Bertolt Brecht and the people (Volk)

Notes for a lecture at the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg, May 2008 (revised 4.6.08)
Bertolt Brecht and the people (Volk)
- Towards a sociology of folk and civil society
By Henning Eichberg, University of Southern Denmark
Contents
From „people‟ to population‟? – the problem
1. Volk as ideological contents
1.1. Agitprop and folk song– Volk as a term of appeal
1.2. Volksfront – „People‟ as a strategic term of unity
1.3. Against Nazism – Volk as a term of distance
1.4. GDR – an alternative concept of German we-building
1.5. 1953 – Volk as a term of revolt
2. Volk as intonation, rhythm, and practice
2.1. Folk tale and folk tune against the war
2.2. The cynical-materialistic turn
2.3. Identification and warm feeling
2.4. Teacher‟s attitude and popularizing rhythm
2.5. Fascination of Eastern European folk culture
2.6. The new Volkstümlichkeit
2.7. Between 1953 and 1968 – atmospheres of revolt
3. Brecht‟s Volk in the version of Heiner Müller
4. Folk and the body – Brecht and sport
5. Population? – People as substance or construction?
Sociology of Volk: movement, civil society, and living democracy
___________________________________
The notion of „the people‟ (folk, Volk) has become problematic through Nazi history and
should be substituted by „population as a „more neutral‟ word – this is what some sociologists
and intellectuals in (West) Germany have argued for. This argumentation was often founded
on some sentences of Bert Brecht, the most prominent German left-wing writer and devoted
communist of the twentieth century.
In Denmark, the anti-folk argumentation is much less present, and the words folk and
folkelig (popular) have a strong stand, both in culture and in politics. They were even
confirmed by the Danish anti-Nazi resistance under World War II. The painter Asger Jorn,
communist under the resistance against the German occupation and later an unorthodox
anarchist thinker, promoted and collected folk arts from the Nordic cultures and launched the
concept of democratic folkekunst.1
This understanding corresponded to the international left-wing use of the term
‟people‟, peuple, popolo, and Volk. Classical papers of the democratic, socialist and
communist left were titled “Volksstimme”, “Volkswille”, “Volkszeitung”, “Volksstaat”,
“Volkspresse” and “Volksfreund” or just “Das Volk” (which Karl Marx edited in London in
1859).
That is why there is good reason to have a closer look at Brecht‟s relation to Volk and
its political and poetic connotations. We look foremost at his lyrical and song work.
From ‘people’ to population’? – the problem
1
The central source of the people-population problem was Brecht‟s text Fünf Schwierigkeiten
beim Schreiben der Wahrheit, published in Paris 1938. It was illegally distributed as special
issue of: Unsere Zeit, publication of “Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller”. Point 5, under
the subtitle: „Die List, die Wahrheit unter vielen zu verbreiten“, was directed against the Nazi
misuse of language.
„Wer in unserer Zeit statt Volk Bevölkerung und statt Boden Landbesitz sagt unterstützt schon viele
Lügen nicht. Er nimmt den Wörtern ihre faule Mystik. Das Wort Volk besagt eine gewisse Einheitlichkeit und deutet auf gemeinsame Interessen hin, sollte also nur benutzt werden, wenn von mehreren
Völkern die Rede ist, da höchstens dann eine Gemeinsamkeit der Interessen vorstellbar ist. Die Bevölkerung eines Landstriches hat verschiedene, auch einander entgegengesetzte Interessen, und dies ist
eine Wahrheit, die unterdrückt wird. So unterstützt auch, der Boden sagt und die Aecker den Nasen und
Augen schildert, indem er von ihrem Erdgeruch und von ihrer Farbe spricht, die Lügen der Herrschenden; denn nicht auf die Fruchtbarkeit des Bodens kommt es an, noch auf die Liebe des Menschen zu
ihm, noch auf den Fleiss, sondern hauptsächlich auf den Getreidepreis und den Preis der Arbeit.“
Thus, Brecht proposed:
- The word „people‟ should be substituted by „population‟
- One should take into account the inner differentiation of the people
- especially their differences of interests
- Talking about Volk should be reduced to its plural, Völker, the many „peoples‟ of the
world.
Bertolt Brechts lyrical-poetical writing, placed on the radical left-wing, illustrated, indeed, his
life-long attempts to shun Volkstümelei, national-romantic populism. "Das Volk ist niemals
tümlich" – the people is never populist, folk is never loristic. This untranslatable Brecht joke
from another context was often linked with the question of population versus people, as
quoted above. However, at a closer regard, Brecht‟s work reveals some paradoxical
implications of this critical position – and a much broader and contradictory literary practice.
This may help to reach a clearer understanding of the term „people‟ today and its
qualities challenging the capitalist world order.
1. Volk as ideological contents
On the ideological surface of Brecht‟s literary work, one can search for Volk as contents. In
consequence of his communist engagement, Brecht tried to replace the term Volk by „more
correct‟ Marxist terms of social class like Prolet (proletarian), Arbeiter (worker) etc.
And yet, the word Volk was not absent in his work. On the contrary, Volk can be seen
as a through-going element of Brecht‟s poetical left-wing radicalism.2
1.1. Agitprop and folk song – Volk as a term of appeal
In Brecht‟s communist agitprop lyrics, Volk had its place as a term of appeal. Volk and the
plural Völker designated the social and political subjects, which were appealed to for
revolutionary action. Volk was here the people of class struggle and stood in sharp
confrontation with the representatives of power and war.
