Diener, daß er hier mit Kreide vier Verbrecher aufzeichnet. Er zeichnet auf die Tür des Gebetskastens.

Einer von ihnen hat ein Gesicht, so daß man sieht, wer er ist, aber drei von ihnen haben keine Gesichter. Sie erkennet man nicht. Der nun mit dem Gesicht hat kein Geld, also ist er kein Dieb. Die mit dem Geld haben aber kein Gesicht, also kennt man sie nicht. Das ist so, solang sie nicht beieinander stehen. Wenn sie aber beieinander stehen, wachsen den drei

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Kopflosen Gesichter, und man wird bei ihnen fremdes Geld finden. (Brecht 2:111-12)

Just as the phrase “Einer ist keiner” argues that an individual acquires identity within a group, Wang’s illustration convincingly demonstrates that the group to which the individual belongs also receives meaning based on the external perception of its members. Only in a series, or, as Wang says, when standing “beieinander,” do all the members of the group gain an identity, which Brecht’s language renders in fittingly corporeal manner, namely that faces grow on the three unidentified soldiers.

Additionally, what protects the three soldiers from punishment is that they do not have faces. The three anonymous figures in Wang’s parable are able to keep their money without repercussion because they are not identified beieinander, in a series with the incriminating member. They can survive because they are not Charakterköpfe (Wang even refers to them as the “drei Kopflosen”); as Garga discovers in Im Dickicht der

Städte and as Brecht’s Lesebuch für Städtebewohner advises, survival is possible because they are not tied to the fixed, identity of their group. They cannot evade this identity forever, however, as it has been determined by the hegemonic social institution of the

British army, and with Jip’s bald spot in their numbers the identity of the

Maschinengewehrabteilung becomes connected to the group of criminals who robbed the pagoda. Therefore, after discovering the impossibility of retrieving Jip from Wang, they seek to replace him with Galy Gay, whose presence will distance the identity of their group from that of the criminals.

Galy Gay states that for an individual to have an identity, “Es muß ihn einer anrufen.” This suggests not only that identity is determined when a person is among others, but that it is actually determined by others. The characters in Mann ist Mann are 161

who they are not because of an inner development of self, but rather due to how they are perceived. In framing him for the fraudulent elephant sale, the soldiers transform Galy

Gay’s identity from dockworker to criminal, assuming “dann will er lieber Jeraiah Jip sein als Galy Gay, der Verbrecher” (Brecht 2:124). His name is changed from outside, and if he does not inwardly adjust to his new external circumstances, he is made to believe that he will die. In this way Brecht departs from Hegel, who views external recognition as a necessity for a definition of self, but for whom the self plays an active role in determining its identity through a process of recognition of self in other as well as difference from other. In Mann ist Mann, on the other hand, the self plays little to no role in determining self-certainty. In his desperation after he has been sentenced to die, Galy

Gay frantically searches for a new identity that will save him from death. He pleads with the soldiers to give him an identity:

Glaubt mir, und lacht nicht, ich bin einer, der nicht weiß, wer er ist. Aber Galy Gay bin ich nicht, das weiß ich. Der erschossen werden soll, bin ich nicht. Wer aber bin ich? Denn ich hab’s vergessen; gestern abend, als es regnete, wußt ich’s. Gestern abend regnete es doch? Ich bitte euch, wenn ihr hierher schaut oder dorthin, wo diese Stimme herkommt, das bin ich, ich bitte euch. Ruft die Stelle an, sagt Galy Gay zu ihr oder andere Wörter, erbarmt euch[.] (Brecht 2:136)

The verb anrufen in this passage carries the same meaning as in Galy Gay’s statement

“Es muß ihn einer anrufen”: alone, he is an empty Stelle with no identity. He seems to recognize in his pleading that the soldiers, as others in his social environment, can provide him with an identity by calling to him. This is also reflected in Uria’s words to

Galy Gay earlier in the play, as the soldiers try to convince him to permanently take Jip’s place: “Sie behalten also ohne weiteres Ihren Soldatenrock mit den hübschen

Messingknöpfen und haben ein Recht darauf, daß man Sie jederzeit Herr, Herr Jip anspricht” (Brecht 2:118). Here the verb ansprechen acts in a similar manner as anrufen 162

does above, and Uria’s words make it clear that to have an externally recognized identity in this social order is a right to be desired and earned. Related verbs such as rufen, aufrufen, and nennen arise numerous times in the play’s dialogue and function in the same way, suggesting not only saying a person’s name, but assigning that name meaning.

Further, kennen and anerkennen, which have Hegelian connotations, serve a similar purpose. For example, in the final scene, after Galy Gay has taken over the role of

Jip, the soldiers encounter the original Jeraiah Jip, who has left the temple to find them.

Having their new Jip, however, they pretend not to recognize him, telling him, “Wir kennen Sie gar nicht” (Brecht 2:154). Jip asks his former comrades, “So ist wirklich keiner unter euch, der mich kennen will?” (Brecht 2:154). His question indicates with the modal verb wollen that recognizing or knowing him is a conscious decision on the soldiers’ part. Jip cannot make a claim to his name because he isn’t recognized by others; they, the subjects, deny him, the object, an identity, and as a passive recipient of this recognition, he has no say in the matter. The use of the verb heißen in Mann ist Mann is particularly fitting when it is considered that heißen has developed historically to take on a passive meaning; instead of saying “my name is” or “I am,” characters that say “ich heiße” are literally saying “I am called.” In such language the play suggests that the individual is a passive recipient of his or her identity, as signified in his or her name.

If there is no internal Mittelpunkt that defines us, the question remains as to what makes up identity. In Mann ist Mann, there are two components of identity: name and body. The name itself has no intrinsic meaning – something that Hegel also argues in his

Logik:

der individuelle Name ist aber ein Sinnloses in dem Sinne, daß er nicht ein Allgemeines ausdrückt, und erscheint als ein bloß Gesetztes, Willkürliches 163

aus demselben Grunde, wie denn auch Einzelnamen willkürlich angenommen, gegeben oder ebenso geändert werden können. (Hegel 5:126)

Proper names are ultimately meaningless and arbitrary, as they make no reference to any intrinsic qualities of the things they signify, but rather refer simply to themselves in the manner of A = A. Already in a journal entry from 1919, Brecht comes to the same conclusion: “Welch ein Unfug, jedem Mädchen einen andern Namen aufzuhängen! Hieß etwa jedes Hemd anders, die Hemden waren doch auch gleich, folglich auch der Name!

Mit den Ansichten verhielt es sich ähnlich” (Brecht 26:113). In Mann ist Mann, a name likewise contains no true meaning, except for the meaning attached to it by the social environment. It could be seen as an external, social counterpart of the ideal Mittelpunkt; it identifies a person, but in contrast to an inner core, it is received, in ever-changing definitions, by the individual as a result of his or her place in the social setting. At birth it corresponds with Hegel’s term bloßer Name, being an empty sound with no inherent meaning. The name eventually takes on signification as others recognize it and assign its collected meaning to its bearer.

Names in Brecht’s materialism thus make up a social counterpart to Hegel’s rational concepts. To determine what a thing or concept is, Hegel’s method moves into the thing’s negation or opposite; it explores the thing’s limits and observes it from an opposing perspective, and then returns to the thing with a more progressed knowledge of it and a new, refined concept for it: “Die Natur des Geistes läßt sich durch den vollkommenen Gegensatz desselben erkennen” (Hegel 12:30). In intersubjective relationships this process occurs reciprocally; each individual recognizes itself from the perspective of the other, and as each recognizes the other as an independent self, each

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gains a more complete recognition as well. In the strictly material world of Mann ist

Mann, on the other hand, the determination of identity through name is a one-way process. Characters’ names take on meaning as it is assigned to them within their social setting.

