Dictators as gangsters … a cut-out of Hitler adorns a manuscript of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Brecht’s allegory about the Führer’s path to power. Photograph: Courtesy the Bertolt Brecht Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (The Guardian, 12/06/2024)
Therefore learn how to see and not to gape. To act instead of talking all day long. The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him here his kind belong. But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from still is going strong.
Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
We return to Bertolt Brecht, in our effort to trace the contours, the ways and means, of fascism. In the brilliant essay that follows, not only does Brecht bring forth the “theatricality” of fascism, but with the same stroke, he criticises an array of art, ethics and politics centred on “empathy”; on the blind identification with those individuals who pretend to “dramatically” speak not for us, but as us.
In the essay that follows, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is not coincidental.
THOMAS We were talking recently about how one might achieve a sort of theatre in which the representations of human social existence might give the spectators the key by which to master their own social problems. We were looking for an ordinary event from everyday life, which wouldn’t normally be described as theatrical because it isn’t played out amongst artists and doesn’t pursue any artistic purpose, but which nonetheless involves the use of artistic, theatrical methods, and is at the same time a demonstration designed to give the spectators the key with which to master an unclear situation. We discovered a little scene at a street corner, in which the eyewitness of a traffic accident demonstrated the behaviour of those involved to passers-by. In the mode of acting employed by our street-side demonstrator we foregrounded some features which might be of value for our theatre. Now let us consider another sort of theatrical presentation, again one which is neither by artists nor serves any artistic purpose, but which is staged in a thousand variations and repetitions on the streets and in assembly halls. Let us consider the theatricality of the way in which the Fascists present themselves.
KARL I suppose these reflections are intended also to serve the theatre, and I must confess, that makes me uncomfortable. How am I to turn my mind to the theatre when life is so terrible? Living, by which I mean to say staying alive, has itself become an art these days; who can then afford to reflect how art is to be kept alive? In times like these even the sentences I have just spoken begin to seem cynical.
THOMAS I understand your sensibilities. But we had agreed that the theatre we envisage should be able to further precisely that art of living. When we speak of the theatricality of the oppressors, of course we speak as experts in the theatrical, but we speak also as the oppressed. In view of the misery which man is inflicting on mankind, we have to speak of the services which our art may render to the rapists. What we intend, by means of our art, is to wage war on the exploitation of man by man. In that case we must investigate precisely what means we employ; and we may best observe these means where they are not used by professional artists for artistic purposes. After all, we ourselves don’t wish to employ our professional artistry just for artistic purposes.
KARL Do you mean to say the theatre does not only imitate events from social life, but also the manner in which such events themselves are imitated ‘in life’?
THOMAS Yes, that’s precisely what I mean. And now I suggest we investigate how the oppressors of our times make theatre – not in their theatres, but on the streets and in the assembly halls, as well as in their private homes, diplomatic offices and conference rooms. And by ‘making theatre’ we understand this: that they behave not just as their immediate purposes demand, but rather that they act consciously in the eyes of the world, and try to impose their immediate tasks and purposes on a public, as if they were reasonable and exemplary.
KARL Let’s anticipate the little dramatisations which are so characteristic of National Socialism. I mean how they lend a theatrical expression to otherwise unremarkable circumstances. The Reichstag Fire is a classical example. Here the point is to dramatise the danger of Communism and develop it into an ‘effect’. The 30th of July offers another example: when the Fuhrer, in person, entrapped a few homosexuals in flagrante, and a scarcely developed political countermovement was elaborated into a real, acute and three-dimensional conspiracy. But from there we can move on to the more immediately stagy. There is no doubt that the Fascists behave in an exceptionally theatrical manner. They have a particular feel for it. They speak themselves of Regie [direction, stage management], and they’ve adopted a whole range of effects directly from the theatre, the lights and the music, the choruses and the surprise twists. An actor told me years ago that Hitler even took lessons with Fritz Basil, an actor at the court theatre in Munich, not only in elocution but also in comportment. He learned, for example, how to step out on stage, the hero’s walk, for which you straighten your knee and set the whole sole of your foot on the ground in order to appear more majestic. And he learned the most impressive way to cross his arms, and studied how to be casual. There’s something ridiculous about that, isn’t there?