Solidaritätslied, 1931/51, melody by Hanns Eisler:
"1. Auf, ihr Völker dieser Erde!
Einigt euch in diesem Sinn...
2. Schwarzer, Weißer, Brauner, Gelber!
Endet ihre Schlächterein!
Reden erst die Völker selber,
werden sie schnell einig sein.
3. Unsre Herrn, wer sie auch seien,
2
Sehen unsre Zwietracht gern...
4. Proletarier aller Länder,
einigt euch, und ihr seid frei...
Vorwärts, und nicht vergessen
die Solidarität!"
The song had its premiere in "Rote Revue" of Junge Volksbühne in 1931 (which had the folk
in ts name). In the communist movie "Kuhle Wampe" 1932, the song was sung and whistled
by marching workers‟ sport people, and also by the Agitprop group "Das Rote Sprachrohr".
The solidarity song had millenarian undertones just like the “International”, which in the
German version also appealed to the folk:
“Völker, hört die Signale,
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!”
Eisler saw the revolutionary Kampflied (fighting song) realizing "alle Eigenschaften des
Volksliedes" (all qualities of the folk song), though it made – in contrast to other folk songs –
the class character explicit.
1.2. Volksfront – ‘People’ as a strategic term of unity
When the communists decided the strategy of the People‟s Front in the 1930s, Volk got a new
positive connotation. The „people‟ of the Popular Front where those who engaged themselves
and built a common front against fascism – in French front populaire, in German Volksfront.
Volk became a term of tactic and strategic unification.
Das Einheitsfrontlied, 1934 (Und weil der Mensch ein Mensch ist…) was for first
time published in Edition de la Féderation Musicale Populaire around 1935. Its context was
the decision of the KPD for the unity of all anti-fascists in 1934 and of the Comunist International for the formation of a Volksfront (People‟s front) in 1935, with the following
Volksfront congress in 1936. In spite of this change of strategy towards Volk and le populaire,
Brecht‟s song avoided the word „folk‟ itself and gave priority to the „front of unity‟. However,
the song addressed in a popular way the masses of the people, using the Chevy-Chase verse
form. It became popular in different languages. Brecht wrote about Eisler:
"seinen widerwillen gegen die vulgarität und primitivität der marschlieder hat er jetzt sublimiert, indem
er etwa das einheitsfrontlied symphonisch auflöst, dh als volkslied in strengen musikalischen Stücken
verwendet".
The tendency of the folk- and march song was, thus, directed against "diese scheusslichen
Hitlerlieder" (these awful Hitler songs). But Eisler expressed more generally "Ekel gegen das
Marschieren überhaupt" (disgust against the marching in general).
Brecht‟s – cautious – turn to the Volk of the Popular Front can be compared to what
the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre in 1937 did for the nation. Formerly as „wild‟ as Brecht
and coming from circles of the Surrealists, but in the time of the Popular Front functioning as
the official PCF-Stalinist philosopher, Lefebvre rehabilitated the nation against nationalism.3
1.3. Against Nazism – Volk as a term of distance
It was not without reservations that Brecht joined the new Stalinist strategy of Volksfront,
which could be understood as a sort of Volksgemeinschaft, people‟s community. Brecht kept
to his left-wing radikal and workerist class perspective.
This skeptic distance was affirmed by the experiences of Nazi politics and especially
World War II, when the Nazi expansion made the völkisch populist undertones of Volk and
Volksgemeinschaft more obvious.
3
The song Mein Bruder war ein Flieger, around 1937, music by Paul Dessau, referred
in an ironical way to the Nazi saying that "Unserm Volke fehlt's an Raum". The term of Volk
appeared as a sarcastic term of distance. It referred to a famous Nazi slogan, which was taken
from the title of a colonial novel from 1926, written by the novelist Hans Grimm,“Volk ohne
Raum”.
It is here, in the conflict with Nazi terminology, that the initially quoted text with its
differentiation between „people‟ and „population‟ had its historical place.
1.4. GDR – an alternative concept of German we-building
When GDR tried to build socialism on German ground, this was headed by keywords like
arbeitende Volksmassen, werktätiges Volk, Volksdemokratie, Volkskammer, Deutscher
Volkskongress, Volkssolidarität, Haus des Volkes, Volkskorrespondenten, Volkspolizei,
Volkssport etc. With that, the problem of Volksfront returned: Who was „the people‟? Should
left-wing radicalism in Germany join the attempt of building a people‟s community, now after
socialist premises? Brecht both joined the project and kept his distance. And it was this
distance that made GDR authorities distrust him as leftist “volksfremd”, „decadent‟ and
„formalistic‟. On the other hand, Brecht tried to re-install the class-related term of Volk (der
gemeine Mann) again in a sharp contrast against the great “Herren”, the masters, the lords,
the power.
Aufbaulied der FDJ, 1948, music by Paul Dessau, defined these non-people figures
as:
"Schieberpack ... und die Herren, die die Schieber schieben ...
Wanzen, Junker, Unternehmer, Potentat..."
Lied der Mutter Courage, additional verse from 1950, expressed the new relation to “us, the
people” and its historical depth, as seen in the bottom-up perspective of the seventeenth
century‟s common woman:
"Es kommt der Tag, da wird sich wenden
Das Blatt für uns, er ist nicht fern.
