"Reject it, in order to possess it": On Heiner Müller and Bertolt Brecht

"Reject it, in order to possess it": On Heiner Muller and Bertolt Brecht THEO GIRSHAUSEN translated by Peter Harris and Pia Kleber None of those writers who began writing in the German Democratic Republic (GDR; the Federal Republic of Germany is here similarly abbreviated to FRG), or who found a literary home there, was more clearly regarded as a pupil of Brecht than the playwright Heiner Muller - not even Peter Hacks, whose first plays rerum unabashedly to forms of the "epic theatre," and about whom the story long circulated that he had immigrated to the GDR in the early 1950'Sat Brecht's personal invitation.' Hacks began to speak of the "new classicism" of the theatre in the "developed socialism" of his society, and in his plays of the 1960'S based on classical models he replaced the critical parable about the misunderstandings in this world with large-scale and above all aesthetically "rounded" designs for the future human society. It was at this pOint that people realised that Hacks was going his own way - a way that led away from Brecht.' The interaction was quite different with Muller. His first plays about the establishment of socialism in the developing GDR, about the hard, difficult, contradictory work involved, have little in common with the "typical" techniques of "epic theatre." There is no trace of parabolic forms, "Verfremdungseffekte ,"3 techniques of authorial comment as Brecht developed them (and as they are characteristic of Hacks's early works) in Mulier'S The Wage Slaver (Der Lohndriicker; 1957), Correction (Korrektur; 1956/58), Report/rom Kletrwitz (Kletrwitzer Bericht; 1958), or The Building Site (Der Bou; 1964). Nonetheless, until the 1970'S, there was no question that this writer was a successor to Brecht. This categorization - in contrast to that of Hacks - outlasted Muller's adaptations of the classics (like Philoctetes [Philoktet; 1964l, Prometheus [1968l, or Oedipus the Tyrant [Odipus Tyrann; 1966]), and even his version of Macbeth (1971), which treated the old text much more drastically and radically than Brecht had ever done in his adaptations of the classics. The differing classification of Hacks and Muller, as paradoxical as it may seem in view of the aesthetic of their early works, nevertheless expresses a Heiner Muller and Bertolt Brecht correct critical insight shared by the first interpreters of Muller, such as Helen Fehervary,4 Fritz J. Raddatz,' Bernhard Greiner" and articulated most clearly by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.7 The real "Brecht pupil" is not he who uses the forms of "epic theatre," or even imitates them (and this cannot be assumed even for the early Hacks); rather, it is he who accepts and further develops the socia-political and aesthetic principles on which Brecht founded his theatre model. Precisely this is firmly stated in the literature on Muller: his affinity to his model is due exclusively to the same - Marxist - method, dialectics. Dialectics treat reality critically; they reveal its contradictions; they expose and identify ideologies; and they indicate again and again the mutability of every condition in society, no matter how ossified. The individual fonnal means are, by contrast, of secondary importance, and may be different from Brecht's. It is because Muller is a dialectician and transforms dialectics into dramatic form that he is a legitimate successor to Brecht. The change seemed to happen quite suddenly. In a 1975 interview with American Germanists who knew and defended his works, Muller, who is normally quite reticent about self-explanations, took a position on potentially influential examples that were important to him. He spoke of his increasingly strong leaning towards Beckett, Artaud, surrealism, and the entire "bourgeois"avant-garde8 For dyed-in-the-wool Brechtians, the evocation of such names may be enough ofan affront, but Muller did not stop there. He went on to proclaim quite openly his low opinion of a large part of Brecht's plays, with which he now felt almost nothing more could be done. One of the participants in the conversation summarised Muller's argument bluntly: "You are emphasising the contrast to Brecht very strongly indeed.". Muller's dramas that were then published in the second half of the 1970'S seemed inclined to accentuate this contrast still more strongly...