THOMAS I wouldn’t say that. It’s true, it constitutes an attempt to dupe the people, since they’re supposed to think that a strange behaviour which has been laboriously learned comes naturally to a great man, that it’s a born expression of his greatness and his exceptional nature. Besides, he was imitating an actor who, when he himself appeared on stage, provoked amusement amongst the younger spectators because of his affectation and pomposity. That may well be ridiculous, but the man’s general intention, to improve himself by copying others, is not ridiculous – even if his choice of models was. Think of the countless perfectly sensible young people, not in the least inclined to deceit, who attempted, at around the same time, to imitate screen heroes. Here too there were poorly chosen models, but there were good models too. I propose we don’t linger too long over Hitler’s attempt to acquire an impressive, ‘star’- like appearance, but that we turn instead to a consideration of the theatrical elements which he, and the other heroes of his type, didn’t borrow directly from the theatre, even if the theatre of our time does use them. I would like to investigate the representative nature of his behaviour.
KARL Yes, let’s do that. Let’s observe him as he makes his entrance as the great example to us all! The very model of the German, the inspiration for our youth!
THOMAS I didn’t just mean that. That aspect is obvious. That is still a part of being impressive. There’s the Siegfried model, slightly modified to incorporate a certain ‘man-of-the-world’ air, you can most easily make a study of it in those photographs where he’s bowing (to Hindenburg or Mussolini, or to some high-society ladies). The role he constructs (the friend of music, connoisseur of great German music; the unknown soldier of the world war; the joyful donor to political causes, the conscientious citizen of the Volk; the dignified mourner, with stiff upper lip) is an individual one. In contrast to the Roman dictator he is clearly disdainful of physical labour. (The former likes to present himself building walls, ploughing fields, driving, fencing.) Our man prefers the attitude of inspecting. There is a remarkable photograph of his arrival in Italy (Venice). Mussolini is evidently showing him the town. The house painter is playing the part of the preoccupied, hard-working travelling businessman, who happens to be, at the same time, a fineconnoisseurofarchitecture, incidentally also the fact that he has to avoid wearing a soft hat, sun or no sun. On a visit to the aged and infirm Hindenburg in Neudeck the camera captures him playing the jovial house guest. His host and his host’s grandson, in contrast, are unable to forget the camera, and seem out of place in the scene. Of course, he has many functions to satisfy, and he doesn’t always manage to shape his role in a truly unified way. The representation of the scene in which the Fuhrer contributes his few pennies to the Winter Aid Programme is more successful. He has been given a couple of notes, and one of them is folded so it can be pushed into the collecting tin. Yet he manages to show a Gestus which is perfectly petty bourgeois: he seems to be fishing a coin out of a purse. At a commemoration of the Battle of Tannenberg he is the only one who manages to express an even half-genuine respect for the fallen of 1914, even though he has to carry a top hat in his lap! That is exemplary in the best sense. But let’s go further. Let us observe, above all, the manner in which he acts on the occasion of his great speeches in preparation, or justification, of his acts of butchery. You understand, we must observe him where he’s concerned to induce a public to empathise with him and to say: yes, that’s how we would have acted too. In short, where he presents himself as an ordinary human being and seeks to convince the public that his actions are simply human, and to persuade them, quite naturally, to applaud him. That makes for very interesting theatre.
KARL Indeed, and it is very different from the theatre of the witness of our accident at the street corner.
THOMAS Very different. You could even say, it’s very different precisely in that it has much more to do with the theatre which we normally get to see on the stage. For there it is again, that empathy of the public for the protagonists that we tend to think of as the most essential product of art. There’s that feeling of being swept along, that transformation of the spectators into a unified mass, which we demand of art.