Da werden wir, das Volk, beenden
Den grossen Krieg der grossen Herrn.
Die Händler all mit ihren Bütteln
und ihrem Kriegs- und Totentanz
Sie wird auf ewig von sich schütteln
Die neue Welt des g'meinen Manns."
From this approach – the fundamental contradiction between Volk as the common people and
the agents of power – Brecht‟s Volk was turned towards an alternative understanding of the
question of the national folk, too. „We, the Germans‟ – „we, the German people among other
peoples‟ became the topic of his famous Kinderhymne (children‟s anthem):
“Anmut sparet nicht noch Mühe
Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand
Dass ein gutes Deutschland blühe
Wie ein andres gutes Land.
Und nicht über und nicht unter
Andern Völkern wolln wir sein
Von der See bis zu den Alpen
Von der Oder bis zum Rhein.
Dass die Völker nicht erbleichen
4
Wie vor einer Räuberin
Sondern ihre Hände reichen
Uns wie andern Völkern hin.
Und weil wir dies Land verbessern
Lieben und beschirmens wir‟s
Und das Liebste mag‟s uns scheinen
So wie andern Völkern ihrs.”
‟We‟ and ‟the people‟ constituted a read thread through this song, which could be regarded as
an alternative left-wing national anthem. „We, the people‟ was here explicitly related to‟we as
the other people‟, contrasting the fascist bands of brigands and robbers.
This was a starting point for a new German tradition of Volk ideology and research,
which produced famous reference works about popular culture, folk song etc.4 However, the
communist Volk focus of the 1950s was soon turned down by the official policy of the GDR –
launching the theory of the „two nations‟ – and was finally repressed by the West German
Anschluss of the GDR in 1989/90.
1.5. 1953 – Volk as a term of revolt
Short after the death of the Stalin, however, the wave of popular revolutionary unrest arrived
also at the GDR. The 17th of June 1953 saw a sharp confrontation between the people and the
power in the post-Stalin state. By the means of Soviet Russian tanks, the bureaucratic state
monopolism overthrew the popular rising and survived 35 more years.
Brecht commented the riots and their oppression by an ironic and somewhat cynical
poem (which he never published at that time):
"Die Lösung
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
liess der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbandes
in der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen,
auf denen zu lesen war, dass das Volk
das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückeroberen könne. Wäre es da
nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
löste das Volk auf und
wählte ein anderes?"
This raised in an ironical way the fundamental question of democracy: Who elects whom,
who has to trust whom? The verse repeated the dialectic relation between power and the
people from Brecht‟s earlier communist days, but now it had got a new historical dimension.
Now, under Stalinism, „folk‟ was linked to a new (and old) contradiction, which the
Brecht-pupil Heiner Müller later in 1989, on the top of the people‟s revolution in the GDR,
characterized as:
“Das Volk als Staatseigentum, eine Leibeigenschaft neuen Typs.” 5
2. Volk as intonation, rhythm, and practice
At a closer look, the relation of Brecht‟s writing to the term of Volk was, thus, much more
complex than one might think from out the dogmatic Marxist deduction and the recent (West)
German bourgeois reduction. The picture gets still more nuances when we go deeper into
Brecht‟s poetical form and technique, looking at his way of how to say things. On this level of
literary practice, Volk reveals as being more than an ideological program (or anti-program), it
appears as intonation – as different forms of intonation, atmosphere and swing.
5
2.1. Folk tale and folk tune against the war
The folk tone in Brecht‟s work found its expression already before he turned to orthodox
Marxism. Directly after World War I, motives and intonations from fairy tales and folk music
genres as ballad, Moritat and Bänkelsang delivered important inspirations for Brecht‟s work,
especially his anti-war poetry.
The song O Falladah, die du hangest, from 1919/32, music by Eisler, turned one of
the brothers Grimm‟s folk tales into a political direction. The horse Falladah breaks down in
the time of war and, becomes a victim of hungry people. Dying, Falladah experiences the
„cold‟ society, where people fight a murderous struggle of survival.
The song Legende vom toten Soldaten, 1922/26, used the Chevy-Chase verse form
from the popular tradition to show a grotesque picture of the dead soldier mobilized by the
Kaiser. Brecht commented the story by the remark: "Das Volk sagte: Man gräbt schon die
Toten aus für den Kriegsdienst" – saying that the people was the real author. The song was
directed against the völkische Heldenballade, the national-patriotic hero worship. That is why
the followers of the Hitler coup from 1923 placed this song high on their blacklist of what
was regarded as Verhöhnung des Frontsoldaten (derision of the front soldier).
The song Apfelböck oder Die Lilie auf dem Felde, 1920, used the intonation of the
popular folk ballad. As a Moritat and Bänkelsang, it told with some comical effects about a
case of murder.
2.2. The cynical-materialistic turn
During the 1920s, Brecht gave the popular intonation a both cynical and materialistic turn.
Both tendencies were interrelated.
