LEFT-WING INTELLECTUALS IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC:
Many thrilled to the slogans of the Comintern but
sensed at some point that the USSR stifled creativity
Joseph
Vissarionovich
Jugashvili,
code-named
“Stalin”
(1878-1953),
photographed with
Lenin in 1922
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940): Ukrainian Jew,
cosmopolitan intellectual, founder of the Red Army
Stalin exiled Trotsky
in 1927 and then
rewrote history
(retouched photo
of Lenin addressing
Red Army recruits
in Red Square in
May 1920)
“We will smite the
kulak who agitates for
reducing the cultivated
area”
(USSR, 1930):
In 1929 Stalin
launched a Five-Year
Plan to collectivize
agriculture and
accelerate
industrialization
“Religion is poison.
Safeguard the
children”
(USSR, 1930):
Stalin suppressed
the Uniate Catholic
Church of Ukraine
“Imperialists cannot
stop the triumphal
march of the FiveYear Plan”
(USSR, 1930)
“RAISE HIGHER THE BANNER OF LENINISM, THE BANNER OF THE
INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION” (N. Kochergin, 1932)
THE COMINTERN RECRUITED MANY ARTISTS AND WRITERS TO
SUPPORT A “HELP RUSSIA” ANTI-FAMINE CAMPAIGN IN 1921/22
(poster by Käthe Kollwitz)
But George Grosz became
disillusioned when he met Soviet
leaders on a tour in 1922:
“Many acted like living, red-bound
brochures and were proud of it.
Naturally they sought, since it was
supposed to be the time of the
masses, to suppress entirely their
little individuality, and would have
preferred to have faces of gray
cardboard with red numbers on
them instead of names.”
George Grosz,
Manhattan
(1934):
He settled in New York
in 1932 and came to
love America
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the son of a Berlin Jewish
businessman who became a Marxist philosopher and literary
critic. He travelled to Moscow in 1927 to pursue a career but
learned that the avant-garde was being shut down….
Kazimir Malevich
(1870-1935),
“Suprematist
Composition”
1916:
He received
academic
promotion under
Lenin and Trotsky
Kazimir Malevich
"The Mower"
(1930):
An unsuccessful
attempt to adapt to
Stalinist standards
Bruno Voigt
(1912-1988),
“Anti-War
Demonstration”
(1932):
Art in the style of
“Socialist Realism”
imposed by Stalin as
Comintern policy in 1932
Bruno Voigt,
“Attack”
(1932):
The crowd demands
“Jobs and Bread”
Bruno Voigt,
“Street Fight”
(1932)
Bruno Voigt,
“Capitalism Has Reached
Its Zenith!”
(1932)
John Heartfield, “Fathers and Sons,” 1924
(born Helmut Herzfelde in Berlin, 1891; name change in 1916)
John Heartfield, “War and Corpses/ The Last Hope of the Rich”
(1932): According to the Comintern, big business could see no way
out of the Great Depression except an arms race….
Heartfield,
“His Majesty Adolf:
I will lead you to
glorious slimes!” (1932)
[by changing a Z to PL,
the Kaiser’s promise of
“glorious times”
becomes a promise of
bankruptcy].
John Heartfield,
“The True Meaning of the
Hitler Greeting.
‘Millions Stand Behind Me!’
A Small Man Asks for
Large Gifts”
(1932).
Heartfield toured the USSR
in 1931/32 but fled to
Czechoslovakia in 1933 and
England in 1938
Rudolf Schlichter,
“Portrait of Bert Brecht”
(1926)
1898: Born into a bourgeois
Augsburg family; his Protestant
mother taught him the Bible
1917/18: Evaded war service by
enrolling for medical study
1920: Drums in the Night, set in
Berlin in January 1919
1922: In the Jungle of the Cities
(inspired by Upton Sinclair)
1926: Man Equals Man (inspired
by Kipling)
1927: Brecht collaborates with
Erwin Piscator, Kurt Weill, and
the dissident Communist theorist
Karl Korsch
Act II of DRUMS IN THE NIGHT (Berlin premier, 1922): The
denizens of a bar are wrapped up in their private miseries as the
Communists attempt their uprising in January 1919
In the Jungle of the Cities (Chicago production from 2010):
“You are in Chicago in 1912. You are about to witness an inexplicable wrestling
match between two men and observe the downfall of a family that has moved
from the prairies to the jungle of the big city. Don’t worry your heads about
the motives for the fight, concentrate on the stakes. Judge impartially the
technique of the contenders, and keep your eyes fixed on the finish.”
Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) was an educated
bourgeois, pacifist combat veteran, and KPD
member. His “New Playhouse” in Berlin
deployed slideshows, film, elevators, etc.
Brecht, Grosz, and
Heartfield all
worked here in
1927/28 to help
create a
“political theater”
Deluge integrated film clips
of insurrectionary crowds
into the live action
(dir. Piscator, premier on
February 20, 1926)
Piscator designed a tiered
stage to mirror the class
divisions of German society
Rasputin, the Romanovs,
the War, and the People
that Arose Against Them,
directed by Piscator,
co-written by Brecht;
premier on
November 10, 1927.
Brecht found such overt
political didacticism
tiresome, but he began to
study the writings of
Marx and Lenin with
Karl Korsch.
“The Piscator Stage,”
caricature in
Simplicissimus,
January 1928.
“Piscator, the priest
of the new deus ex
machina, whips the
revolutionary spirit
forward with the cry,
‘Make money!’”
BRECHT, photographed in 1927
Design by Caspar Neher for the last scene of THREEPENNY OPERA
Stars of the original stage production of The Threepenny Opera,
Berlin, 1928: Harald Paulsen as Macheath, Roma Bahn as Polly,
and Erich Ponto as Peachum, the Beggar King
Will Mackie Messer
hang???
(Tiger Brown at right):
The KPD reviewer
declared that this play
contained “not a vestige
of modern social or
political satire.”
Brecht sought to educate Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries with The
Measures Taken (Dec. 1930), but it too failed to please the KPD
BRECHT’S SAINT JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS (1931)
Only with The Mother (January 1932)
did Brecht win applause from the Comintern
In 1933 Brecht fled to Denmark, and
to the USA in 1941.
1947: Subpoenaed by the House
Unamerican Activities Committee
1949: Return to Communist East
Berlin, which built him a theater and
promised him freedom.
Brecht and Helene Weigel
in the May Day parade,
East Berlin, 1954