KARL I have to say, this turn in your argument alarms me. It seems you want to associate the production of empathy, come what may, with the performances of that dubious man, just in order to bring empathy into disrepute. It is, of course, correct that he proceeds from that sort of empathy, but the same could be said of some outstanding people.
THOMAS That’s quite right, but if empathy is getting disreputable surely he, rather than I, must be made responsible. We won’t get much further if we allow our observations to be ruled by the fear of what might follow from them. Let us study fearlessly (or even in fright) how the subject of our deliberations makes use of the artistic means of empathy! Let us see what artistic turns he employs! Consider, for example, how he speaks in public! In the course of speeches which are meant to pave the way for, or to explain, state actions, he submits himself, in order to facilitate empathy, to intensely personal feelings, feelings which are readily accessible to the private individual. In themselves, speeches by politicians are not impulsive, spontaneous outpourings. They are much revised and reworked from all angles and prepared for a particular date. When he steps up to the microphone, the orator feels neither especially courageous, nor especially angry nor especially triumphant, nor anything else. So generally the speaker is content to read out his speech in a serious tone of voice, to lend his arguments a certain urgency, and so forth. The house painter and his like proceed quite differently. First of all, by all sorts of tricks, the expectation of the audience – for the people must become an audience – is aroused and provoked. Word gets around that no one can predict what the speaker will say. For he doesn’t speak in the name of the people, and he doesn’t say simply what the people have to say. He’s an individual, a hero in the drama, and it’s his purpose to make the people (or rather the audience) say what he says. Or more precisely, feel what he feels. So it all depends on the fact that he himself feels, intensely. And in order to feel intensely the house painter speaks as a private individual, to private individuals. He picks fights with individuals, foreign ministers or politicians. He gives the impression that he’s involved in some personal dispute with these people, because of the way they are. He loses himself in furious tirades like some Homeric hero, insists on his innocence, implies that he can only barely stop himself leaping at his opponent’s throat, addresses him directly, flings challenges at him, ridicules him, and so on. In all this, his audience follow him emotionally, they participate in the speaker’s triumphs, adopt his attitudes. Without doubt, the house painter (as some call him, since he can only daub whitewash over the cracks in a building that’s ripe for demolition) has taken up a theatrical method, by which he can persuade his audience to follow him almost blindly. He induces everyone to abandon their own points of view, and to adopt his, the protagonist’s viewpoint, to forget their own interests, and to pursue his, the protagonist’s interests. He involves his audience in himself, implicates them in his movements, lets them participate’ in his troubles and his triumphs, and dissuades them from any criticism, even from a fleeting glance at their surroundings from their own viewpoint.
KARL You mean, he doesn’t work with arguments.
THOMAS That’s not what I mean. He uses arguments all the time. His pose is as ‘one who argues’. He loves to hang a ‘because’ on the end of some sentence which is actually perfectly complete as it stands and which he’s just uttered as if it were an incontrovertible, incontestable truth, and then to pause, and then produce reasons. It’s like he’s tossing a handful of ‘reasons why’ in the wake of his assertions, reasons which he just happens to have to hand. Some of what he tacks on after such a ‘because’ is not really a reason at all, it’s just labelled a reason by the gestic emphasis it’s given; sometimes he promises, to himself, as it were, in his excitement, three reasons why, or five, or six, evidently without having first worked out precisely how many he actually has. So he discovers the number he’s promised, or not, as the case may be, sometimes it’s one too few, or one too many. What matters to him is to induce in the empathising public the attitude of ‘one who argues’, one who employs arguments, or more exactly, one who looks for arguments.
KARL And what does he achieve by this?