Mahagonnygesänge, around 1920/25/29. In 1923, Brecht had experienced a Hitler
meeting in the Munich Zirkus Krone, together with his friend Arnolt Bronnen. (Bronnen was
a writer of „black expressionism‟, later joining the national-revolutionary circles, trying to
survive by some Nazi support, and after the war continuing as communist in Austria and in
GDR.) These impressions made Brecht associate the brown-shirts with the criminal gang of
Mahagonny. He combined the Nazigesindel (Nazi rabble) with the underworld of capitalist
America – fascism as gangsterism . This picture was a counter-picture, but fascinating at the
same time.
This can in some way be compared with boxing. And indeed, at the same time Brecht
dreamt of a scene served after the model of the boxing ring.6 This can be read in relation both
to the Hitlerist passion for boxing and violence, and to the American sport fashion. For the
Mahagonny songs and Dreigroschenoper, Brecht used folkloristic elements like folk dance,
drinking songs and honky-tonk intonation, the Sauf- und Kneipenlied.
The Moritat vom Mackie Messer, from 1928, was re-figured after the murder ballad
of the Augsburg "Plärrer" and other folk fairs, which Brecht liked to visit with passion.
Maybe, it was also inspired by a Russian folk song. It intonated the monotonous repetition of
the hurdy-gurdy, Drehorgel – and rose to a world hit in international pop music.
In this period, Brecht used jazz, shimmy, and tango, American gangster movies and
melodramas as models. Popular culture appeared as trivial, vulgar, Gassenhauer-like, and
thus not so far from entertainment industry. This atmosphere corresponded to the contents of
Brecht‟s cynical philosophy: People are materialistic.
The cynical attitude pointed, however, also back towards the intellectual himself, and
it became, indeed, subjected to some persiflage. Commenting Brecht‟s Lied vom SurabayaJohnny, 1925/29, after Rudyard Kipling, Erich Kästner wrote a parody in 1930:
"Du sprachst von Kolonien,
Johnny, sunny Johnny,
6
und kanntest nur Berlin...
Du versprachst mir, mich zu ermorden.
Du stachst mir schon in die Haut.
Es ist nichts draus geworden.
Du hast dich nicht getraut...
Du warst nicht englisch, Johnny.
Du warst nicht indisch, Johnny.
Kauft Kolonialwaren bei Bert Brecht!”
2.3. Identification and warm feeling
Side by side with the materialistic cynism, however, Brecht‟s folk intonation also showed an
element of identification, an intonation of warm feeling.
Famous became his love song Erinnerung an Marie A., from 1920. It had as models
both a "vulgäre Schlagermelodie" (vulgar pop song) and an anonymous old folk tune, the
Volksballade von Schön Anna. Its popular Volkston was characterized as going "fast an die
Grenze zum Kitsch", to trash (Schöne).
Also Brecht‟s Kinderlieder, from 1920/1932 ff, were part of this tendency. Eisler
described Brecht‟s children‟s songs as "ein einfacher, den breiten Massen brauchbarer Stil".
The tone of Volk as identification corresponded to the socialist tradition, which had
established the Volksbühne in Berlin, where the dramatic plays of Brecht were shown in 19271931. Volk, Kitsch and socialism were not so far from each other, and Brecht built his avantgarde poetry provocatively on this relation. Opening the question: Which Kitsch – and which
Volk?!
2.4. Teacher’s attitude and popularizing rhythm
After his period of expressionist ‟wildness‟, Brecht made a communist-didactical turn. He
began writing Lehrstücke according to agitprop, and these required again another approach to
the Volk. The „teaching pieces‟ or „educating plays‟ were means of teaching the popular
masses the Marxist truth of society. This task demanded certain educational qualities from the
text: It should be understandable, easy to recognize, simple, and follow folk patterns. The
writer knew the truth, but the truth had to be mediated, to be made popular, to be popularized.
The play Die Mutter, 1932, after Maxim Gorki, had its premiere at the oppositional
Junge Volksbühne. The pattern was taken from popular agitprop groups; Eisler cooperated
with "Das Rote Sprachrohr". The didactical-popular play adressed the audience by imperative
forms of appellation and the intimate "du".
Agitprop came, however, into a problematic relation to march music. On one hand,
march music had popular and mobilizing effects, which were used by communist marching
units in the streets, like Roter Frontkämpferbund. On the other hand, it reminded by its
undertones of the völkisch Nazi squads – and was sometimes directly copied from soldiers‟
songs. By marching and march music, education was linked to mobilization, in a literal sense.
Between the period of agitprop and the period of Popular Front, there were no sharp
cleavages, but rather a gliding what concerns the practice of intonation and the didactic of
folk education. What had changed was the millenarian expectation. The perspective was now
no longer directed towards the working people‟s Sowjetdeutschland (Soviet Germany), but
towards a more pragmatic coalition defending the working people against fascism.
However: The French surrealist Georges Bataille experienced Front Populaire in a
less defensive way:
“Comrades, we must say of the Popular Front that it was born on the Cours de Vincennes on the day of
February 12, 1934, when for the first time the masses of workers gathered to demonstrate the strength
of their opposition to fascism.
Most of us, comrades, were in the street that day and can recall the emotion that overcame us
7
when the Communist marchers, coming out of the rue des Pyrénées, turned into the Cours de Vincennes
and took up the entire width of the street: this massive group was preceded by a line of a hundred
workers, shoulder to shoulder and arm in arm, marching with unprecedented slowness and singing the
Internationale. Many among you, no doubt, can remember the huge old bald worker, with a reddish face
and heavy white moustache, who walked slowly, one step at a time, in front of this moving human wall,
holding high a red flag.”
