Berthold from the Offstage

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the death of a writer, a master of the German language, and a political voice of conscience: Berthold Brecht.

The graves of Berthold Brecht and Helene Weigel at the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin.

Berthold Brecht, the already successful author, was an ideological communist who fled Germany on February 28, 1933 - one day after the Reichstag fire and two days before the Nazis seized power - first to Prague, Vienna, and Zurich, and then to Paris. Further stops on his journey into exile - the Nazis had stripped Brecht of his citizenship - included Svendborg (Denmark), Lidingö (Sweden), and Helsinki.

In May 1941, Brecht received an entry visa to the United States and traveled with his family via Moscow and Vladivostok by ship to Santa Monica, California, where he lived in a rented house.

After the war ended, the House Un-American Activities Committee questioned him on October 30, 1947, asking whether he had ever been a member of a Communist Party. Brecht truthfully answered "no."

However, he could no longer stay in America. The following day, he traveled to Paris and soon after to Zurich. Switzerland was the only country that granted the stateless Brecht a residence permit.

Finally - since Brecht remained barred from entering the Western occupation zones of Germany - he traveled from Zurich via Prague to East Berlin in October 1948 at the invitation of the East German Cultural Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany. 

The result of this statelessness was Brecht's "Flüchtlingsgespräche," Refugee Conversations at a wooden table in the spartan train station restaurant in Helsinki between the physicist Ziffel and the worker Kalle: "The passport is the noblest part of a human being. It doesn't come into being as easily as a human being does. A human being can come into being anywhere, in the most reckless way and without any good reason, but a passport never does. On the other hand, it is recognized when it is good, whereas a person can be as good as he wants and still not be recognized."

This loose collection of dialogues premiered on February 15, 1962, in the Werkraum of the Munich Kammerspiele, and Red Baron - I was a doctoral student at the university at the time - was there.

Famous Erwin Piscator directed the production, and the cast included cabaret artist Werner Finck as the tall, somewhat clumsy bourgeois intellectual and physicist Ziffel, and the Swabian folk actor Willy Reichert as the stocky, down-to-earth communist worker Kalle.

Ziffel had fled Germany primarily because the Nazis had exploited science for their war effort. He argues philosophically and ironically.

Kalle had already been imprisoned in a German concentration camp. He views the world with a sharp, materialistic class consciousness.

In their dialogues, the protagonists deconstruct the "virtues" of diligence, patriotism, and courage. Bad governments demand these virtues from their citizens to cover up mismanagement, wars, and their own mistakes. An ideal state doesn't need any heroes, capitalism, or fascism. 

For Ziffel and Kalle, National Socialism is not an "accident"* of history, but a logical consequence of the capitalist economic system, which relies on dictatorships in times of crisis. 

*Nor is it bird droppings

In the waiting room "Exile," the two refugees explore the agonizing feeling of waiting, their dependence on visas, and their longing for a homeland that no longer exists.

Against this backdrop, Brecht's warnings from beyond the grave regarding the current political situation in Germany read like an omen. The author is Florian Harms, editor-in-chief of the German news service T-Online.

Once again, Red Baron is promoting someone else's work and providing the translation of the German text here:

Greetings to you who are reading this:

You must listen to me. Today marks 70 years since my death, and as is the custom with all those who were a thorn in the side, I have been set in marble so that I may remain silent. 

But even in life, I considered silence to be the worst of all arts. That is why I speak once more today. It will be a short speech, for the dead have little time.

I see my country well-fed, yet seething with discontent. It has been taught to distrust, and now it distrusts the wrong people - not those who deceive it, but those who warn it. The seats of government and the parliaments, the offices and city halls no longer serve the people, and I ask: Who benefits when you smash them to pieces? Where trust falls, freedom does not rise. Instead, men rise who are loud.

I know the agitators. I saw them when they first came, in brown uniforms, with simple slogans for people who were a nuisance. People laughed at them, then voted for them, then idolized them. In the end, everything was destroyed. "The womb from which this crawled is still fertile," I once wrote. It was a warning, and warnings do not lose their validity.

Eighty-one years after the end of Hitler's regime, many are once again following those who promise simplicity but mean cruelty. They do so carefree, like stepping into the water on a summer day without knowing how deep it is. They say a fish never swims into the same net twice. People, however, are happy to swim right into it if the net is decorated with blue instead of brown flags and music is playing. I see it, and I'm worried.

For while you argue over who hates the state the most, there's a man in the East waging war. I won't call him a general, for generals lead armies; he, however, leads an army of butchers who are tearing Ukraine apart. He has plunged Europe into its deepest crisis since 1945 and is now striking at you as well: drones over airports, arson at warehouses, assassination plots against corporate leaders, sabotage of what is dearest to you. Hundreds of cases have already been counted. 

And yet many of you still believe that this man can be dealt with through compromise. He cannot. Evil must be brought to its knees; otherwise, it will sweep you off your feet—take it from someone who has seen more evil than all of you put together. Remember this: War is not far off. It's already in your basement, setting the clock.

It has eager accomplices. They set invisible traps for you ... They stoke anger and rake in billions upon billions of dollars: colorfully packaged rumors, portioned out, delivered right to your bedside. The executives at Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and that thing called X don't profit from peace - they profit from strife. Hate gets more clicks than reason, and whatever gets more clicks gets amplified. That's how they've built a business out of your worst traits and call it "community."

I'm telling you the old truth anew. "First comes food, then morality," I wrote. But these gentlemen and their henchmen have realized that you eat the most when you sell morality first. They feed you anger until you puke, and send the bill to democracy.

I have my concerns, but I also have hope. In every country, there are decent people. They aren't the loudest; often, they're the weary ones. But there are many of them - more than the agitators believe - and their time has come. Not tomorrow, when the fishermen's nets have been hauled in at Halle, Magdeburg, Schwerin, and Rostock*. Not the day after tomorrow, when the neighbor with the match is already standing in the living room. Decent people everywhere should unite.

*There are upcoming State elections in Sachsen-Anhalt und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

A decent person does not look away. One who steadfastly calls a lie a lie, even if it is shared a thousand times over. One who would rather help a discredited government office than shout it down. One who knows that freedom is not a summer retreat, but a work that must be built upon daily, because many are trying to undermine it every day.

So show that you are decent! That would be my wish. And in the spirit of those who came before me, who also wrote and suffered for this country - Lessing, Heine, Tucholsky - all of whom knew that a people can lose its reason as easily as a glove. That is what I can tell you on the 70th anniversary of my death, through the pen of a small-time journalist. Stand up. I can no longer do so myself.

**