ABSTRACT
From the founding of the GDR in 1949, through Stalin’s death in 1953, and up until Khrushchev’s “secret speech” at the 20th Soviet Party Congress in 1956, GDR cultural policy was largely dictated by Soviet policy, in particular the crudely didactic, anti-Modernist doctrines of Socialist Realism. Along with advocates of innovation in the other arts, Brecht fought for a broader understanding of socialist art until his death in 1956. Christoph Funke (“The Brechtian Legacy of Theater in the German Democratic Republic”) outlines Brecht’s influence and its consequences in later years. Joachim Lucchesi (“From Questioning to Condemnation: The Debate over Brecht/Dessau’s 1951 Opera Lucullus”) uses hitherto unavailable archival material to shed light on one of the formative episodes of GDR cultural policy, and Carl Weber (“Periods of Precarious Adjustment: Some Notes on the Theater’s Situation at the Beginning and after the End of the Socialist German State”) recounts his personal experiences during the same controversy and in the subsequent one concerning Hanns Eisler’s Johann Faustus.