“Badly formed political conceptions have set these people in motion, but the Popular Front
does not depend on the will of its founders to work exactly for their goals: The Popular Front is above
all now a movement, an agitation, a crucible in which formerly separated political forces meld with an
often tumultuous effervescence.”7
The description of masses in movement, song and flag, the street and emotions, “people in
motion” allow a more dynamic understanding of what was the „popular‟ in the Popular Front
and in the milieu where Brecht moved at that time.
2.5. Fascination of Eastern European folk culture
Under World War II, the folk musical inspirations from Eastern Europe obtained new
significance, delivering cultural elements to the art of resistance. Brecht and his colleagues
experimented somewhere between traditional folk tone and avant-garde music, which
corresponded to the graphic work of Asger Jorn in Denmark. The popular element was among
others found in folk dance.
Brecht‟s play Schweyk im zweiten Weltkrieg, from 1943/57, documented this process.
Eisler discerned between different pitches (Tonlagen) with certain social distinctions: music
of the "höhere Regionen" (higher regions), music of the Nazi clique with deformed opera in
Wagner style, and "Lieder des Volkes". Among these latter ones were folk dances, which one
could "behalten und sofort nachpfeifen" – polka, waltz, the Czech beseda as well as
pantomimes. Brecht was especially interested in Czech folk songs in English translation. The
music should have a cheerful tone and express what Eisler called the "Musik der Résistance".
The cynical perspective, corresponding to the materialistic interpretation, did not
disappear in this process. Das Lied vom Weib des Nazisoldaten discussed the question of war
profit: "was das volk aus dem krieg herausholen wird". As Brecht wrote himself, he had for
this song "gut vom Volkslied gelernt".
Mutter Courage, 1939/41/49, was another attempt to use popular traditions,
"Volksweise". Paul Dessau saw the challenge in the project
"Musikstücke zu erfinden, die, ausgehend vom Volkslied, das Volkslied erweitern, indem sie es durch
rhythmische und harmonische Mannigfaltigkeit bereichern".
The song Lied des Pfeifenpieter, from 1951, turned to dialect, the popular idiom, which
Brecht regarded as useful for the gestical quality of play. The song was based on a Dutch
Shanty, a folk tune noted in 1536.
Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, from 1940/48, was based on a Finnish source,
and Brecht called it himself a "Volksstück".
Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, from the 1920s/1948, based Chinese sources and had a
folk singer from a kolkhoz singing comments. Brecht used Slovak folk songs, old Estonian
folk tales, Georgian folklore and folk songs from Azerbaijan.
The later song Die haltbare Graugans, from 1946/47 was based on an American folk
song of the Black-American singer Leadbelly. Dessau wrote, that "das Lied deutet das
Vertrauen der amerikanischen Neger in die Unzerstörbarkeit des Negervolks aus", the
indistructibility of the negro people.
2.6. The new Volkstümlichkeit
8
The literary and musical work in the GDR confronted the artists with new demands from the
side of state and party. These were interested in ‟popular‟ tones, but this caused some
problems for the avant-garde who tried to follow the political line.
The song An die Nachgeborenen, was written in 1934/37, and Eisler composed a
tune in the dodecaphony which he had learned from his teacher Arnold Schönberg. But in the
1950s, a „volkstümliche Fassung“ was composed for the singer Ernst Busch, now including
popular, simple, even trivial elements.
"Die populäre Fassung ist selbstverständlich auch sehr lustig, und Busch singt sie auch grossartig. Aber
... Ich glaube, die populäre Fassung ist gar nicht viel populärer wie das; sie ist einfach einfacher zu
singen. Ich habe also dem Busch eine Chance gegeben, das in eine volkstümliche Art des Musizierens
zu zwingen – was auch einen eigentümlichen Widerspruch zwischen den hohen Versen von Brecht und
einer einfachen Melodie ergibt" (Eisler).
Neue Kinderlieder, 1950, showed how Brecht now worked with what was called the „new
popularity“.
"Neue Volkstümlichkeit ist ein Umschlagen des Neuen in das Einfache ... Sie ist das Gegenteil zum
Epigonentum, aber sie wird Tradition in sich haben und alle Künste des Handwerks" (Eisler).
Eisler composed "Neue deutsche Volkslieder" nach Johannes R. Becher – but he did not
experience this as an easy job. He wrote to Brecht in 1952:
"Auch ich bastel an Deinen Kinderliedern, die mir grosse Mühe machen. Es ist eben schwer ein passendes Arrangement zu machen, das weder vulgär noch verspielt oder gar tölpelhaft modernistisch ist. Ich
entwickle mich zum musikalischen Hypochonder, es ist zum schlechte Laune kriegen."
In this context, Brecht‟s Kinderkantate was written as an attempt to create an alternative
national anthem. And the song Die Pappel vom Karlsplatz played around the motive of the
tree, which was typical for the „popular‟ Brecht.
2.7. Between 1953 and 1968 – atmospheres of revolt
When people rose in revolt in 1953, Brecht had difficulties to tune into the atmosphere of
popular insurrection. His ironical poem remained an intellectual comment seen from outside –
and unpublished.
