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294 BOOK REVIEWS Hanns Eisler were affiliated with the movement both ideologically and by producing some of the music that the agitprop troupes used. However, the many texts and sub-texts of the troupes are never analyzed in depth or in a larger cultural context. The lack of the original Genman texts for the songs that Bodek uses in his arguments also makes it difficult to assess the texts' affinities to other cultural expressions. The extent to which high and low culture met in agitprop theatre is therefore, unfortunately, left largely unexplored. In his chapter on Brecht, Bodek asserts that "Brecht and Eisler bridged the worlds of the professional stage and proletarian revolutionary perfonmance" (140). Bodek uses Brecht's play Die Mutter to illustrate this point. Set to music by Hanns Eisler, the play deals with the same themes as agitprop theatre - unemployment, wage cuts, reformist trade union tactics, and urban-rural relations. Also, both agitprop theatre and Die Mutter had a clear message: the solution to all problems facing Weimar Genmany was to implement the policies of the Communist party. Even though this chapter illustrates that there was some overlap between professional theatre and the agitprop movement, one would have liked to see two points developed further. First, Die Mutter is seen only in the context of agitprop theatre, not in the context of Brecht's vast production activity during the Weimar period. Secondly, no attempt is made to analyze Die Mutter in the context of the text from which Brecht adapted the play, Maxim Gorky's novel of the same name. The question as to what extent Brecht's other works or Gorky's novel also bridged the worlds of professional high culture and proletarian low culture is therefore not explored. This, however , should not be seen as negative critique of the book. On the contrary, all good books should give the reader impulses for further reading and research, and Bodek's book does just that. KERSTIN GADDY, THE CATHOLIC UNtVERSITY OF AMERICA PETER THOMSON. Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [997. Pp. 206, illustrated. $59.95; $[8.95, paperback . Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is one of his most successful plays. This drama is about the female sutler Anna Fierling and her incapability of learning anything from the Thirty Years War ( 16[8-[648). Brecht wrote it at the beginning of World War lJ, in 1939. The topicality of this discussion of the relationship between war and business can be felt today from Sarajevo to Uganda, as the book amply demonstrates. This volume of the Plays in Production series is the first comprehensive study of Mother Courage and its productions. It starts with a chapter on sources. "Sources" are, according to Peter Thomson, of a literary and historical kind. He mentions Johann Ludwig Runeberg's Tales of a Subaltern, c.v. Book Reviews 295 Wedgwood's classic account of the Thirty Years War, Christoffel von Grimmelshausen 's Simplicissimus and Trutz-Simplex, and Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. But other "sources" are equally important. Thomson gives a vivid description of Brecht's situation before and during his exile, including an analysis of the development of his political views towards German militarism from "The Legend of the Oead Soldier" to Man is Mati and Mother Courage. It might have been rewarding to continue with Stalin's theory of "just wars" and Brecht's Lukullus, but even so, Thomson leaves no doubt open about Brecht's "opposition to the official artistic policy of socialist realism" (20). This solid introduction is followed by a chapter called "The Text and The Stage," a detailed reading of Mother Courage, scene by scene, not only following the text carefully, but also with extensive reference to Brecht's own views of a production of the play, as documented in the Model Book. This chapter is especially useful in demonstrating the intimate linking of Brecht's writing to performance. It also gives Thomson the opportunity to explain Brechtian terminology - for example, Gestus or Verfremdung - with practical examples. The third chapter is devoted to Brecht's Berlin production of 1949, with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage. Held in repertoire for a decade...

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