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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
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
“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.”
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
Bruno Voigt (1912-1988),
“Anti-War Demonstration”
(1932):Art in the style of
“Socialist Realism” imposed by Stalin as
Comintern policy in 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 Bible1917/18: Evaded war service by enrolling for medical study1920: Drums in the Night, set in Berlin in January 19191922: 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!’”
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