One decade later, Günter Grass made this conflict of climate a topic of his play Die
Plebejer proben den Aufstand (The plebeians rehearse the uprising, 1966). Brecht appeared
here as the great master, setting Shakespeare‟s Coriolan and the historical uprising from
ancient Rome on the scene. But as a boss and distanced intellectual, he is not able to leave his
theatrical preoccupation to support the East Berlin workers' uprising. After Brecht has argued
about the revolutionary processes, as he remembered them from his communist youth, a
collaborator concludes
“Du kennst das Volk nicht mehr.” (You do not know the people any longer.)8
This Grass interpretation can be read as a step into the direction of 1968, when a new
atmosphere of insurrection suddenly seized relevant parts of the young German intelligentsia.
Now, the ‟folk‟ returned in the form of Volksuniversität, Dem Volke dienen, Volksblatt,
Volxzeitung, Kultur und Volk, Internationale Solidarität mit den Volksbewegungen, La cause
du peuple, People‟s Health Movement etc.
In 1953, time had overhauled Bertolt Brecht. And in 1968, it also overhauled Günter
Grass himself.
9
3. Brecht’s Volk in the version of Heiner Müller
One of the few artists who paid special attention to Brecht‟s ‟popular‟ dimension and its
contradictions, was the dramatist and poet Heiner Müller. He described Brecht‟s position on
the radical left-wing standing against the Volksfront and in favour of revolutionary struggle,
even terrorism. When the Volksfront concept became obligatory in the GDR under the
heading of the all-parties Nationale Front, Brecht‟s Marxism would be suspected as subversive and dangerous. What the Communist party leader Walter Ulbricht called "sozialistische Menschengemeinschaft", Volk without class struggle, could remind Brecht of the Nazi
Volksgemeinschaft. And its political concept corresponded with the bourgeois understanding
of art, which began to dominate the cultural policy of the GDR.
This caused problems for the avant-garde (Brecht, Eisler, Dessau), which was now
officially under attack as being „formalistic‟. Under the heading of Kampf gegen den
Formalismus, the 5th plenum of the ZK of the SED in 1951 „unmasked‟ Brecht as „decadent‟
and „volksfremd‟. The only defence in this debate came from the actor Helene Weigel. She
quoted Brecht as having said that the controversial play "Die Mutter" had a folk song
structure and was based on the tradition of Volkslied.
And yet, there was another Brecht than the anti-Volk left-winger.
"Es gibt eine Linie, die bei Brecht durchgeht und die mich interessiert. Das ist die gotische Linie, das
Deutsche."9
A classiscal example was for Müller the song "O Falladah, die du hangest", which he
characterized as "sehr deutsch, sehr zerrissen, eben nicht heiter, beruhigt, römisch, klassisch,
chinesisch". Müller discovered in Brecht‟s work a deep conflict between different styles. One
Brecht was “Chinese“ or „Roman“, but this only in certain situations of life. The other was
“the Gothic line” starting with the play Baal. This Gothic Brecht was placed somewhere
between the young wild Bavarian expressionist with his preindustrial agrarian fascination and
his popular appeal – and the classic Brecht, under the brake of Stalinist (self-) censorship.
The German „popular‟ Brecht, as seen by Heiner Müller, was characterized by
Knittelvers, those rhyming couplets using a four-stress line:
"die 'deutschen' Knittelverse, die eine ungeheure Gewalt haben. Das ist so wie ein Anschluss an einen
Blutstrom, der durch die Literatur geht, seit dem Mittelalter, und das Mittelalter war die eigentlich
grosse deutsche Zeit. Im Mittelalter gab es eine deutsche Kultur. Danach zerfiel das in Regionen, dann
in private Provinzen. (...) Die Bauernkriege waren das grösste Unglück der deutschen Geschichte. Dann
kam der Dreissigjährige Krieg, und danach gab es diese Gesichter nicht mehr in Deutschland, Gesichter
wie bei Cranach, wie bei Dürer, so etwas wie einen Volkscharakter."10
After Middle Age, the Knittelvers reappeared in eighteenth century‟s Sturm und Drang, later
in the work of Heinrich von Kleist and Georg Büchner. "Der Knittelvers ist die einzige
deutsche Versform, die originäre deutsche Versform vor dem Blankvers."
And last but not least, a German Volk feature of Brecht was his Bosheit, his
maliciousness and fiendishness.
"Der Terrorismus ist die eigentliche Kraft, der Schrecken. Deswegen war der Hitler als Gegner ganz
wichtig für ihn, auch formal. Das war ein Idealfeind. Benjamin beschreibt das gut, diesen Grabenkampf
Brechts gegen Hitler. Das ist die gleiche Art von Bosheit, da war eine ungeheure Affinität. (...) Interessant ist Brecht eben nicht als Aufklärer."11
This was both a provoking observation and a deep remark from the side of an artist, who has
been called “the real Brecht pupil” (Theo Girshausen).
10
4. Folk and the body – Brecht and sport
Brecht had, thus, like other engaged intellectuals on the side of radical left-wing workerism, a
tendency to throw the concept of Volk out and to put the concept of class in instead. He really
tried. And yet, through the backdoor the Volk entered again – as critical element, as cynical
quotation, as warm feeling, as revolutionary subject, as object of education, as unit of
mobilization, as basis for the new socialist state... Folk was not just one – and not at all the
„race‟, which the Nazis referred to.
