The Decision

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The Decision (Die Maßnahme), also known as The Measures Taken, is a Lehrstuck by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and the composer Hanns Eisler, it consists of eight sections in prose and unrhymed, irregular verse, with six major songs. A note to the text by all three collaborators describes it as an "attempt to use a didactic piece to make familiar an attitude of positive intervention."[1]

Contents

[edit] Plot Summary

The plot involves three comrades sent to organize the workers in China. They meet a young militant, who offers to join them as their guide. They are forced to hide their identities because organizing the workers is illegal. The three comrades instruct the young comrade to abnegate himself and to take advantage of opportunities. He is told to hide that he is a communist. Their mission must remain a secret. Should they be discovered the authorities will attack the organization, and the entire movement, not merely the lives of the four comrades, will be put in danger. Before entering China, they all put on masks in order to appear as Chinese. At the sight of the injustices and oppression, the young comrade is not able to contain his desires and acts immediately to correct the wrongs he see around him. As a result, he exposes himself by taking off his mask. When he does, he puts the entire mission and movement in danger. As a revolutionary uprising among the workers begins, the authorities pursue the young comrade. The comrades realize that they "can neither take him with us nor leave him"; if they help him to escape, they will be unable to help the uprising, and the needs of the many outweigh those of an individual; if he is left behind and caught, he will unwittingly betray the movement and then be shot. To save the movement, they conclude that their only solution is to shoot him. They ask him for his consent. The young comrade agrees to his fate in the interest of revolutionizing the world and in the interest of communism. He asks them to take him to the lime pit and to help him with his death. They shoot him and throw his body into the lime pit, so that the authorities can not identify him and put the uprising into danger. The play concludes with a chorus, to whom they have been telling their story, reassuring them that have made the correct decision.

"You've helped to disseminate / Marxism's teachings and the / ABC of Communism," (a reference to the popular book by Nikolai Bukharin) they assure them, and the revolution there has begun. They also mark the sacrifice and cost that the wider success entailed:

At the same time your report shows how much

Is needed if our world is to be altered.

– Bertolt Brecht, The Decision (scene eight).

[edit] A Short History

The Decision received its first theatrical production at the Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin, opening on the 10th December,1930.[1] A Brecht favorite, Ernst Busch, played the young comrade. The play was also produced in Moscow around 1934.[2]

Heiner Müller, a postmodern dramatist from the former East Germany who ran Brecht's Berliner Ensemble for a short time, reworked The Decision in his plays The Mission: Memory of a Revolution (1979) and Mauser (1970).

Both Brecht and Hanns Eisler always said this play was based on an old Japanese play but there is indication that the play may have been loosely based on the exploits of Eisler's brother, Gerhart Eisler, who had been sent to China in 1929-30. According to the testimony of Eisler's sister, Ruth Fischer, brother Gerhart "was sent to a mission in China with the GPU delegation to purge rebellious Chinese Communists....In these Chinese purges he behaved so cruelly and carried out the orders so well that the report about him in Berlin said that he was really the hangman of the rebellious Chinese Communists, who were sentenced by the decisions of Moscow."[3][4][5]

[edit] Brecht and his Critics

Brecht wrote the play in 1930. Since then, some critics have seen the play as an apologia for totalitarianism and mass murder while others have pointed out that it is a play about the tactics and techniques of clandestine agitation. [6] They have also pointed out that it is thematically similar to his 1926 poem, "Verwisch die Spuren", ("Cover Your Tracks"), that his friend Walter Benjamin saw as “an instruction for the illegal agent." [7] Elisabeth Hauptmann told controversial Brecht biographer John Fuegi that "she had written a substantial portion of it," but had forgotten to list herself as co-author.[8] Ruth Fischer, the sister of Hanns Eisler, denounced Brecht, as "The minstrel of the G.P.U.". She also viewed the play as a foreshadowing of the Stalinist purges and was among its harshest critics.[9]

In his journals, Brecht, however, relates how he had rejected explicitly that interpretation, referring the accusers to a closer scrutiny of the actual text; "[I] reject the interpretation that the subject is disciplinary murder by pointing out that it is a question of self-extinction", he writes, continuing: "I admit that the basis of my plays is marxist and state that plays, especially with an historical content, cannot be written intelligently in any other framework."[10]

[edit] Banning the Play

Brecht and his family banned the play from public performance but in fact the communists did not like the play and other governments banned it too.[11]

[edit] The Decision and the F.B.I.

