Clare Finburgh
Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies
TH343 European Political Drama
BERTOLT BRECHT (1898-1956), LEHRSTÜCKE (1926-33):
LINDBERGH’S FLIGHT (DER FLUG DER LINDBERGHS) (written and first performed at
Baden Baden Music Festival, 1929)
THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE (DIE AUSNAHME UND DIE REGEL) (written 1930, first
performed 1947, Paris)
The following notes provide background information to our seminar session. They are
intended as a starting point from which you can conduct further and more detailed
research. They include questions (in BLUE) that encourage you to explore themes and
issues in greater detail. If you refer to the notes in essays or examinations, please ensure
that you quote your source clearly.
SET TEXT: Bertolt Brecht, Lindbergh’s Flight and The Exception and the Rule, Collected Plays 3ii
(London: Methuen, 1997).
INTRODUCTION
 Lindbergh’s Flight (LF) and The Exception and the Rule (ER) are examples of B.’s Lehrstücke
– “learning plays”.
 B. wanted to effect a “radical transformation” of society and theatre. He wanted to change the
purpose of theatre: “The new purpose is called paedagogics” (“On Form and Subject-Matter”
(1929), in Brecht on Theatre, p. 30).
 Theatre should teach moral and political lessons through the participation of the audience in
the performance.
 This was the most experimental, radical, and innovative form of theatre that B. devised, and it
had a radical impact on 20th-century performance.
 In particular, B.’s theories pose as the foundations for modern-day theatre movements like
“creative collaboration”, “Popular Theatre” and “Theatre for Development”.
THE LEHRSTÜCK’S INTENDED AUDIENCE
 The Lehrstücke was a group of 9 plays written mainly between 1926 and 1933. The most
famous is The Measures Taken (Die Maβnahme).
 The historical and political context for these plays was the rise of Nazism in Germany.
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
B. said:
This sort of playing must be invented and performed in such a way that it is useful for the
state. It is not beauty that is decisive for the value of a sentence or a gesture or an action,
but whether it is useful for the state when the players speak a sentence, perform a gesture
or carry out an action (quoted by Douglas Kellner, “Brecht’s Marxist Aesthetic”, in Betty
Nance Weber and Hubert Heinen eds., Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary
Practice, p. 34).
 Why do you think B. and his colleagues felt there was an urgent need for theatre to
serve a purpose, to be “utilitarian” (sachlich) instead of purely for the purposes of
entertainment?
Villa Savoye, Poissy, France. This building, by famous Bauhaus architects Le Corbusier and
Pierre Jeanneret (1929), is plain, functional and utilitarian
George Grosz, Head of the Household (1922). Here, a simple, functional line drawing
caricatures the bourgeoisie.
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Rudolf Schlichter, Street Scene (1935). Another simple, functional drawing, that implies the
decadence and corruption of the middle classes.
 From the 18th century onwards, theatre was an upper- and middle-class pursuit. Many of B.’s
most famous plays, known as his Schaustücke – The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage, The
Caucasian Chalk Circle – had a paradoxical status: they made statements against bourgeois
capitalism and advocated socialist equality, but they were performed in bourgeois theatres, to
middle-class audiences.
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, La Loge (1893-94).
What kind of audience did B. intend for his Lehrstücke?
THE LEHRSTÜCK: DIDACTIC OR DIALECTICAL?
 Lehrstück is often translated into English as “didactic play”, “teaching play” or “learning play”.
B. writes:
The audience has got to be a good enough psychologist to make its own sense of the
material I put before it. All I can guarantee is the absolute correctness and authenticity of
what happens in my plays; I’m prepared to bank on my knowledge of human beings. But I
leave the maximum freedom of interpretation. The sense of my plays is immanent. You
have to fish it out for yourself (“Conversation with Bert Brecht” (1926), in Brecht on
Theatre, p. 14).
It is understood that the radical transformation of the theatre can’t be the result of some
artistic whim. It has simply to correspond to the whole radical transformation of the
mentality of our time … it is precisely theatre, art and literature which have to form the
‘ideological superstructure’ [Marxist phrase for the relationship in society between the
economy, and art, ideas and morality] for a solid, practical rearrangement of our age’s
way of life (“The Epic Theatre and its Difficulties” (1928), in Brecht on Theatre, p. 23).

With the learning-play, then, the stage begins to be didactic. (A word of which I, as a man
of many years of experience in the theatre, am not afraid). The theatre becomes a place
for philosophers, and for such philosophers as not only wish to explain the world but wish
to change it (“The German Drama: Pre-Hitler”, in Brecht on Theatre, p. 80).
Which translation of Lehrstück, in your opinion, is the most accurate, and why?
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY
 Erwin Piscator, a famous Communist dramaturgist and colleague of B.’s, explains how the idea
of an autonomous individual is no longer relevantin our contemporary world of globalised politics,
world wars and mass media:
The War finally buried bourgeois individualism under a hail of steel and a holocaust of fire.
Man, the individual, existing as an isolated being, independent (at least seemingly) of
social connections, revolving egocentrically around the concept of the self, in fact lies
buried beneath a marble slab inscribed “The Unknown Soldier”. … It is no longer the
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private, personal fate of the individual, but the times and the fate of the masses that are
the heroic factors in the new drama … Does the individual lose the attributes of his
personality in the process? Does he love, hate or suffer less than the heroes of former
generations? Certainly not, but all his emotional complexes are seen from a new angle. It
is no longer one man alone, insulated, a world in himself, who experiences his fate; that
man is inseparably bound up with the great political and economic factors of the times, and
Brecht once pointedly observed: “Every Chinese coolie is forced to take part in world
politics to earn his daily bread”. He is bound in all his utterances to the destiny of the age,
regardless of what his station in life might be. For us, man portrayed on the stage is
significant as a social function. It is not his relationship to himself, nor his relationship to
God, but his relationship to society which is central (“The Function of Man” (1926), in Erwin
Piscator: The Political Theatre, pp. 186, 187).