Brecht‟s persisting accomplishment was that he renewed the folk tone and transposed
it to the twentieth century. He cannot be used as an icon of anti-Volk argumentation. The antivolkstümliche cynic became the great folk singer of the century, the last before the rock
singers entered the scene.
This paradox has a methodological point. It means that Volk is not restricted to a
political or ideological contents. Volk describes a way of doing, of saying and singing. The
folk tone has a bodily dimension, as dance, march, verse form, as a way of singing or
humming with others, as swing and rhythm and intonation. ‟Folk‟ is not only an idea, i.e. a
construction on the level of superstructure, but it is something with the body, related to bodily
practice.
This may, finally, be illustrated by the relation of Brecht to sport. The sports arena
was for Brecht in the 1920s a model for the theatre of the future.
”Unsere Hoffnung gründet sich auf das Sportpublikum. Unser Auge schielt, verbergen wir es nicht,
nach diesen ungeheueren Zementtöpfen, gefüllt mit 15 000 Menschen aller Klassen und Gesichtsschnitte, dem klügsten und fairsten Publikum der Welt (...) Das alte Theater hingegen hat heute kein Gesicht
mehr.“12
„Also ich schlage vor, ihr (...) ladet die Leute in den Zirkus ein! Da dürfen sie in Hemdsärmeln dasitzen
und Wetten abschliessen. Und sie müssen nicht auf seelische Erschütterungen lauern und mit den
Zeitungen übereinstimmen, sondern sie schauen zu, wie es mit einem gut steht oder abwärts, wie er
unterdrückt wird oder wie er Triumphe feiert, und sie erinnern sich an ihre Kämpfe vorm Vormittag
(...).“13
Brecht‟s sportive utopia included, however, from the very beginning an inner contradiction.
Two models were competing in the world of sports, which he referred to. The one was the
competitive sport of performance, the ‟American‟ model. In those large “pots of concrete”,
the people were the “knowing and fair” spectators, paying and betting, but the people was also
reduced to spectatorship leaving the field of bodily activity to the few elite experts. Brecht
was fascinated by this. The other model was workers‟ sport, which Brecht described in his
movie “Kuhle Wampe”. This was an attempt to develop mass sport and mass gymnastics, less
competitive and rather showing „proletarian discipline‟ in rank and file. Here the people were
not only spectators, but in bodily movement themselves.
Both models had something in common: With the body in focus, by movement and
certain forms of non-verbal practice, they created collective identity and solidarity by doing.
It is here that Brecht met with the Danish left-winger folk artist and avant-garde
painter Asger Jorn.
„Volkskunst bedeutet nicht etwa, für das Volk zu singen, sondern das Volk zum Singen zu bringen.
Volkskunst besteht nicht darin, lediglich eine Kunst zu machen, die dem Volk gefällt,
sondern vielmehr das zum Blühen zu bringen, was als Kunst aus dem Volk wächst.
Die einzig demokratische und volkliche Kunsttendenz besteht darin,
aus dem Volk der Zuschauer ein Volk der Mitwirkenden zu machen.“ 14
5. Population? – People as substance or construction?
With these discoveries in mind we can turn back to the initial question of the relation between
11
people and population. Brecht‟s folk tones were not „population tones‟, and the People‟s
Front against fascism was not a „Population‟s Front‟. „People‟ cannot just be converted to
„population‟ without more or less grotesque implications. Karl Marx‟ paper Das Volk from
London could not be re-baptized as Die Bevölkerung (The Population), which would give no
meaning. If the socialist Volksparteien (people‟s parties), as they can be found in the Nordic
countries and in other parts of the world, would called Bevölkerungsparteien (population‟s
parties), this would be close to nonsense. And the socialist anthem “The International”, in its
German version, appealed to the peoples of the world, not to the populations.
People are a collective seen from inside – „we, the people‟ – and acting bottom-up,
and including the dead and the not-yet born human beings. Population is a unit seen from
outside, measurable, and administrated from above.
In this respect, the folk singer Bertolt Brecht was on the side of the people in action,
turning the administrated and measured population into something different, into an actor of
revolutionary quality. Making Bevölkerung into Volk.
Such observations around Brecht and his leftist contradictions require a deeper
theoretical approach. Because they question some assumptions dominating today about whom
„the people‟ are, the folk. During 200 years of its modern existence, the term „the people‟ has
become colonized by hegemonic theories. These have been mainly two: substantialism and
constructivism.
Traditionally, one has tried to define a given people by a certain substance, treating it
like a material object. The „substantial people‟ was objectified by criteria of „blood‟,
language, historical origin, territory, religion, customs, „national character‟ and inner psychic
disposition, state and constitution, common economy, community of communication or
whatever.
This is what the Nazi terminology of the German Volk referred to. And it was the
conflict with this substantialism that gave meaning to Brecht‟s opposition and his proposal to
replace „people‟ by „population‟.
From the beginning of the modern „folk‟, the substantial view of the folk was
opposed by interpretations of folk as an idea. This had in the early nineteenth century typical
connotations of elitist national idealism: „Great men build nations‟. But in recent times it was
revived by theories which subjectively understood themselves as critical. The „people‟ was
said to be nothing but a construction, created by the propagandistic actions of leaders or
intellectuals, typically nationalist ideologists. The assumption about the „constructed people‟
became in this way dominated by elitist connotations again: The „people‟ does not exist in
itself, nor does it find itself – it is made from above, as an “imagined community” or an
“invented tradition” (Hobsbawm, Anderson).
