Chapter 7 - Brecht and Germany

Summary

This chapter examines Bertolt Brecht’s complicated and fraught relationship with his homeland Germany. Brecht was always attracted by the adventure of foreign lands and was particularly fascinated by the cultures of the United States and East Asia. He was devastatingly critical of Germany and its cultural traditions, and during the Hitler dictatorship he was one of the fiercest intellectual opponents of Nazism, producing some of the most articulate and best-known literary and cultural attacks on Hitler’s Third Reich. Brecht also severely criticized what he, together with Friedrich Engels, referred to as “deutsche Misere” (German misery), i.e. the slavish fealty of German intellectuals to political power. However, during the Third Reich and later Brecht also insisted on the hope for a certain kind of German normality and nonjingoistic patriotism that recognized the qualities and achievements of other nations and peoples. For this reason, Brecht’s conception of a national feeling that is also open toward other cultures has the potential to be of use in today’s multicultural Germany.