As the dominant social institution in the play, the British army creates and regulates the identities of its soldiers, codifying them in the form of their military identification papers, which take precedence over the soldiers themselves as determinants of identity. The image of paper surfaces again here as an extension of Brecht’s critique of language. As the printed word creates an inert crust around a living, fluid reality, the identification papers in Mann ist Mann capture a snapshot of the soldiers and fail to reproduce the dynamic reality of identity. Instead of the military papers in Mann ist Mann acting as mere indicators of the soldiers’ identities, they fix a static definition that the soldiers themselves must conform with. In losing a quarter pound of his hair, Jip no longer matches the identity in his papers, and the remaining three soldiers need to find a man who can be brought to fill the resulting vacuum. Through the identification papers, the army attempts to crystallize the soldiers’ transitory identities, and if a soldier can no longer fit his identity as it has been established by the army, the play argues that he must be replaced with one who can: “Denn ein Mann kann jederzeit ersetzt werden, aber es gibt nichts Heiliges mehr, wenn es nicht ein Paß ist” (Brecht 2:98).

The material social order in Mann ist Mann recognizes people on a positivist level corresponding with Hegel’s notion of Verstand, namely as already determined entities with no room for contradiction (and thus development) within them. Moreover, as their identities have been frozen in the form of the printed identification papers, the soldiers

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must verify to the army that they remain who they have been assigned to be; this is performed in the rite of the roll-call (Appell), through which the army maintains the soldiers’ identities as dictated in their papers; this can be seen near the beginning of the play, as Blody Five arranges a roll-call in order to reveal who damaged the temple:

“Kommt zum Appell wegen der Pagodengeschichte. Es soll einer fehlen. Darum werden die Namen aufgerufen und die Pässe durchgesehen” (Brecht 2:107). The French verb appeler, from which the term Appell stems, carries the same meaning as the German anrufen, and reinforces the notion that the army, by calling the names of the soldiers, maintains command over their identities.

As a social counterpart of a traditional, defining inner Mittelpunkt, the name is one aspect of individual identity in Mann ist Mann. The other is the body, or the material aspect. Faced with the task of giving his own eulogy, Galy Gay contemplates his identity in strictly bodily terms: “Meine Mutter im Kalendar hat verzeichnet den Tag, wo ich herauskam, und der schrie, das war ich. Dieses Bündel von Fleisch, Nägeln, Haar, das bin ich, das bin ich” (Brecht 2:141). Identifying himself only in such material terms as meat, nails, hair, and voice, he uses these criteria to draw a connection between who he was at birth and who he is now (“das war ich […] das bin ich”). Such an assessment runs against

Hegel’s idealistic notion of conceptual definition; Galy Gay’s identity is not an accumulation of his personal experiences; the only constant (which itself is not constant at all) is the material composition of his body. This runs parallel to Brecht’s critique of history in Trommeln in der Nacht and in Shlink’s statement that “Die Etappen des Lebens sind nicht die der Erinnerung. Der Schluß ist nicht das Ziel, die letzte Episode nicht wichtiger als irgendeine andere” (Brecht 1:490). A progressivist conception of identity

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would view it as the sum of personal history. For Brecht, individual experience, like history, is “ein Haufen ungeordneten Materials” externally and retrospectively given meaning (Brecht 21:180).

Galy Gay learns to rely only on his physical being as the definition of himself. He delineates his identity as the limits of his body (specifically the beginning and end of his digestive system), telling the soldiers, “gebt mir ein Stück Fleisch! Worin’s verschwindet, das ist der Galy Gay und das, woraus es kommt” (Brecht 2:136). Ironically, this carnal self-assessment of identity reflects an aspect Hegelian thought: Hegel insists that all concepts and things contain their own negation, and that their limit, or where they cross into their own negation, is essential in defining them. In this regard, Maybee notes that

“Having negation within them is what gives them a rudimentary determination or character at all. Concepts and human beings are something at all because they contain negation” (Maybee 41). Thus, in a material sense, Galy Gay’s definition of himself based on his limit, or his negation, echoes this key aspect of Hegelian definition of concepts.

Name and body in Mann ist Mann can be seen to be situated in a dialectical model whose Aufhebung, if it were possible, might be a defined personal identity. However, in

Mann ist Mann, as in the other plays examined here, there is no ideal supersession, and individuals find themselves hopelessly caught in the material contradictions of existence.

This is most clearly exemplified in the character of Blody Five. Although the sergeant is usually remorseless and austere, Begbick informs the three soldiers that

es ist armeebekannt, daß er bei Regengüssen in schreckliche Zustände von Sinnlichkeit verfällt und sich äußerlich und innerlich verändert. […] Wenn es einmal regnet, ist Blody Five, der gefährlichste Mann der indischen Armee, ungefährlich wie ein Milchzahn, denn bei Regen verwandelt sich Blody Five in Blody Gent, und der blutige Gent befaßt sich drei Tage lang nur mit Mädchen. (Brecht 2:107) 167

As it begins to rain outside, Blody Five proves the truth of Begbick’s words. Succumbing to an overwhelming carnal Sinnlichkeit, he allows Begbick to distract him from the aftermath of Galy Gay’s trial, which has just occurred in the same place. He comes dressed in a tuxedo to Begbick and her daughters in the hopes of sexual satisfaction and makes a fool of himself in front of his soldiers, who happily seize upon the opportunity to humiliate him. Blody Five loses his name because he succumbs to his physical

Sinnlichkeit, a material, bodily quality that so decisively determines who he is as to strip him of the name he has developed over years of austerity. He is defined by his material existence to the point that he sheds his respected identity and appears as a civilian, a target of the soldiers’ contempt. Due to the change in his clothing from their sergeant to a civilian dandy, his identity changes in the eyes of others; this brings to mind the German expression Kleider machen Leute. Because the change in his clothes was caused by a more essential change in physical identity, namely the onset of Blody Five’s condition of

Sinnlichkeit, Mann ist Mann suggests that the body makes the man before the clothes do.

Blody Five drinks himself into a stupor and is carried unconscious to the train that is about to transport the soldiers to battle. As he is carried along, Begbick points to him, commenting, “Das war der menschliche Taifun” (Brecht 2:144). Although he had this name, it no longer applies to him in the eyes of others. Blody Five realizes the same thing upon awakening in the train the next morning, exclaiming, “Wo ist mein Name, der groß war von Kalkutta bis Cooch-Behar? [… I]m ganzen Zug sagt man, daß ich nicht mehr

Blody Five bin! (Brecht 2:149). In asking where his name is, he indicates that his name, instead of being attached to his body, is something which can be taken away from him

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due to the events of one night. But, his name is so important to him that he takes drastic measures in the train in order to reclaim it and assure that he will never lose it again:

Das ist ganz einfach. Das ist die Lösung. Da ist ein Strick. Da ist ein Armeerevolver. Da kenne ich gar nichts. Aufständige werden erschossen. Das ist ganz einfach! Johnny, pack deinen Koffer. Mich kostet auf dieser Welt kein Mädchen mehr einen Pfennig. So. Das ist ganz einfach. Dabei darf mir noch nicht einmal die Pfeife ausgehen. Ich übernehme die Verantwortung. Ich muß es tun, damit ich Blody Five bin. (Brecht 2:150)

In order to regain his name, his socially constructed identity, Blody Five castrates himself with his pistol, despite Galy Gay’s attempt to dissuade him at the last moment: “Halt!