 What do B.’s plays tell us about the role of the individual, egotism, and the importance
of the community? Should individuals always submit to greater good of the community?
 How does he draw characters? Are they psychological and individualised, or more
stereotyped ? B. makes the following statement regarding characterisation?
The production has got to bring out the material incidents in a perfectly sober and matterof-fact way. Nowadays the play’s meaning is usually blurred by the fact that the actor plays
to the audience’s hearts. The figures portrayed are foisted on the audience and are
falsified in the process. Contrary to present custom they ought to be presented quite
coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for empathy; they are there to be
understood. Feelings are private and limited. Against that the reason is fairly
comprehensive and to be relied on (“Conversation with Bert Brecht” (1926), in Brecht on
Theatre, p. 15).
THE DRAMATIC STYLE OF THE LEHRSTÜCK: BRECHT’S RADICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
OF THEATRE
 B. felt that a specific dramatic form and style was necessary to present his pedagogical,
debate-provoking political theatre. For B., content and form of political theatre are indissociable:
Concern with subject and concern with form are complementary. Seen from inside the
theatre it appears that progress in theatrical technique is only progress when it helps to
realize the material (“Last Stage: Oedipus” (1929), in Brecht on Theatre, p. 25).
 How can one define and characterise B.’s dramatic style?
 B.’s dramatic style is often described as “dialectical”. What does this mean?
 B. was very influenced by east-Asian theatrical traditions. How did they impact on his
dramatic style? Think about scenography, acting style and vocal delivery.

Japanese Noh theatre, with minimal set and musicians on stage.
What role did the audience play in Lehrstücke?
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Audience participation in Lindbergh’s Flight
Lindbergh’s Flight performed in 1929. Musicians and participants all shared the stage.
This is B.’s opinion on Popular Theatre – theatre for the people – and the audience’s role:
Popular means: intelligible to the broad masses, adopting and enriching their forms of
expression / assuming their standpoint, confirming and correcting it / representing the most
progressive section of the people so that it can assume leadership, and therefore be
intelligible to other sections of the people as well / relating to traditions and developing
them / communicating to that portion of the people which strives for leadership the
achievements of the section that at present rules the nation (“Against Georg Lukács”, in
Aesthetics and Politics, p. 68).
 B. wished to narrow the gap between capitalist consumerism in theatre, and the
production of art, with his Lehrstücke. In what ways do you think he might have achieved
this?
 B. wanted to transform spectators from passive consumers into active participants.
How did he do this?
BRECHT’S RATIONALISM
 One criticism that could be levelled at B. is that he’s over-optimistic in his rationalism
and belief in progress. Why do you think this criticism is sometimes levelled at him?
CONCLUSION
 Theories behind B.’s Lehrstücke have had a radical influence on 20th- and 21st-century
performance:
 The idea of creative collaboration has been prevalent in theatre since the 1960s: the director
and actors devise a performance piece together, and don’t rely solely on the play-text of a
playwright.
 The idea of Popular Theatre was explored and implemented from the 1960s onwards in
Europe. Theatre companies went to factories, university campuses, schools, to perform plays on
human rights issues, union enfranchisement, etc.
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 Today, Theatre for Development is a type of educational form, particularly prevalent in Africa,
which travels to rural areas, schools, factories, etc., and includes local people in theatrical
performances in order to raise awareness of health issues like HIV/AIDS, and to explore matters
like conflict resolution. Participants act out scenarios to explore their own reactions and behaviour.
This is a particularly powerful means of education in isolated areas, and where people are illiterate.
 B. was a major influence on the development of all these theatrical innovations.
FURTHER READING
Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Aesthetics and
Politics (1977), (London, New York: Verso, 1980).
*Bertolt Brecht, “Conversation with Bert Brecht” (1926), “An Example of Paedagogics" (Notes to
Der Flug der Lindberghs)” (1929), in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic,
ed. and trans. John Willett, (London: Methuen, 1964).
Ronald Hayman, “Didactic Drama”, in Bertolt Brecht: The Plays (London: Heinemann, 1984), pp.
30-37.
Douglas Kellner, “Brecht’s Marxist Aesthetic”, in Betty Nance Weber and Hubert Heinen eds.,
Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1980), pp. 34-36.
Michael Morley, “The Marxist Plays”, in Brecht: A Study (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp. 41-45.
Roswitha Müller, “Learning for a new society: the Lehrstück”, in Peter Thomson and Glendyr
Sacks, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), pp. 79-95.
Betty Nance Weber and Hubert Heinen eds., Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980)
Erwin Piscator, “The Function of Man” (1926), in Erwin Piscator: The Political Theatre, trans. Hugh
Rorrison (London: Methuen, 1980).
Elizabeth Wright, Postmodern Brecht: A Re-Presentation (London, New York: Routledge, 1989),
pp. 11-23.
*Highly recommended.
When looking for materials in the university library, think laterally: search not only under
the author’s and text’s names, but also under key words related to the text. E.g. for Bertolt
Brecht, you could search under “German drama”; “twentieth-century German theatre”; “art
and war in Nazi Germany”; “political theatre”, etc. You can also conduct online searches for
materials using Literature Online and Jstor (available via the university library website –
click “Databases”). Again, think laterally if you don’t immediately find relevant resources.
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