THOMAS He manages to make his behaviour take on the appearance of being determined, so to speak, by natural law. He just is as he is – and everyone else (empathising with him) is as he is. He cannot be otherwise than he has to be – and everyone else can’t be otherwise either, they have to be as they are. His followers even say of him that he follows his path like a sleepwalker, or as if he had already passed that way before. So he takes on the appearance of a natural phenomenon. To resist him is simply unnatural, and in the long run impossible. He has weaknesses, but only because mankind, of whom he is the outstanding representative, has weaknesses, and they are the weaknesses that everyone shares, unavoidable weaknesses. ‘I am simply your voice,’ he likes to maintain, ‘the commands that issue from me are nothing else but the commands you call out to yourselves.’
KARL Of course, I can appreciate the danger of empathising with him; he is, after all, leading the people on a dangerous path. But it seems to me that is not your only point, that it may be dangerous to empathise with a protagonist (as it is dangerous to empathise with this one), but rather that it must be dangerous, quite irrespective of whether he’s leading you on a dangerous path or not. That’s right, isn’t it?
THOMAS Indeed. If only for the reason that the establishment of empathy makes it impossible for the person who falls under its spell to recognise whether the path is dangerous or not.
KARL So when does the establishment of empathy not work? After all, we know that there are great masses of people who observe the house painter distantly and coldly and don’t for one moment adopt his standpoint.
THOMAS He must fail to establish empathy with those whose interests he perpetually damages, as long as they are able continually to call to mind the whole of reality, in all its variety, and to see him as just a small part of it.
KARL And only they are able truly to perceive the laws by which his appearance and his behaviour are governed?
THOMAS Yes.
KARL So, they don’t empathise with him, because they recognise that their interests are different from his. But surely they might well empathise with someone else who could represent their interests?
THOMAS Of course they might do that. But then they would be equally unable to perceive the laws which govern the appearance and behaviour of this other person. You might say: but he is leading them on the right path, how can it be dangerous to follow him blindly? But that would be a completely mistaken understanding of a ‘right path’. A right path can never be followed on a harness. The life of man does not consist in going somewhere, but in that he walks at all. The concept of the right path is less appropriate than the right way of walking. The most amazing capacity of mankind is criticism, it has added most to the goods of happiness, improved life the most. Whoever empathises with someone, and does so completely, relinquishes criticism both of the object of their empathy and of themselves. Instead of awakening, they sleepwalk. Instead of doing something, they let something be done with them. They are those with whom others live and from whom others live, not those who truly live themselves. They have only the illusion that they are living, in reality they are vegetating. They are, so to speak, passively lived. That is why the theatrical presentation offered by Fascism is not a good example of theatre, not if we expect of it representations which might give the spectators the key by which to master the problems of social existence.
KARL It is hard to agree with this conclusion. It adds up to a rejection of a practice of theatre which has been exercised for thousands of years.
THOMAS So do you suppose the practice of the house painter is new?
[‘Uber die Theatralik des Faschismus’, in the Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe 22/561-9]
Corrected typescript from May 1939. According to notes by Margarete Steffin, Brecht and Hermann Greid (an actor and director who was also in exile) discussed Verfremdung and the artistic tradition in Lidingö at this time. The topic also crops up in the plans for The Messingkauf Dialogues at around the same time, but this piece was never reworked for the Messingkauf. The reference to the ‘everyday event’ at the beginning is to The Streetscene, where Brecht develops ideas of the epic by means of a practical example {Brecht on Theatre, pp. 121-9).
The (true) anecdote about Hitlers ‘acting’ lessons is wonderfully exploited in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, scene 6. The Battle of Tannenberg was one of the early German successes which became the occasion for yearly celebrations. There are numerous photographs of Hitler, giving speeches, visiting Mussolini, and so on, amongst Brecht’s papers. On Brecht’s disparaging description of Hitler as ‘the house painter’, compare note to no. 35.
A satirical nickname for Hitler, in reference to his one-time artistic pretensions, was ‘der Anstreicher’, the house painter. Brecht makes frequent allusions to this and to Hitler’s ability to ‘paint over the cracks’. A programme of repairs was indeed part of the early Nazi work creation programme.