Tue nichts wegen deinem Namen. Ein Name ist etwas Unsicheres: darauf kannst du nicht bauen!” (Brecht 2:150). In the play’s final scene, referring back to this event that he witnessed, Galy Gay “lächelt [Blody Five] ins Gesicht: Mann ist Mann! Aber kein Mann ist kein Mann. Aber ich sage es niemand” (Brecht 2:153). Blody Five also proves, through his self-castration, another statement implied by the law of identity, namely that because A = A, it subsequently cannot be equal to not-A.

After witnessing this key experience, Galy Gay truly decides to become Jeraiah

Jip; up until now, he has consciously adopted Jip’s name as a role. At this point, however, the role of Jip “wird ihm nun zur eigenen Natur” (Witzler 147). Seeing Blody Five’s self- mutilation for the sake of his name brings Galy Gay to a greater realization:

Dieser Herr hat wegen seinem Namen etwas sehr Blutiges mit sich gemacht. Er hat sich eben sein Geschlecht weggeschossen! Das ist ein großes Glück für mich, daß ich das gesehen habe: Jetzt sehe ich, wohin diese Hartnäckigkeit führt und wie blutig es ist, wenn ein Mann nie mit sich zufrieden ist und so viel Aufhebens aus seinem Namen macht! (Brecht 2:150)

Leading to this point in the play, Galy Gay has impersonated Jip out of generosity, for material gain, and in immediate fear for his life. In the middle of the play, although he

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has already happily impersonated Jip to help the soldiers at roll-call, he is hesitant at the thought of joining the army as Jip. When Polly asks him at one point why he does not want to be Jip, he answers simply, “Weil ich Galy Gay bin” (Brecht 2:118). He does not readily accept his transformation into Jip until the revelation that stubbornly clinging to his name can lead to “etwas sehr Blutiges,” as demonstrated by Blody Five.

I would argue that, in addition to “Einer ist keiner,” and “Einmal ist keinmal,” a further mathematical lesson implicit in Brecht’s play could be formulated as Haut (as one way of understanding the essence of Mann) > Name (the other way of understanding

Mann). Brecht suggests this in a July 1920 journal entry regarding Galgei, in which he briefly summarizes the story: “Anno domini … fiel der Bürger Joseph Galgei in die

Hände böser Menschen, die ihn gar übel zurichteten, ihm seinen Namen abnahmen und ohne Haut liegen ließen. So möge jeder achtgeben auf seine Haut!” (Brecht 26:125). The admonition that Brecht gives here is not to preserve Name, but rather Haut. This fits with his use of this bodily image in his early works in general as discussed in previous chapters; Galy Gay’s instinct to preserve his skin parallels those of Andreas Kragler and

George Garga. This is the ultimate materialist notion of staying true to oneself: physical survival. Kragler abandons the revolution to live with Anna, and Garga deserts his own idealized notions of identity to survive in the urban jungle.

The play therefore agrees with Hegel’s view that a bloßer Name is immaterial. In

Hegel’s conceptual idealism, empty terms are negated through supersession, and their place is taken by increasingly refined rational concepts which categorize them according to their true essence. In discussing conceptual categorization, Hegel writes of three distinct forms of universality (Allgemeinheit) in rational categories. Each one has a

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degree of validity, but the move from one to the next is a progressive move to a truer universality. The first of these is a universality based on communality

(Gemeinschaftlichkeit), and it occurs at the level of Verstand. Hegel writes that such a universality “gewährt wohl Wahrnehmungen von aufeinanderfolgenden Veränderungen oder von nebeneinanderliegenden Gegenständen” (Hegel 8:111); this universality determines causality and likeness based on external, empirically perceivable conditions.

Maybee writes that communality is “an ‘external’ form of universality, largely because it cannot explain why certain items should be put into certain sets. […] It makes no reference to the items themselves – i.e. to their internal natures” (Maybee 16). Things classified based on communality are, in Hegel’s words, “durch das bloße Auch verbunden” by the understanding (Hegel 8:73).52 Vernunft, in contrast to Verstand, classifies things not based on external communality, but internal commonality, or on internal characteristics that tie them together. Commonality is more rational and more progressed than communality, because it focuses on the intrinsic qualities that things share, as opposed to external circumstances holding them together.

Although universals of communality and commonality may entail truth in themselves, they are ultimately inadequate. The ideal mode of universality is attained when, through speculative reason, the true essence of the things is determined, or that which necessitates their classification under one concept as opposed to another. Maybee

52 Kant would view any classification as an attempt of the understanding to categorize universals in this communal sense, because our understanding is the limit of what claims we can reasonably make. We can have no real knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and therefore any classification or grouping of things or concepts is (and should be) limited to empirical perception. For Hegel, who believed that the reason and rationality of the thing-in-itself is also present in the material world, including human beings, “true” categories exist among rational concepts, and classification is not just an arbitrary exercise of human understanding in order to produce meaning in a world that cannot be truly known. Of course, that is not to say that merely empirically determined universals are sufficient. Thus the notion of communality progresses to commonality, and finally to essence (see Maybee 16-18). 171

makes this point as she examines this most authentic form of universality in Hegel, namely that of essence:

[E]ssential universals […] point toward the whatever-it-is without which a thing would not be what it is. That whatever-it-is is essential to, or necessary to, the thing because the thing could not be what it is without the whatever-it-is. (Maybee 18)

As a concept in Hegel’s dialectics contains within it the positive preserved from all previous concepts, an essential universal also includes any truth in the previous stages of universality. However, the universality of essence includes only that which defines the true nature of the thing or category. It expresses “einen Zusammenhang der

Notwendigkeit” (Hegel 8:111), without which the things in question would cease to be such things.

In Hegel’s system, the true concept Mann would ideally be attained through a qualitative, refining process of sublation; as the unnecessary elements in it were negated and the positive preserved, the concept would eventually express the essential characteristic without which a Mann would no longer be a Mann. As it arises in the title of Brecht’s play, Mann is a strictly quantitative counterpart to Hegel’s rational concept. It signifies a material substance as opposed to a conceptual ideal, and the content of that substance is interchangeable. A material, social counterpart to Hegel’s essential category also exists in Mann ist Mann, namely in the form of the identification papers. The three soldiers, who are in possession of Jip’s papers, have all that is necessary for producing a new Jip:

URIA […] Jetzt muß also dieser Packer Galy Gay aus Kilkoa mit Haut und Haar zu Jeraiah Jip werden, unserem Kameraden. […] POLLY Aber wie soll denn das gehen, Uria? Wir haben nichts als Jips Paß. JESSE Das genügt. Das muß einen neuen Jip geben. (Brecht 2:117) 172

As the governing social institution, the army in Mann ist Mann takes the place of Hegel’s

Spirit as the active defining force in the world. The army determines what is necessary in an individual’s identity, codifying these traits with the soldier’s name within the papers.

Thus, as Spirit and the ideal are replaced by social order and the material, the papers become the essential definition of individuals.