The F.B.I. translated the play in the 1940s, and titled it The Disciplinary Measure. The report described it as promoting "Communist World Revolution by violent means."[12]

[edit] The Decision and the House Committee on Un-American Activities

Brecht appeared before the Committee on October 30, 1947. Only three members of the Committee and Robert E. Stripling, the committee's chief investigator were present. Brecht wanted no attorney, and unlike previous ten witnesses, was charming, friendly and seemingly cooperative.

The committee tried to trick him by reading some of his more revolutionary plays and poems, but he was able to dismiss those questions by saying they were bad translations.[13] Some of his answers were cleverly evasive, such as when he was asked about Comintern agent Grigory Kheifetz. At other points, they were untruthful, such as when he stated that he had never joined the Communist party. He had joined in 1930. [14] [15]

Brecht was asked specific questions about the The Decision. He said it was an adaption of an old Japanese religious play. At times, he seemed to be answering questions about the Japanese play and, at other times, he seemed to answering about Die Maßnahme. When asked if the play was about the murder of a Communist party member by his comrades "because it was in the best interest of the Communist party." He said no that "is not quite right." He told the committee that it was about his suicide, and compared it to the tradition of hari-kari in the Japanese play.

A month earlier, however, Hanns Eisler had said that the play was about the murder of a member of the Communist party by three other members. Eisler also said that the title of the play could be translated as The Disciplinary Measure.[16]

During his testimony, Brecht objected to this title, and argued that a more correct translation of the title would have been "Steps to Be Taken".[17]

The committee went lightly on him despite frequently interrupting his answers. At the end, Committee chairman J. Parnell Thomas said, "Thank you very much. You are a good example ..."[18] The next day, Brecht left for East Germany.

Brecht was embarrassed by Parnell's compliment but said the committee was not as bad as the Nazis. The committee let him smoke. The Nazis would never have let him do this. Brecht smoke a cigar during the hearings. He told Eric Bentley that this let him "manufacture pauses" between their questions and his answers.[19]

[edit] Examples of his Testimony About The Decision

Brecht: This play is the adaptation of an old religious Japanese play and is called Nō Play, and follows quite closely this old story which shows the devotion for an ideal until death.

Stripling: What was that ideal, Mr Brecht?

Brecht: The idea in the old play was a religious idea.

– From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht.[20]

The interrogators ask explicitly about the death of the young comrade:

Stripling: Now, Mr Brecht, will you tell the committee whether or not one of the characters in this play was murdered by his comrade because it was in the best interest of the party, of the Communist Party; is that true?

Brecht: No, it is not quite according to the story.

Stripling: Because he would not bow to discipline he was murdered by his comrades, isn't that true?

Brecht: No; it is not really in it. You will find when you read it carefully, like in the old Japanese play where other ideas were at stake, this young man who died was convinced that he had done damage to the mission he believed in and he agreed to that and he was about ready to die in order not to make greater such damage. So, he asks his comrades to help him, and all of them together help him to die. He jumps into an abyss and they lead him tenderly to that abyss, and that is the story.

Chairman: I gather from your remarks, from your answer, that he was just killed, he was not murdered?

Brecht: He wanted to die.

Chairman: So they killed him?

Brecht: No; they did not kill him - not in this story. He killed himself. They supported him, but of course they had told him it were better when he disappeared for him and them and the cause he also believed in.