(Source: Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Art and Politics, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles, eds., Bloomsbury, 2003.)
Bertolt Brecht: On the Theatricality of Fascism (1939)
Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.
To act instead of talking all day long.
The world was almost won by such an ape!
The nations put him here his kind belong.
But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape –
The womb he crawled from still is going strong.
Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
We return to Bertolt Brecht, in our effort to trace the contours, the ways and means, of fascism. In the brilliant essay that follows, not only does Brecht bring forth the “theatricality” of fascism, but with the same stroke, he criticises an array of art, ethics and politics centred on “empathy”; on the blind identification with those individuals who pretend to “dramatically” speak not for us, but as us.
In the essay that follows, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is not coincidental.
THOMAS We were talking recently about how one might achieve a sort of theatre in which the representations of human social existence might give the spectators the key by which to master their own social problems. We were looking for an ordinary event from everyday life, which wouldn’t normally be described as theatrical because it isn’t played out amongst artists and doesn’t pursue any artistic purpose, but which nonetheless involves the use of artistic, theatrical methods, and is at the same time a demonstration designed to give the spectators the key with which to master an unclear situation. We discovered a little scene at a street corner, in which the eyewitness of a traffic accident demonstrated the behaviour of those involved to passers-by. In the mode of acting employed by our street-side demonstrator we foregrounded some features which might be of value for our theatre. Now let us consider another sort of theatrical presentation, again one which is neither by artists nor serves any artistic purpose, but which is staged in a thousand variations and repetitions on the streets and in assembly halls. Let us consider the theatricality of the way in which the Fascists present themselves.
KARL I suppose these reflections are intended also to serve the theatre, and I must confess, that makes me uncomfortable. How am I to turn my mind to the theatre when life is so terrible? Living, by which I mean to say staying alive, has itself become an art these days; who can then afford to reflect how art is to be kept alive? In times like these even the sentences I have just spoken begin to seem cynical.
THOMAS I understand your sensibilities. But we had agreed that the theatre we envisage should be able to further precisely that art of living. When we speak of the theatricality of the oppressors, of course we speak as experts in the theatrical, but we speak also as the oppressed. In view of the misery which man is inflicting on mankind, we have to speak of the services which our art may render to the rapists. What we intend, by means of our art, is to wage war on the exploitation of man by man. In that case we must investigate precisely what means we employ; and we may best observe these means where they are not used by professional artists for artistic purposes. After all, we ourselves don’t wish to employ our professional artistry just for artistic purposes.
KARL Do you mean to say the theatre does not only imitate events from social life, but also the manner in which such events themselves are imitated ‘in life’?
THOMAS Yes, that’s precisely what I mean. And now I suggest we investigate how the oppressors of our times make theatre – not in their theatres, but on the streets and in the assembly halls, as well as in their private homes, diplomatic offices and conference rooms. And by ‘making theatre’ we understand this: that they behave not just as their immediate purposes demand, but rather that they act consciously in the eyes of the world, and try to impose their immediate tasks and purposes on a public, as if they were reasonable and exemplary.
KARL Let’s anticipate the little dramatisations which are so characteristic of National Socialism. I mean how they lend a theatrical expression to otherwise unremarkable circumstances. The Reichstag Fire is a classical example. Here the point is to dramatise the danger of Communism and develop it into an ‘effect’. The 30th of July offers another example: when the Fuhrer, in person, entrapped a few homosexuals in flagrante, and a scarcely developed political countermovement was elaborated into a real, acute and three-dimensional conspiracy. But from there we can move on to the more immediately stagy. There is no doubt that the Fascists behave in an exceptionally theatrical manner. They have a particular feel for it. They speak themselves of Regie [direction, stage management], and they’ve adopted a whole range of effects directly from the theatre, the lights and the music, the choruses and the surprise twists. An actor told me years ago that Hitler even took lessons with Fritz Basil, an actor at the court theatre in Munich, not only in elocution but also in comportment. He learned, for example, how to step out on stage, the hero’s walk, for which you straighten your knee and set the whole sole of your foot on the ground in order to appear more majestic. And he learned the most impressive way to cross his arms, and studied how to be casual. There’s something ridiculous about that, isn’t there?
