| The Decision | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Bertolt Brecht |
| Date premiered | 10 December 1930 |
| Original language | German |
| Genre | Lehrstück |
The Decision (Die Maßnahme), also known as The Measures Taken, is a Lehrstück 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 |
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).
The Decision received its first theatrical production at the Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin, opening on the 10 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).
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.[3] 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." [4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
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."[7]
Brecht and his family banned the play from public performance, but, in fact, the Soviet government did not like the play and other governments banned it as well.[8] Performances resumed in 1997 with Klaus Emmerich's historically rigorous staging at the Berliner Ensemble.[9]
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."[10]
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 the 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.[11] Some of his answers were cleverly evasive, such as when he was asked about Comintern agent Grigory Kheifetz. At one point, he stated that he had never joined the Communist party. Despite Brecht's extensive support for Communism, most authors agree that he really hadn't officially joined the party, nor did he ever do that in his life,[12][13][14][15][16] although it has also been claimed in the literature that he had joined in 1930.[17][18]
Brecht was asked specific questions about The Decision. He said it was an adaption of an old Japanese religious play. 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 that that was "not quite" right, pointing out that the member's death is voluntary, so it is basically an assisted suicide rather than a murder. He compared that to the tradition of hara-kiri in the Japanese play.
The interrogators suggested that the title of the play (German Die Maßnahme) could be translated as "The Disciplinary Measure".[19] 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".[19]
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 ..."[20] 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 smoked a cigar during the hearings. He told Eric Bentley that this let him "manufacture pauses" between their questions and his answers.[19]
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. This young people —
Stripling: Did it have to do with the Communist Party?
Brecht: Yes.
Stripling: And discipline within the Communist Party?
Brecht: Yes, yes, it is a new play, an adaptation.
— From the Testimony of Berthold Brecht.[21]
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.[22]