The wanted poster (Steckbrief) fulfils the same role in Mann ist Mann. When we first see Blody Five, he is posting a Steckbrief informing of the soldiers’ crime at the temple. He is overjoyed at the prospect of discovering and punishing the perpetrators:

“Einbruch in die Gelbherrpagode, das Dach der Gelbherrpagode durchlöchert von

Kugeln, als Indizium findet man an Pech klebend ein Viertelpfund Haare!” (Brecht

2:100). The Steckbrief isolates the necessary essence of the criminals by identifying a key trait of one of their members. Blody Five continues, “Wenn sich aber in einer

Maschinengewehrabteilung ein Mann mit einem Glätzchen findet, dann sind das die

Verbrecher. Das ist ganz einfach” (Brecht 2:100). As the sergeant reasons, and as Wang demonstrates in his illustration, the identities of the criminals can be determined only in their existence as members in a collective. Thus after Polly realizes, “Und jetzt hat er ein

Glätzlein, und jeder erkennt ihn,” Jesse refers to Jip as “Der lebendige Steckbrief!”

(Brecht 2:99). In the Steckbrief, Jip’s identity is reduced to a necessary external quality, as dictated by the authority of the military. This also echoes Brecht’s use of paper as a representation of written language’s petrifaction of the thing (or, in this case, person).

In Mann ist Mann, there is no true essence or Mittelpunkt by which people can be classified. The only valid universality present in the play is at the communal level that sees the figures categorized together on empirically temporal and spatial terms: they are

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in the same place at the same time, and as soldiers, the majority of them participate in the same activities, developments, and gestures. This is illustrated in the following passage, after Galy Gay’s monologue in which he comes to the conclusion that “Einer ist keiner”:

GALY GAY […] Zu den dreien. Ihr, seht ihr mich denn überhaupt? Wo stehe ich denn? POLLY zeigt auf ihn. GALY GAY Ja, das stimmt. Was mache ich denn jetzt? POLLY Du beugst den Arm. GALY GUY So, ich beuge also den Arm! Tu ich es jetzt schon wieder? POLLY Ja, zum zweitenmal. GALY GAY Jetzt habe ich also zweimal den Arm gebeugt und jetzt? POLLY Jetzt gehst du wie ein Soldat. GALY GAY Geht ihr auch so? POLLY Genau so. (Brecht 2:143)

By learning to produce the same movements as the soldiers, Galy Gay allows himself to become a part of this community, which will assure his survival. The repeated “A = A” statements throughout the play further establish the communal universality in Mann ist

Mann. For Hegel, this communality is insufficient; nevertheless, the communal universality in the play is not to be viewed negatively. In Brecht’s materialism where

Haut > Name, the ability to change and even become anonymous is crucial for material survival, as illustrated in Im Dickicht der Städte and Aus dem Lesebuch für

Städtebewohner.53

In the tenth scene, aboard the train carrying the soldiers to battle in Tibet, this is again emphasized in a conversation that Galy Gay has with Begbick shortly after he has witnessed the spectacle of Blody Five’s self-castration:

GALY GAY Und wie viele gibt es hier, die nach Tibet fahren? LEOKADJA Hunderttausend! GALY GAY Nicht wahr? Hunderttausend! Und was essen sie? LEOKADJA Gedörrte Fische und Reis.

53 See chapter 3. 174

GALY GAY Alle das gleiche? LEOKADJA Alle das gleiche! GALY GAY Nicht wahr? Alle das gleiche. (Brecht 2:151)

Galy Gay finds comfort in this setting of communal universality, and ultimately allows himself to fully conform, which, within the play itself, proves Brecht’s claim that Mann ist Mann. This confirmation that “A = A” is of course, in Hegel’s thought, a false dialectic, limited only to Verstand within the schlechte Unendlichkeit of the

Naturzustand. Hegel writes in his Logik that “Solches identische Reden widerspricht sich also selbst. Die Identität, statt an ihr die Wahrheit und absolute Wahrheit zu sein, ist daher vielmehr das Gegenteil; […] sie [ist] das Hinausgehen über sich in die Auflösung ihrer selbst” (Hegel 6:44). In accepting the law of identity as “A = A,” as if to confirm

Hegel’s claim, Galy Gay indeed goes über sich hinaus and experiences an Auflösung of his selfhood. In its advocation of material survival, though, Brecht’s play dwells happily within such a schlechte Unendlichkeit, because it allows the individual to avoid a more fatal Auflösung, namely that of material existence. Because there is no ideal Mittelpunkt defining selfhood, Galy Gay’s course of action is certainly advantageous when compared to the alternative, illustrated in Blody Five, who clings to a name whose only meaning is assigned by the social environment.

It may be surprising, then, that the play concludes with an apparent affirmation of the importance of Name and Paß. When Jeraiah Jip returns to his machinegun squad on the battlefront in the final scene, Galy Gay, who has replaced him, is the only soldier who shows him any form of compassion, telling him:

Natürlich brauchen Sie einen Paß. Wer wird Sie denn ohne einen Paß herumlaufen lassen? Ach Polly, hole doch […] diesen alten Paß von diesem Galy Gay, mit dem ihr mich einmal aufgezogen habt. Polly läuft. Ein Mann, der in den Niederungen geweilt hat, wo der Tiger den Jaguar 175

nach seinen Zähnen fragt, weiß, wie gut es ist, etwas schwarz auf weiß bei sich zu halten, denn sehen Sie, allenthalben wollen sie einen heutzutage um seinen Namen bringen, ich weiß, was ein Name wert ist. Oh, ihr Knäblein, warum habt ihr mich statt Galy Gay damals nicht gleich noch Garniemand genannt? Das sind gefährliche Späße. Sie hätten gerade so gut böse ausgehen können. Aber ich sage ja: Schwamm drüber (Brecht 2:155).

The play presents a paradox not present in the other works examined in this study. On the one hand, Mann ist Mann supports the other plays in illustrating the danger of stubbornly insisting upon a fixed personal identity. On the other hand, however, Galy Gay maintains the importance of possessing a name and papers and the “gefährliche Späße” of addressing somebody by the wrong name. This paradox arises due to the introduction of a rigid social order in Mann ist Mann, which differs from the social chaos of Im Dickicht der Städte or Trommeln in der Nacht in that a central, governing institution is present in the form of the British Army. As this social order assigns, maintains, and enforces individual identity, the anonymity promoted in Brecht’s Lesebuch für Städtebewohner is not a valid option, as it was in the earlier plays.

Although material existence clearly outweighs consistency of name in Mann ist

Mann, the addition of a hegemonic social institution which defines and regulates identity makes anonymity as dangerous as Blody Five’s physical sacrifice for the sake of a continuity of self. Galy Gay learns this during his trial and “execution”; recognizing the danger in being associated with a particular name, he insists throughout the elephant transaction as well as his trial that “Mein Name darf nicht genannt werden” (Brecht

2:125). He is referred to numerously over the next several pages as the man who wishes to remain unnamed:

LEOKADJA Ihr Name? GALY GAY Soll nicht genannt werden. 176

LEOKADJA Bitte geben Sie einen Bleistift, daß ich den Scheck ausstellen kann, und zwar auf diesen Herrn, der nicht genannt sein will. (Brecht 2:128)

Galy Gay seeks safety in anonymity, but having no name is as dangerous in this social order as rigid insistence upon a fixed identity. This is reflected in the final and most severe accusation leveled against him in his trial: Uria informs him that he is condemned to death, “weil du […] keinerlei Namen noch Paß zeigen kannst und vielleicht sogar ein

Spion bist oder ein Schwindler, der beim Appell einen unechten Namen angegeben hat”

(Brecht 2:131). He is condemned because he cannot provide any evidence of his identity which would be acknowledged by the army. Although he later learns, in the example provided by Blody Five, the dangers of regarding his name as an essential component of who he is, Galy Gay learns while he is on trial that having no name can prove fatal when one is required within the social structure.