THOMAS I wouldn’t say that. It’s true, it constitutes an attempt to dupe the people, since they’re supposed to think that a strange behaviour which has been laboriously learned comes naturally to a great man, that it’s a born expression of his greatness and his exceptional nature. Besides, he was imitating an actor who, when he himself appeared on stage, provoked amusement amongst the younger spectators because of his affectation and pomposity. That may well be ridiculous, but the man’s general intention, to improve himself by copying others, is not ridiculous – even if his choice of models was. Think of the countless perfectly sensible young people, not in the least inclined to deceit, who attempted, at around the same time, to imitate screen heroes. Here too there were poorly chosen models, but there were good models too. I propose we don’t linger too long over Hitler’s attempt to acquire an impressive, ‘star’- like appearance, but that we turn instead to a consideration of the theatrical elements which he, and the other heroes of his type, didn’t borrow directly from the theatre, even if the theatre of our time does use them. I would like to investigate the representative nature of his behaviour.
KARL Yes, let’s do that. Let’s observe him as he makes his entrance as the great example to us all! The very model of the German, the inspiration for our youth!
THOMAS I didn’t just mean that. That aspect is obvious. That is still a part of being impressive. There’s the Siegfried model, slightly modified to incorporate a certain ‘man-of-the-world’ air, you can most easily make a study of it in those photographs where he’s bowing (to Hindenburg or Mussolini, or to some high-society ladies). The role he constructs (the friend of music, connoisseur of great German music; the unknown soldier of the world war; the joyful donor to political causes, the conscientious citizen of the Volk; the dignified mourner, with stiff upper lip) is an individual one. In contrast to the Roman dictator he is clearly disdainful of physical labour. (The former likes to present himself building walls, ploughing fields, driving, fencing.) Our man prefers the attitude of inspecting. There is a remarkable photograph of his arrival in Italy (Venice). Mussolini is evidently showing him the town. The house painter is playing the part of the preoccupied, hard-working travelling businessman, who happens to be, at the same time, a fine connoisseur of architecture, incidentally also the fact that he has to avoid wearing a soft hat, sun or no sun. On a visit to the aged and infirm Hindenburg in Neudeck the camera captures him playing the jovial house guest. His host and his host’s grandson, in contrast, are unable to forget the camera, and seem out of place in the scene. Of course, he has many functions to satisfy, and he doesn’t always manage to shape his role in a truly unified way. The representation of the scene in which the Fuhrer contributes his few pennies to the Winter Aid Programme is more successful. He has been given a couple of notes, and one of them is folded so it can be pushed into the collecting tin. Yet he manages to show a Gestus which is perfectly petty bourgeois: he seems to be fishing a coin out of a purse. At a commemoration of the Battle of Tannenberg he is the only one who manages to express an even half-genuine respect for the fallen of 1914, even though he has to carry a top hat in his lap! That is exemplary in the best sense. But let’s go further. Let us observe, above all, the manner in which he acts on the occasion of his great speeches in preparation, or justification, of his acts of butchery. You understand, we must observe him where he’s concerned to induce a public to empathise with him and to say: yes, that’s how we would have acted too. In short, where he presents himself as an ordinary human being and seeks to convince the public that his actions are simply human, and to persuade them, quite naturally, to applaud him. That makes for very interesting theatre.
KARL Indeed, and it is very different from the theatre of the witness of our accident at the street corner.
THOMAS Very different. You could even say, it’s very different precisely in that it has much more to do with the theatre which we normally get to see on the stage. For there it is again, that empathy of the public for the protagonists that we tend to think of as the most essential product of art. There’s that feeling of being swept along, that transformation of the spectators into a unified mass, which we demand of art.