This constructivism was the background for the attention that some „post-national‟
sociologists paid to Brecht‟s „anti-people‟ remarks – and for their misreading. And it had
certain undertones of a conspiration theory.
If one tries, instead, a materialistic approach from body and movement culture, the
dual pattern of substance versus construction reveals as insufficient, and a third understanding
becomes visible: „People‟ is related to movement. “We are the people!” was a basic saying of
democracy since the time of the French Revolution.15 The call “We are the people!” did not
mean: We are the blood! nor: We are an idea! But people said: We are in motion! By
reclaiming the street and by festivity, people reclaimed their individual and interacting bodies
against ruling power elites.
But surely, this interpretation leaves the question open: Where are the people, when
there is no movement?
Sociology of Volk: movement, civil society, and living democracy
12
Who are or were Bert Brecht‟s people as movement? Brecht‟s Volk after World War I were
the people in movement against the war. Since the 1920s, the communists were „the
movement‟, with millenarian, utopian undertones. In the 1930s, the anti-fascist Popular Front
was an attempt to overthrow dictatorship by the united force of left-wing movements, and the
anti-Nazi resistance under World War II was a movement with other means and methods. The
building of a socialist GDR in the 1950s required a people‟s movement. But soon this
revealed as a simulation, an illusion, and people rose in revolt against Stalinist power in June
1953. In all these processes, social movements, political movements, cultural movements
were acting – not the population.
On this basis, the challenge for a sociology of the folk can be summed up.
(1.) Movement. The people are folk in motion.
(2.) Intonation. The population has no intonation, atmosphere or rhythm – the folk
has. Population can be quantified and measured, the people cannot. In contrast to the static
and statistic population, people are in dynamic movement – the concept designating both
bodily movement and historical change. The two terms tell different stories and cannot
substitute each other. When left-wing historians like E.P. Thompson told people‟s history in
Britain, they referred to this quality of movement and intonation – they did not write a
population history.16
The sociology of the people and the sociology of the body are in some or other way
linked to each other.
(3.) Contradiction. Folk is not one, but a multitude of contradicting life-worlds,
habitus and movements in plural. And even Brecht‟s people was full of contradictions,
changing through his life-time, changing with the up-and-down of contemporary popular
movements.
Das Volk ist niemals tümlich – Brecht‟s ironical and untranslatable saying has to be
re-read in the light of the complex relations between people and population, between the „one
people‟ and the inner diversity of folk. “The people are never populist” – “folk is never
loristic” – how ever this may be paraphrased, it does not imply a destruction of the Volk. On
the contrary: Brecht‟s saying reconstructed „the people‟ against their populist misunderstanding, „folk‟ was restored against its folkloristic and monolithic domestication. On the political
level, this can be compared to what Henri Lefebvre did when rehabilitating the nation against
nationalism.
(4.) The untranslatable. While the „nation‟ of Lefebvre, however, could be – more or
less – translated, the „folk‟ of Brecht could not, it could only be „done‟ and interpreted. (Even
if the differentiation of folk as ethnos, demos, and plebs helps to some partial translations)17.
The untranslatability of the Brecht joke affirms on a more basic level the presence of Volk in
bottom-up experiences of the people, which cannot be translated from language to language.
But they can be paraphrased in a spirit of international recognition and solidarity.
(5.) Civil society. Such observations are especially significant for future sociology.
They challenge towards studies in civil society, which is another word for „the people‟. The
term of „civil society‟ spread since the 1980s as contrasting the logics of the state and the
market. But it pointed back to Antonio Gramsci, the Communist contemporary of Brecht.18
„Civil society‟ designates the bottom-up self-organisation of the people in togetherness and
distinction, in repetition and change. In the Nordic countries, civil society is understood in
prolongation of the Scandinavian term of folk. The study of civil society contributes to the
sociology of democracy – democracy not to be understood as a certain superstructure of ideas
and institutions, but as a form of life in materialistic perspective.
The troubles about Brecht‟s „folk‟ terminology are, thus, not only historical and
retrospective. They obtain their actuality just in a time when living self-determination is on
the agenda. And when power tries to blur the fundamental differences between the top-down
13
administrative category of „population‟ and the bottom-up moving people of democracy.
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1936).
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14
1
Eichberg 1991.
If not quoted specifically, the following quotations are from Brecht 1984.
3
Lefebvre 1937.
4
Steinitz 1954/62, Jacobeit 1987.
5
Neues Deutschland, 1989, see Müller 1992: 417.
6
Brecht 1928: ”Die Krise des Sportes.” In: Brecht 1967, 8: 582-584. Brecht 1920 and 1926, see footnotes 11-12.
7
Bataille 1936/1985: 163 and 165.
8
Grass 1966: 28.
9
Müller 1992: 225. Also pp. 86-87.
10
Ibid. 226.
11
Ibid. 227.
12
Brecht 1926: „Mehr guten Sport.“ In: Brecht 1967, 7: 81-84.
13
Brecht 1920: „Das Theater als sportliche Anstalt.“ In: Brecht 1967: 47-49. Also pp. 60 and 76.
14
Jorn 1993.
15
Büchner 1835. Proudhon 1848.
16
Thompson 1968 and Samuel 1981.
17
See Korsgaard 2007.
18
Kebir 1991.
2
15