– From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht.[21]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Willett (1959, 38-39).
  2. ^ Bertolt Brecht and the Politics of Secrecy by Eva Horn, p. 17
  3. ^ Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from the Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Selected and edited by Eric Bentley; First published in 1971 by Viking Press.
  4. ^ The Man from Moscow, Time Magazine, Monday, Feb.17, 1947
  5. ^ Hanns Eisler: A Miscellany, complied and edited by David Blake, Harwood Academic Publishers, (1995), p. 81
  6. ^ Bertolt Brecht and the Politics of Secrecy by Eva Horn, p. 7
  7. ^ Walter Benjamin, “Kommentare zu Gedichten von Brecht,” in Gesammelte Schriften II,vol. 2 (Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp 1991), 556.
  8. ^ Fuegi, John. 1987 Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, according to Plan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 71
  9. ^ Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948.
  10. ^ Brecht (1993, 372).
  11. ^ Otto Friedrich. 1995. Before the Deluge, A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. (HarperPrennial.) 321.
  12. ^ This translation can be found in Hans Eisler's F.B.I file and a summary in his own F.B.I file.
  13. ^ Lester Cole, Hollywood Red, 1981, (Ramparts Press) 285
  14. ^ Otto Friedrich. 1995. Before the Deluge, A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. (HarperPrennial.) 265
  15. ^ Lloyd Billingsley. Hollywood Party. 1998. (Prima Lifestyles). 197
  16. ^ Bertolt Brecht before the Committee on Un-American Activities: An Historical Encounter, Presented by Eric Bentley (Record Label: Folkways Records Originally released: 24-OCT-2006)
  17. ^ Bertolt Brecht before the Committee on Un-American Activities: An Historical Encounter, Presented by Eric Bentley (Record Label: Folkways Records Originally released: 24-OCT-2006)
  18. ^ Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, House Committee, 491-504
  19. ^ Bertolt Brecht before the Committee on Un-American Activities: An Historical Encounter, Presented by Eric Bentley (Record Label: Folkways Records Originally released: 24-OCT-2006)
  20. ^ Demetz (1962, 34).
  21. ^ Demetz (1962, 36).

[edit] Bibliography

  • Brecht, Bertolt. 1993. Journals 1934-1955. Trans. Hugh Rorrison. Ed. John Willett. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0415912822.
  • ---. 1997. The Decision. In Collected Plays: Three. Ed. and trans. John Willett. Brecht Collected Plays Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413704602. p.61-91.
  • Demetz, Peter, ed. 1962. "From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht: Hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, October 30, 1947." Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views Ser. Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0130817600. p.30-42.
  • Friedrich, Otto. 1995. Before the Deluge, A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. HarperPrennial. ISBN 0060926791.
  • Fuegi, John. 1987 Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, according to Plan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521282454
  • Müller, Heiner. 1995. The Mission. In Theatremachine. Ed. and trans. Marc von Henning. London and Boston: Faber. ISBN 0571175287. p.59-84.
  • Müller, Heiner. 2001. Mauser. In A Heiner Müller Reader: Plays | Poetry | Prose. Ed. and trans. Carl Weber. PAJ Books Ser. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801865786. p.93-107.
  • Thomson, Peter. 1994. "Brecht's Lives". In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 22-39).
  • Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466.
  • Willett, John. 1959. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. London: Methuen. ISBN 041334360X.

[edit] Works and Articles Cited

v • d • e
The Plays of Bertolt Brecht

Baal • Drums in the Night • The Beggar • A Wedding • Driving Out a Devil • Lux in Tenebris • The Catch • In The Jungle of Cities • Edward II • Man Equals Man • Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer • The Elephant Calf • Little Mahagonny • The Threepenny Opera • The Flight across the Ocean • The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent • Happy End • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny • Der Jasager / Der Neinsager • The Decision • Saint Joan of the Stockyards • The Exception and the Rule • The Mother • Kuhle Wampe • The Seven Deadly Sins • Round Heads and Pointed Heads • The Horatians and the Curiatians • Fear and Misery of the Third Reich • Señora Carrar's Rifles • Life of Galileo • How Much Is Your Iron? • Dansen • Mother Courage and Her Children • The Trial of Lucullus • Mr Puntila and his Man Matti • The Good Person of Szechwan • The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui • Hangmen Also Die! • The Visions of Simone Machard • The Duchess of Malfi • Schweyk in the Second World War • The Caucasian Chalk Circle • Antigone • The Days of the Commune • The Tutor • Die Verurteilung des Lukullus • Report from Herrnburg • Coriolanus • Joan of Arc • Turandot • Don Juan • Trumpets and Drums
Languages