KARL I have to say, this turn in your argument alarms me. It seems you want to associate the production of empathy, come what may, with the performances of that dubious man, just in order to bring empathy into disrepute. It is, of course, correct that he proceeds from that sort of empathy, but the same could be said of some outstanding people.
THOMAS That’s quite right, but if empathy is getting disreputable surely he, rather than I, must be made responsible. We won’t get much further if we allow our observations to be ruled by the fear of what might follow from them. Let us study fearlessly (or even in fright) how the subject of our deliberations makes use of the artistic means of empathy! Let us see what artistic turns he employs! Consider, for example, how he speaks in public! In the course of speeches which are meant to pave the way for, or to explain, state actions, he submits himself, in order to facilitate empathy, to intensely personal feelings, feelings which are readily accessible to the private individual. In themselves, speeches by politicians are not impulsive, spontaneous outpourings. They are much revised and reworked from all angles and prepared for a particular date. When he steps up to the microphone, the orator feels neither especially courageous, nor especially angry nor especially triumphant, nor anything else. So generally the speaker is content to read out his speech in a serious tone of voice, to lend his arguments a certain urgency, and so forth. The house painter and his like proceed quite differently. First of all, by all sorts of tricks, the expectation of the audience – for the people must become an audience – is aroused and provoked. Word gets around that no one can predict what the speaker will say. For he doesn’t speak in the name of the people, and he doesn’t say simply what the people have to say. He’s an individual, a hero in the drama, and it’s his purpose to make the people (or rather the audience) say what he says. Or more precisely, feel what he feels. So it all depends on the fact that he himself feels, intensely. And in order to feel intensely the house painter speaks as a private individual, to private individuals. He picks fights with individuals, foreign ministers or politicians. He gives the impression that he’s involved in some personal dispute with these people, because of the way they are. He loses himself in furious tirades like some Homeric hero, insists on his innocence, implies that he can only barely stop himself leaping at his opponent’s throat, addresses him directly, flings challenges at him, ridicules him, and so on. In all this, his audience follow him emotionally, they participate in the speaker’s triumphs, adopt his attitudes. Without doubt, the house painter (as some call him, since he can only daub whitewash over the cracks in a building that’s ripe for demolition) has taken up a theatrical method, by which he can persuade his audience to follow him almost blindly. He induces everyone to abandon their own points of view, and to adopt his, the protagonist’s viewpoint, to forget their own interests, and to pursue his, the protagonist’s interests. He involves his audience in himself, implicates them in his movements, lets them participate’ in his troubles and his triumphs, and dissuades them from any criticism, even from a fleeting glance at their surroundings from their own viewpoint.
KARL You mean, he doesn’t work with arguments.
THOMAS That’s not what I mean. He uses arguments all the time. His pose is as ‘one who argues’. He loves to hang a ‘because’ on the end of some sentence which is actually perfectly complete as it stands and which he’s just uttered as if it were an incontrovertible, incontestable truth, and then to pause, and then produce reasons. It’s like he’s tossing a handful of ‘reasons why’ in the wake of his assertions, reasons which he just happens to have to hand. Some of what he tacks on after such a ‘because’ is not really a reason at all, it’s just labelled a reason by the gestic emphasis it’s given; sometimes he promises, to himself, as it were, in his excitement, three reasons why, or five, or six, evidently without having first worked out precisely how many he actually has. So he discovers the number he’s promised, or not, as the case may be, sometimes it’s one too few, or one too many. What matters to him is to induce in the empathising public the attitude of ‘one who argues’, one who employs arguments, or more exactly, one who looks for arguments.
KARL And what does he achieve by this?