The name/body dialectic in Mann ist Mann develops entirely in the material realm. As idealism does not come into play in Brecht’s work, this dialectic finds no true resolution or supersession. Rather, Galy Gay learns to adapt and survive amid these opposites. To cling to his name could lead to his destruction, but to abandon it entirely could as well. He is able to survive by shifting from one name to another, finding both the fixity and fluidity required to survive this paradoxical dialectic. In this way he reflects

Heraclitus’ river, and on a material level, the relevance of its dual nature for Hegel’s philosophy: the river is in constant flux, but in its course it maintains a permanence or fixedness in its flow. This reflects the permanence of rational concepts while simultaneously including the need for constant change dictated by Hegel’s dialectic. Galy

Gay likewise becomes fixed in his fluidity, adapting to the contradiction within existence

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by becoming such a contradiction himself. This duality is also reflected in Uria’s unintentionally ambiguous statement earlier in the play that “Der Mann, den wir brauchen, eine kleine Zeit muß er haben, weil es für die Ewigkeit ist, daß er sich verwandelt” (Brecht 2:142). Upon an initial reading and in the context of the soldiers’ situation, Uria seems to mean that Galy Gay’s change into Jip will be a permanent transformation. However, removed from this immediate connotation and examined in the context of the contradictions inherent in Brecht’s notion of identity, Uria’s words could also express the likelihood that Galy Gay will need to constantly and repeatedly transform himself, or in other words, rather than making a change that will last forever, he will be forever changing. In learning to exist as a contradiction by changing himself as circumstances dictate, Galy Gay personifies the approach necessary for surviving the ubiquitous, irreconcilable opposition which Brecht’s work sees in material existence.

In the material social order of Mann ist Mann, the determination of identity does not occur as a qualitative progression. Because “Mann ist Mann” on a quantitative level, however, Galy Gay is able, if not to independently determine his identity, at least to transfer identity in order to survive. At the play’s end, after he (as Jeraiah Jip) topples the enemy fortress blocking the army’s way into Tibet, the voices of other soldiers call up to him:

SOLDATENSTIMMEN VON UNTEN Wer ist aber der Mann, der die Bergfestung Sir el Dchowr gefällt hat? GALY GAY […] Er ruft durch das Megaphon. Ich bin es, einer von euch, Jeraiah Jip! STIMMEN VON UNTEN Was aber hast du gemacht, daß der Paß jetzt frei ist? GALY GAY durch das Megaphon: Beinahe nichts! Beinahe nichts! Meine Ansicht ist: Mann ist Mann! (Brecht 2:156-57)

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Taken at face value, the other soldiers ask Galy Gay what he did to clear the pass through the mountains. As with Uria’s comment above, this language takes on new meaning when read in the context of my study; given the repeated emphasis the text places on the identification papers (Paß), it seems unlikely that Brecht’s choice of wording here is coincidental. With this ambiguity in mind, we can understand the significance of Galy

Gay’s remark that, to free the pass (military papers), or the authoritative statement of his expected identity, he needed to do almost nothing. These are encouraging words for those who, due to the contradictive tensions of material existence, have to make similar adjustments for their own survival.

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Conclusion: “Aber das Gesündeste ist doch einfach: lavieren.”

A Brechtian Guide to Surviving the Material of History

As Brecht became familiar with Marx and Hegel, dialectics became an increasingly prominent element of his theory and work. Much later in his life, in his

Kleines Organon für das Theater (1948), he foretells the development of his famous epic theater into a dialectical theater, which would be best fit to address the “ungeheure

Veränderbarkeit unserer Umwelt” (Brecht 23:71). A predominant theme of this treatise is the application of theater in order to encourage the reader to keep in mind the transient nature of historical social structures, “ihre Vergänglichkeit im Auge [zu] halten, so daß auch das unsere als vergänglich eingesehen werden kann” (Brecht 23:79). To enable this,

Brecht prescribes “die Methode der neuen Gesellschaftswissenschaft, die materialistische

Dialektik,” for which “alles nur [existiert], indem es sich wandelt, also in Uneinigkeit mit sich selber ist” (Brecht 23:82).

Long before he began applying a systematic dialectics influenced by Marx, Hegel, or even others, such as the Chinese philosopher Mo-Tse,54 however, the young Brecht’s thinking already contained the roots of the dialectics he would later embrace. David

Bathrick, for instance, argues that as early as his first full-length play Baal, Brecht’s work hinges on a dialectic of subjectivity and objectivity, manifested through the position of

54 See Willett p. 224; Tatlow (1977) p. 431-434 180

the individual within society.55 “Dialectics” may be too strong a term for the young

Brecht, however. If anything, his thinking entails an incomplete dialectics that acknowledges the tensions and oppositions in material reality, as well as the inevitable change that these bring about, but does not yet see a progressive sublation in these changes, whether social or idealistic in nature. Brecht’s writing displays a sensitivity for the ubiquitous conflict and opposition present in existence, and in uncovering the contradictions within reality, his early work thus shows a natural disposition toward a dialectical understanding of the world. He clearly saw opposition in all things and was able to illustrate universal contradiction in his work. Like Hegel, he positions things, concepts, perspectives, etc. against their opposites, exposing a fuller comprehension of them as well as a greater awareness of the contradiction inherent in all things, as Witzler notes:

Vor allem Brechts Schreiben seiner frühen Jahre wird daher bewußt zum ‘Schreiben in Gegensätzen’. Sein früher schriftstellerischer Impetus erhält seine Energie aus der Einsicht, daß jede Position angemaßt ist, wenn sie nicht ihre Gegenposition als ebensogut für möglich und zureichend begründbar hält wie sich selbst. (Witzler 156)56

This contradictory nature of reality was an essential element of the young Brecht’s worldview and work. But, because these contradictions and oppositions are at their core material and irrational, they cannot be sublated through the application of speculative logic. For Hegel, the dialectical nature of the material world exists because reason itself develops dialectically, and the material world is an extension of the rational concepts that define it. As reason dialectically supersedes the oppositions within the rational realm, it is able also to reconcile material contradiction. For Brecht, however, the contradictions in

55 See Bathrick (1975). 56 See also Koopmann. 181

the material world are not based on a rational dialectics on a conceptual level. Instead, these material contradictions are irrational, and reason, therefore, cannot supersede them.

While Hegel’s dialectic occurs primarily within a metaphysical framework and then by application in the material world, Brecht’s has no such idealistic context, and contradiction repeats itself in a Hegelian schlechte Unendlichkeit.

Already in 1920 Brecht found himself developing a disdain of any fixed perspective of reality that fails to acknowledge the ambiguity and contradiction in things, as he notes in a journal entry from early September of that year:

In mir wächst ein Gefühlchen gegen die Zweiteilung (stark-schwach; groß-klein; glücklich-unglücklich; ideal-nichtideal). Es ist doch nur, weil die Leute nicht mehr als zwei Dinge denken können. Mehr geht nicht in ein Spatzengehirn. (Brecht 26:152)

Brecht shows that he observed the world with more than simple Verstand, to use Hegel’s term, although Brecht is less concerned with rational concepts and more so with the changing material reality of the world. Like Hegel, though, Brecht eschews viewing things as fixed, even his early works address the world with a much more ambiguous approach than simple “Zweiteilung.”

