The Lonely Baal: Brecht's First Play as a Parody of Hanns Johst's Der Einsame

THE LONELY BAAL: BRECHT'S FIRST PLAY AS A PARODY OF HANNS JOHST'S DER EINSAME* ALTHOUGH IT IS GENERALLY KNOWN THAT BertoIt Brecht's first drama, Baal, stands in a direct genetic relationship to Hanns Johst's Expressionistic play Der Einsame (1917), no detailed comparison of the two works has, so far, been undertaken, although scattered references are found in nearly all the monographs on Brecht and in most essays specifically concerned with Baal-of which there has been no dearth in the last few years.! Prior to the appearance of Dieter Schmidt's exhaustive textual study "Baar und der junge Brecht,2 the most ex· tended discussions of the problem occurred in Ernst Schumacher's still basic survey Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts 1918.19333 in Bernard Dort's Lecture de Brecht4 and in Bj~rn Ekman's article "Bert Brecht, vom Baal aus gesehen."5 We shall have occasion to refer to these studies at various points in our analysis. The situation we seek to remedy is partly the fault of Brecht himself ; for the name Hanns Johst fails to appear in any of the pieces co;nstituting his published Schriften zum Theater. The author's acknowledgment that Baal was meant "ein schwaches Erfolgsstiick in den Grund zubohren mit einer Hicherlichen Auffassung des Genies und des Amoralen" is the closest we come to an admission of this source.6 Additional information regarding the reasons for Brecht's antipathy to Johst's play come from two close friends of his youth, George Pfanzelt and H. O. Miinsterer. According to Schumacher (p. 31), Brecht, in a conversation with Pfanzelt, objected to the false·All translations are my own. (V.W.). 1 Eric Bentley, "Bertolt Brecht's First Play," Kenyon Review, xxvi (1964), 83.-92; BjJl}rnEkman, "Bert Brecht, vom Baal aus gesehen," Orbis Litterarum, xx (1965), 3-18; Egbert Krispyn, "Brecht and Expressionism: Notes on a Scene from Baal," Revue des Langues Vivantes, xxxi (1965), 211-218; Charles R.. Lyons, "Bertolt Brecht's Baal: The Structure of Images," Modern Drama, viii (1965). 311-323: W. A. J. Steer, "Baal, a Key to Brecht's Communism," German Life and Letters, xix (1965), 40·5l. 2 Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966 3 Bedin: Ruetten & Loening, 1955, pp. 28-32. 4 Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1960, pp. 40-43. 5 Especially pp. 7-9 6 Gesammelte Werke XV, Schriften zumTheater 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968), p. 69. This edition will subsequently be referred to as GW. 284 1970 THE LONELY BAAL 285 idealism and the sentimentality· exuded by the dramatic portrayal of a Menschenuntergang (this the ironic subtitle of Der Einsame, which implies that while the man may perish the poet will ultimately be transfigured), especially in its conclusion; for "so geht ein Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft nicht zugrunde." Miinsterer, on the other hand, reports that his friend was particularly upset by the "schoHe Szene, in der Johsts Held seiner Mutter, der Waschfrau,die blutig erarbeiteten Groschen abluchst."7When put together, these observations furnish significant clues as to the esthetic and ideological perspective embraced in the Urbaal, which was manifestly conceived as an antithesis to Der Einsame or what Brecht would later have called a Gegenentwurf . This intention is also confirmed by the dramatzs personae of the original version of Baal (discussed on p. 72 of Schmidt's monograph) and by Miinsterer's statement that the playwright wanted to substitute "einen erdverhafteten Vaganten mit deutlichen Beziigenaufden grossen Verlaine" for the thinblooded poet sketched by Johst.8 Unfortunately, in due course this, initially clearcut, situation became obscured in several ways. On the occasion of the Berlin production of the fourth version (Lebenslauj des Mannes Baal) in January , 1926, Brecht himself added to the confusion which still prevails -notably in Anglo-American scholarship-by publishing an account labelled "Das Urbild Baals."9 Here a certain Josef K., an engineer hailing from Augsburg, is described as the actual model for the asocial and amoral protagonist of the play. The existence of this figure is seriously doubted by Miinsterer, who categorically assert$, "dass unter uns niemalsvon einem so1chen Manne die Rede war" (p. 25). And Schmidt, corroborating this view, quotes an anonymous, and probably unpublished, essay preserved in the Brecht...