THOMAS He manages to make his behaviour take on the appearance of being determined, so to speak, by natural law. He just is as he is – and everyone else (empathising with him) is as he is. He cannot be otherwise than he has to be – and everyone else can’t be otherwise either, they have to be as they are. His followers even say of him that he follows his path like a sleepwalker, or as if he had already passed that way before. So he takes on the appearance of a natural phenomenon. To resist him is simply unnatural, and in the long run impossible. He has weaknesses, but only because mankind, of whom he is the outstanding representative, has weaknesses, and they are the weaknesses that everyone shares, unavoidable weaknesses. ‘I am simply your voice,’ he likes to maintain, ‘the commands that issue from me are nothing else but the commands you call out to yourselves.’
KARL Of course, I can appreciate the danger of empathising with him; he is, after all, leading the people on a dangerous path. But it seems to me that is not your only point, that it may be dangerous to empathise with a protagonist (as it is dangerous to empathise with this one), but rather that it must be dangerous, quite irrespective of whether he’s leading you on a dangerous path or not. That’s right, isn’t it?
THOMAS Indeed. If only for the reason that the establishment of empathy makes it impossible for the person who falls under its spell to recognise whether the path is dangerous or not.
KARL So when does the establishment of empathy not work? After all, we know that there are great masses of people who observe the house painter distantly and coldly and don’t for one moment adopt his standpoint.
THOMAS He must fail to establish empathy with those whose interests he perpetually damages, as long as they are able continually to call to mind the whole of reality, in all its variety, and to see him as just a small part of it.
KARL And only they are able truly to perceive the laws by which his appearance and his behaviour are governed?
THOMAS Yes.
KARL So, they don’t empathise with him, because they recognise that their interests are different from his. But surely they might well empathise with someone else who could represent their interests?
THOMAS Of course they might do that. But then they would be equally unable to perceive the laws which govern the appearance and behaviour of this other person. You might say: but he is leading them on the right path, how can it be dangerous to follow him blindly? But that would be a completely mistaken understanding of a ‘right path’. A right path can never be followed on a harness. The life of man does not consist in going somewhere, but in that he walks at all. The concept of the right path is less appropriate than the right way of walking. The most amazing capacity of mankind is criticism, it has added most to the goods of happiness, improved life the most. Whoever empathises with someone, and does so completely, relinquishes criticism both of the object of their empathy and of themselves. Instead of awakening, they sleepwalk. Instead of doing something, they let something be done with them. They are those with whom others live and from whom others live, not those who truly live themselves. They have only the illusion that they are living, in reality they are vegetating. They are, so to speak, passively lived. That is why the theatrical presentation offered by Fascism is not a good example of theatre, not if we expect of it representations which might give the spectators the key by which to master the problems of social existence.
KARL It is hard to agree with this conclusion. It adds up to a rejection of a practice of theatre which has been exercised for thousands of years.
THOMAS So do you suppose the practice of the house painter is new?
[‘Uber die Theatralik des Faschismus’, in the Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe 22/561-9]
Corrected typescript from May 1939. According to notes by Margarete Steffin, Brecht and Hermann Greid (an actor and director who was also in exile) discussed Verfremdung and the artistic tradition in Lidingö at this time. The topic also crops up in the plans for The Messingkauf Dialogues at around the same time, but this piece was never reworked for the Messingkauf. The reference to the ‘everyday event’ at the beginning is to The Streetscene, where Brecht develops ideas of the epic by means of a practical example {Brecht on Theatre, pp. 121-9).
The (true) anecdote about Hitlers ‘acting’ lessons is wonderfully exploited in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, scene 6. The Battle of Tannenberg was one of the early German successes which became the occasion for yearly celebrations. There are numerous photographs of Hitler, giving speeches, visiting Mussolini, and so on, amongst Brecht’s papers. On Brecht’s disparaging description of Hitler as ‘the house painter’, compare note to no. 35.
A satirical nickname for Hitler, in reference to his one-time artistic pretensions, was ‘der Anstreicher’, the house painter. Brecht makes frequent allusions to this and to Hitler’s ability to ‘paint over the cracks’. A programme of repairs was indeed part of the early Nazi work creation programme.
(Source: Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Art and Politics, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles, eds., Bloomsbury, 2003.)