As I have shown, the absence of das Geistige in Brecht creates a fissure between his thought and Hegel’s: while Hegel teaches the supersession of the contradictions inherent in all things through the inevitable self-actualization of Spirit, Brecht’s materialist worldview leaves no such possibility. Hegel’s Aufhebung preserves while negating, thereby maintaining essential qualities within each newly refined concept, but the contradictions presented in Brecht’s work are not superseded at all, but rather create a constant tension that can destroy individuals within them. We can see this in the oppositions within the plays examined here: in Trommeln in der Nacht, Kragler is in 182

jeopardy as he is torn between two conflicting narratives, and survives by rejecting both.

Im Dickicht der Städte shows the intersubjective relationship between self and other in a manner that denies the possibility of meaningful interaction, and can only result in the destruction of one of the combatants. And no reconciling supersession is achieved in the name/body dialectic determining identity in Mann ist Mann. Rather, one of these sides must be sacrificed for the other, and both outcomes are illustrated in the play: Galy Gay abandons his name to save his body, and Blody Five conversely sacrifices a part of his body to preserve his name.

The oppositions in these plays threaten to materially destroy individuals caught in the middle. When the metaphysical narrative is dismissed as illusory, the material

Fleischbank is all that remains; in Im Dickicht der Städte, this image also appears as

Garga, amazed at his opponent’s callousness, accuses Shlink: “Sie machen einen metaphysischen Kampf und hinterlassen eine Fleischerbank” (Brecht 1:467). Despite the metaphysical nature that Shlink wishes to see in their conflict, Garga maintains that the only tangible results are seen on the butcher’s block resulting from Shlink’s actions. The real victims, such as Garga’s sister Marie, are drawn against their will into the battle.

Their lives are destroyed and they are slaughtered at Shlink’s Fleischerbank. As it exists behind false notions of unified historical narrative in Trommeln in der Nacht, the slaughter-bench also comprises the bloody reality obscured through a metaphysical lens in Im Dickicht der Städte.

The changes that occur in Brecht’s Spirit-less world correspond with Hegel’s schlechte Unendlichkeit, in which change is only quantitative and directionless. In such a situation, opposing elements in a dialectical structure are never superseded, and remain in

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a constant relationship in which they are both repelled from and pulled to each other. In

Hegel’s words: “Es sind zwei so zusammengeknüpft, daß sie sich schlechthin fliehen; und indem sie sich fliehen, können sie sich nicht trennen, sondern sind in ihrer gegenseitigen Flucht verknüpft” (Hegel 5:264). Hegel argues that, as they cannot be sublated or reconciled, the oppositions in a schlechte Unendlichkeit are simply stuck with each other. This can be seen in Garga’s relationship with Shlink for the majority of Im

Dickicht der Städte; as Garga tries to separate himself from the Harpun and Stricke with which Shlink has the two connected to each other, he realizes that he is only allowing himself to be tied more firmly to his enemy. Thus trapped in the middle of continuous contradiction, Brecht’s world is a dangerous place requiring careful negotiation, as an early poetic fragment suggests:

Aber ich erhebe mich wild jeden Morgen Wasche mich begeistert, daß die Haut rot wird Und laufe in die Stadt. Was für eine Raubtierluft Ist es am Morgen zwischen den Häusern! Und das Geschäft! Zu turnen zwischen diesen hungrigen Beefsteaks! Hände zu schütteln wie Kirschbäume beir Ernte! (Brecht 13:203)

The lines relate, in a material language, the perils of existence for sentient “Beefsteaks” who are both potential victims and victors in the Raubtierluft of the city. Only through skillful maneuvering, which Brecht communicates here with the physical metaphor turnen, is he able to navigate this dangerous environment.

This finesse is an important aspect of the young Brecht’s materialism. His protagonists survive because they are able to move between or around the destructively contradictory conditions in the world. Andreas Kragler survives to go home with Anna because he refuses to accept history as a progressive teleology. He recognizes the 184

Fleischbank of history and escapes the historical narratives constructed by others.

Learning to let go of his idealized notions of selfhood and individuality, George Garga likewise survives by exiting his fight with Shlink, realizing that “Es ist nicht wichtig, der

Stärkere zu sein, sondern der Lebendige” (Brecht 1:493). And Galy Gay is able to survive a violent re-creation at the hands of the soldiers because he recognizes the danger of clinging to a predetermined notion of identity. In a journal entry made on May 28, 1921,

Brecht explains in more detail how Galgei, the precursor of Galy Gay, survives his experience in the fragment Galgei:

Der Vorwurf des »Galgei« hat etwas Barbarisches an sich. Es ist die Vision vom Fleischklotz, der maßlos wuchert, der […] jede Veränderung aushält, wie Wasser in jede Form fließt. Der barbarische und schamlose Triumph des sinnlosen Lebens, das in jede Richtung wuchert, jede Form benützt, keinen Vorbehalt macht noch duldet. Hier lebt der Esel, der gewillt ist, als Schwein weiterzuleben. (Brecht 26:223)

Galgei, according to Brecht’s journal, is an ass who chooses to live as a pig, because it enables his survival. Kragler willingly undergoes a similar change in order to continue to live, telling the workers, “Schmeißt Steine auf mich, hier stehe ich: ich kann das Hemd ausziehen für euch, aber den Hals hinhalten ans Messer, das will ich nicht. […] Ich bin kein Lamm mehr. Ich will nicht verrecken”; and later, “Der Dudelsack pfeift, die armen

Leute sterben im Zeitungsviertel, die Häuser fallen auf sie, der Morgen graut, sie liegen wie ersäufte Katzen auf dem Asphalt, ich bin ein Schwein und das Schwein geht heim”

(Brecht 1:225, 228-29). Kragler eagerly sheds his identity as a sacrificial lamb for that of a living pig, displaying a proclivity for and a proficiency at changing himself in order to adapt to unyielding external circumstances.

Brecht writes that Galgei survives by flowing, like water, in whatever form external conditions dictate. Beginning a few years later in Brecht’s career, flowing water 185

in this regard would be a model of resistance and endurance against seemingly permanent structures, such as the fascism of the Nazi regime. In the poem “Legende von der

Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration,” written in exile in 1938, the wisdom is imparted, “Daß das weiche Wasser in Bewegung / Mit der

Zeit den mächtigen Stein besiegt. / Du verstehst, das Harte unterliegt” (Brecht 12:33).

And already Im Dickicht der Städte, Garga considers the possibility of overcoming his opponent’s seeming imperviousness, telling Shlink: “Ich habe gelesen, daß die schwachen Wasser es mit ganzen Gebirgen aufnehmen” (Brecht 1:478). Whether a trickle or a great current, flowing water, which in itself is transient and yielding, eventually breaks down the apparent permanence of stone and earth as it carves and shapes landscapes. The river in this context acts as a fitting metaphor of the only permanence in the world, namely that of impermanence. This notion of survival by flowing, which developed early in Brecht’s career, would remain a focal point of his work for decades, as can be seen in later works like Buch der Wendungen, Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner,

Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder, Schweyk, and Leben des

Galilei, to name some. In a version of his play Leben des Galilei, for instance, the title character recants his discoveries in order to avoid execution, but this is done so that he will be able to continue his search for scientific knowledge. And Mutter Courage, as another example, repeatedly switches the flag on her wagon from Protestant to Catholic and vice versa, depending on her company, so that she can continue to survive the Thirty

Years War.

