ABSTRACT
In the short poem ‘O bservation’ w ritten a few m onths after B recht’s re tu rn to Berlin, he w rites of exchanging ‘the travails of the m o u n ta in s’ for ‘the travails of the p la in s’ (P, p. 416); a description con firm ed even in the early period of ru ins and reconstruction by the continuing inequalities and disparities of wealth and privilege Brecht w itnessed .1 T he new G erm any , he said, gave him ‘an eerie, sinister feeling’.2 T here followed his personal tussles w ith those who strove ham fistedly to apply the doctrines of socialist realism , and signs too of active discontent am ongst w orkers in the face of a stiffening and uncom prehend ing state bureaucracy. ‘In 1951’, M cC auley reports, ‘it was com m onplace for books to be pulped, plays to be banned and paintings to be defaced — all in the nam e of socialist rea lism .’3 T he officially adopted cam paign against for m alism in the arts had followed the launching of the first Five Y ear Plan in Ja n u a ry of tha t year. T his resulted in an increase in the production of pig iron, steel and chem icals, but only at the expense of light industry and living standards. T he pu lp ing of undesirable books was accom panied therefore by the continued rationing of b u t ter, m eat and sugar, and a lim ited supply of m uch desired consum er goods.4 By 1953, in spite of the b reath of liberalisation greeting S talin ’s death , the general situation had worsened. Brecht saw the B erliner Ensem ble ignored and its m em bers grow disen chanted , and then in J u n e felt the full shock to the pretensions of the new order, as Berlin workers took to the streets in protest against the im position of new production norm s.
