2 - Brecht and Fascism

Summary

SUMMONED TO APPEAR before the Congress House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on 30 October 1947, Brecht was at one stage of the hearing interrogated about his 1930 “Lehrstück” Die Maßnahme (The Measures Taken). Substantial attention had been paid to the work in the FBI's file on Brecht. “Would you consider the play to be pro-Communist or anti-Communist” was the unsubtle opening question he was asked, “or would it take a neutral position regarding Communists?” “In this play,” Brecht replied, “I tried to express the feelings and ideas of the German workers who then fought against Hitler.” Some surprise was expressed by the chief HUAC investigator, Robert Stripling, upon hearing that German workers were already fighting fascism at that time. “Yes, yes, oh yes,” Brecht disingenuously explained, “that fight started in 1923.” Presumably, deflecting attention from his play's revolutionary Marxism-Leninism to the possibility that it was built around an antifascist theme might have seemed a shrewd counter-move on Brecht's part. Associating Die Maßnahme exclusively with the “feelings and ideas” of a German working class fighting against National Socialism can hardly have suited HUAC's agenda. Although political activist ideas are much in evidence in some scenes of the play, Die Maßnahme in fact treats class warfare without even obliquely referring to National Socialism. But then, as Gerd Koch has pointed out (BHB 4:129), Brecht was notoriously slow to grasp the importance of Hitler's movement.