Flowing like water and taking on whatever shape is necessary to continue suggests a passivity in engaging material existence, and Brecht expresses this notion

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through use of the passive voice: the above journal entry from May 1921 closes with two lines, a question and an answer, about Galgei: “Die Frage: Lebt er denn? / Er wird gelebt” (Brecht 26:223). The transformation of “he lives” to “he is lived” reflects

Galgei’s ability to take on whatever form in necessary for his survival. In a journal entry from March 21, 1921, Brecht had already employed the same technique:

Man darf nicht gegen die Natur jammern. Der Gaurisankar57 ist nicht mein Feind, weil ich nicht hinaufkomme! Mitunter scheint mir der Impuls, mit dem ich das Leben fasse, schwach, und ich schwimme nur, weil ich im Fluß liege. Also werde ich geschwemmt. Aber dabei sehe ich viel. (Brecht 26:192)

Here is a description of a passive approach to life that, as Brecht admits, appears weak at times. But, he reasons, one cannot bemoan or change nature. Brecht has no animosity against nature like Hegel does.58 Rather than imposing reason and order upon nature,

Brecht passively accepts external circumstances, and swims only in the sense that he allows himself to be swept along by and as part of the Fluß der Dinge.

This passive mode of survival likely stems from Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, the fundamental text to religious and philosophical Taoism, to which the above cited 1938 poem refers. Brecht read the work in 1920, and this reading would lay a foundation for a serious, decades-long engagement with eastern thought (Tatlow, “Brecht’s East Asia”

354). 59 The book teaches wu-wei, a strategy of survival through non-action that is of central importance to Brecht. In his examination of wu-wei in Brecht’s later play

Schweyk, Weijia Li cites chapter 73 of the Tao Te Ching: “Those bold in daring will die;

57 A peak in the Himalayas over 7,000 meters high. 58 Again, I use the term “nature” to illustrate not nature itself, but Brecht and Hegel’s view of a natural state of things: for Hegel this is a pejorative reference to the world without the ideal progression of reason, and for Brecht it is used to indicate the natural order of material reality, fighting against which results in destruction, as seen in characters like Blody Five. 59 See Tatlow (1977) for the most in-depth discussion of East-Asian thought in Brecht. See also Detering (2008) for a specific treatment of Brecht and Laozi. 187

those whose braveness lies not in daring will survive.” Wu-wei can thus be interpreted, in

Li’s words, as “to dare not to dare” (Li 108), and its significance to the emphasis on material survival in the young Brecht’s work is apparent.60

Despite Brecht’s suspicion that it is a rather weak way of life, he maintains, like his Galilei later will, that this survival through passivity grants the advantage of being able to see much as a result of his material survival. He also writes of those who are determined to stand against the flow of things in that they “[jammern] gegen die Natur,” as well as the danger of such an unwillingness to maneuver through material contradiction. A journal entry from September 7, 1920 discusses this tendency:

Viele fühlen sich nur an den Dingen, ihrem Widerstand; ihr Tätigkeitsdrang ist Sucht, an ihre Grenzen zu kommen, ihr Maß auszufüllen; sie boxen die Dinge vor sich her, sie widerlegen sich selbst, um in dem benebelnden Taumel der Debatte sekundenlang von ihrer Existenz überzeugt sein zu können. (Brecht 26:159)

The common desire Brecht observes in these people reflects a need for self-definition that is not unlike Hegel’s dialectical movement from one concept to the next. An essential element of a concept for Hegel is that it contains within itself its own limit, or negation.

In order to be convinced of their selfhood, even if for a few seconds, such people are battered by the flow of things; they negate (widerlegen)61 themselves, but not in the positive/negative duality of Hegel’s Aufhebung which leads to greater knowledge. Rather, their negation leads to destruction, as we see in Shlink, who wanted to get “den

Geschmack des Todes auf die Zunge” (Brecht 1:493).

60 The young Brecht also drew from other sources of eastern thought: For instance, on the inside front cover of his Bible Brecht had pasted a picture of a statue of Buddha/Bodhisatva (Tatlow, “Alienation” 89). 61 A more accurate translation of widerlegen would be “refute” or “disprove.” Within the context of this study, however, I feel justified in taking some license in seeing “negate” in this term. 188

In contrast to the people who “boxen die Dinge vor sich her,” Brecht observes others whose approach to reality is healthier, in a material sense: “Wieder andere laufen wie Siebe herum: durch sie hindurch laufen die Dinge” (Brecht 26:159). Reemphasizing the importance of passivity against material reality in survival, this also illustrates why I believe Brecht’s emphasis on survival should not be mistaken for a form of vitalism or

Lebensphilosophie. Survival in Brecht is determined by adapting to material circumstances, and is thus a component of his materialism and not some form of vitalism.

In order to successfully negotiate the dangers of material contradiction, the young

Brecht writes, “Aber das Gesündeste ist doch einfach: lavieren” (Brecht 26:152).

Lavieren in this sense has multiple related meanings: used nautically, it means to tack, or to successfully sail against the wind by zigzagging back and forth at angles. It can also mean to skillfully overcome difficulties, or put more colloquially, to wriggle through. For the young Brecht, lavieren seems to indicate an adaptability necessary for surviving the material contradictions of existence, namely to take on this characteristic of the river, whose water flows by yielding and taking whatever shape is necessary to continue. The technique of lavieren allows the individual to endure and adapt to arbitrary change in material conditions.

On September 4, 1920, after his attendance of a performance of the “Großen deutschen Passion,” Brecht appears to have discovered in the passion play’s character of

Jesus an unlikely model for future protagonists like Galy Gay. Brecht describes the play’s figure of Christ as

ein ganz nabelloser Mensch, ein gelungenes Geschöpf, zwecklos, ohne Benötigung irgendeiner Rückensteifung (Pflichterfüllung oder so). Ein unverletzbarer Mensch weil widerstandslos. Ganz lavierend, biegsam, wolkengleich, voll von Sternhimmeln, milden Regen, Weisheiten, Fröhlichkeit, 189

Vertrauen, Möglichkeiten. Der gute Mensch in einem. Er kann nicht gestaltet werden im Drama: Er bietet keinen Widerstand. Er bietet keinem Ding ein eigenes Gesicht – es wäre ein Affront, ein Aufsichbeharren, ein Hochmut, ein Eingriff in den andern. (Brecht 26:154)

Brecht is impressed by the figure’s flexible, “lavierend” nature. This character is nabellos, suggesting no attachment to history, but also without Mittelpunkt, like Galy

Gay, and invulnerable because he does not resist. Brecht notes that such a figure cannot be created in drama, which is especially significant, as Brecht’s plays, where such a character is at home, are not conventionally dramatic. The nabellos character lives among the contradictions in things, but does not attempt to resist them; to do so, Brecht writes, would be an insistence of self (Aufsichbeharren) and encroachment into the other. This

Eingriff in den andern recalls, in Hegel’s dialectics, the definition of the self by moving into the other before returning in full circle with an increased knowledge. This progressive movement is impossible in Brecht’s world, and in this brutal material chaos, it is dangerous to bare “[einem] Ding ein eigenes Gesicht,” as Garga and Blody Five attempt in asserting their individuality and identity. It is instead healthier to be like those who “laufen wie Siebe herum,” such as the Salvation Army officer in Im Dickicht der

Städte, who allows his face, which he has “rein gehalten” for his entire life, to be spit into, in exchange for a new building for his organization’s operations (Brecht 1:453).

Brecht also notes that the figure of Christ in the passion play is “ohne Benötigung irgendeiner Rückensteifung,” indicating the willingness to bend and yield that makes him

“unverletzbar.” A stiff back is a bodily metaphor Brecht employs a number of times to signify the inability or unwillingness to flex, flow, and tack as necessary through material existence. In Mann ist Mann, Blody Five uses a similar metaphor while complaining about the behavior of his soldiers: “Das Exerzierreglement ist ein Buch voller 190

Schwächen, aber es ist das einzige, an das man sich als Mensch halten kann, weil es einem Rückgrat gibt und die Verantwortung vor Gott übernimmt” (Brecht 2:108).

Rückgrat is an important quality for the sergeant; it is so important, in fact, that his own metaphorical stiff back, or as Galy Gay puts it, his stubbornness (Hartnäckigkeit – more literally stiff-neckedness), prevents him from the act of lavieren, and this leads to his self- mutilation. That Blody Five refers to the written word to develop backbone in his soldiers is also a further instance of Brecht’s critique of language’s calcification of a constantly flowing material reality.

Building on these metaphors of Rückgrat and Rückensteifung, Brecht adds a further corporeal image to illustrate the inability to lavieren, which he represents with the disease tabes dorsalis.62 On the same night in which he attended the passion play, he also wrote in his journal:

Bei Tabes dorsalis (durch frühzeitige Ausschweifung verursacht) sieht man Leute mit eigentümlich stampfendem Schritt, auffällige Leute, groteske Leute, Leute mit einem verderblichen Hang zum Grotesken. Sie gehen dreimal so gründlich als normale Leute, sie stampfen auf, als hätten sie Eisengewichte an den Fußsohlen – aber sie haben nur kein Gefühl in den Fußsohlen; sie merken es nicht, wenn sie unten sind. […] es sind Charaktere, Entweder-Oder-Menschen, sie haben Haltung aus Angst vor ihren gläsernen Herzen. Kurz: es sind arme Leute. (Brecht 26:153)

In applying this bodily metaphor to the inability to lavieren, Brecht also shows his thought to be quite Hegelian in ways. For Hegel, speculative reason is able to see past the stasis of Verstand and on to the necessary contradictions in things, as well as their dialectical supersession. Reason, he writes, sees beyond “das bloß verständige Entweder-

Oder” (Hegel 8:205). The limited, fixed perspective of Verstand judges concepts on an

62 The condition tabes dorsalis is a “late form of syphilis marked by hardening of the dorsal columns of the spinal cord, shooting pains, emaciation, loss of muscular coordination, and disturbances of sensation and digestion” (“tabes dorsalis”). 191

either/or basis, failing to recognize the inherent contradictions, and thereby fails to progress dialectically. For Brecht, it appears, a strictly either/or approach to the world leads not only to stagnation, but potentially to destruction – the “Entweder-Oder

Menschen” with tabes dorsalis referred to in Brecht’s journal are “keine biegsamen

Leute.” He continues, “sie schlüpfen nicht, kuschen nicht, lavieren nicht. Sie treiben alles zum Äußersten” (Brecht 26:153).63 The metaphorical tabes dorsalis fuses their vertebrae, dooming them to a “bewundernswert gerade Haltung,” and rendering them, like the stiff- necked Blody Five, unable to maneuver safely between the contradictions in the material world.

Brecht calls such individuals “Charaktere,” as opposed to the above figure of

Christ, who, like many of Brecht’s non-dramatic figures “kann nicht gestaltet werden im

Drama.” The inflexible characters are those suited for traditional drama; they are the tragic heroes who cling stubbornly to their passions, their virtues, and their inner freedom, and whose failure to yield inevitably leads to their destruction. Hence Jesse’s comment in Mann ist Mann attains greater meaning within Brecht’s early work as a whole: “Mich kann man am Arsch lecken mit Charakterköpfen” (Brecht 2:117). In

Brecht’s non-dramatic theater, the anti-Charakterkopf emerges who can lavieren and turnen, able to abandon preconceived notions of self such as identity and opinion in order to survive a reality of material contradiction.

63 As tabes dorsalis is a progressed form of syphilis, perhaps this journal entry also provides us a context in which we can understand certain lines in the second scene of Trommeln in der Nacht, spoken by Frau Balicke. After Kragler’s entrance in the Picadillybar, an omnidirectional argument erupts, in which each participant stubbornly asserts his or her own perspective. In this chaos, Frau Balicke, “vor Anna, rasend,” shrieks, “Die sind ja alle krank! Die haben ja was! Syphilis! Syphilis! Alle haben die Syphilis!” (Brecht 1:201). 192

This principle is so central to Brecht’s thought that the writer observed its importance beyond mere literary or theosophical application. In July 1925, for example, he makes the observation in his journal:

Nach Genuß von etwas schwarzem Kaffee erscheinen auch die Eisenzementbauten in besserem Licht. Ich habe mit Erschrecken gesehen (auf einem Reklameprospekt einer amerikanischen Baufirma), daß diese Wolkenkratzer auch in dem Erdbeben von San Francisco stehenblieben. (Brecht 26:153)

As a dialectical thinker who must see flux in all things, Brecht writes that he was actually horrified at first by the apparent permanence of these skyscrapers. After his coffee and some contemplation, however, he reportedly found comfort in a new insight regarding these Eisenzementbauten:

Aber im Grund halte ich sie doch nach einigem Nachdenken für vergänglicher als etwa Bauernhütten. Die standen tausend Jahre lang, denn sie waren auswechselbar, verbrauchten sich rasch und wuchsen also wieder auf ohne Aufhebens. Es ist gut, daß mir dieser Gedanke zu Hilfe kam, denn ich betrachte diese langen und ruhmvollen Häuser mit großem Vergnügen. (Brecht 26:283)

The rigid skyscrapers, which withstand earthquakes, are ultimately more transient than farmhouses, precisely because the farmhouses, like Brecht’s characters, are much more easily rebuilt. In their transience, the Bauernhütten resemble water that yields to external circumstances, thereby outlasting more ostensibly permanent structures. Like the farmhouses, Brecht’s characters who survive do so by flexing with their circumstances and allowing themselves to be torn down and rebuilt, as with Galy Gay and Garga.

Characters like Blody Five and Shlink, who cannot let go of supposedly transcendent ideals like selfhood and Verständigung may be steadfast like the skyscrapers, but they cannot stand forever.

193

As Brecht’s materialism was informed and shaped through his engagement with

Marxist theory, his dialectics would also develop to allow for qualitative, as well as quantitative change. Naturally, as it remained materialist at its core, Brecht’s later dialectics envisioned progress primarily on a material level. In his early work, however, there seems to be no progress made even in the material world. Opposition is not resolved through sublation, as it is in Hegel’s ideal rational plane, where negation actually preserves; instead, contradiction is resolved strictly through material negation on the

Fleischbank. The result of contradiction in the material world is not teleological progression, but chaos – the chaos of the city, the chaos of history, the chaos of subjectivity colliding with objectivity – a chaos in which those who do not adapt to the arbitrary shifts in external circumstances can be mutilated or destroyed. In order to survive, Brecht’s work recommends that we be willing to abandon aspects of ourselves like identity, history, or opinion, because the stasis of such an attitude anchors us in the

Fluß der Dinge and prevents us from maneuvering within its flow. Like stone, these supposedly permanent components are worn down by the flow of the river, and the individual who cannot flex with reality’s movement will be dissolved.

The young Brecht thus displays both a materialistic and dialectical mode of thought that precedes his later materialistic dialectics. This study has demonstrated that

Brecht’s early work revolves around a distinct form of materialism, which would develop into his dialectical materialism after his engagement with Marx. Thus my study has illuminated in Brecht’s work both a pre-dialectical materialism and a pre-materialist dialectics, which have been emphasized by reading Brecht within the unlikely context of

Hegel’s idealism.

194

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