Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama [Hardcover]

John Fuegi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

A revolutionary portrait of one of the world's greatest theater artists examines his achievements as the product of his relationships with lovers and colleagues--whose work the charismatic and manipulative Brecht appropriated to fashion himself into a major literary force. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bertolt Brecht, according to this gripping, myth-shattering biography, regularly cheated his closest co-workers and lovers, publishing their literary works under his own name and concealing his wealth in secret bank accounts while posing as a penurious Communist proletarian. Many of Brecht's poems, stories and songs, plus huge sections of some of his most famous plays, were written by his lover Elisabeth Hauptmann, declares Fuegi, who bases his sensational charges on surviving manuscripts, interviews with members of Brecht's circle, contemporaneous diaries and contracts. The Threepenny Opera , he concludes, was almost exclusively the work of Hauptmann, who silently endured Brecht's exploitation, hoping he would divorce his wife and marry her. Professor of Germanic and Slavic literature at the University of Maryland and author of two previous studies on Brecht, Fuegi further argues that substantial unacknowledged contributions to other famous Brecht plays were made by two of his mistresses. Terrified of abandonment and of emotional involvement, Brecht, in Fuegi's scathing portrait, continually played his multiple lovers against one another. The author deduces that Brecht was bisexual and, from his late teens to mid-20s, preoccupied with homosexuality. A founder of the International Brecht Society, Fuegi presents Brecht as a shrewd manipulator, with close friends on both the left and the radical right, who made puny contributions to the anti-Hitler effort until the Nazis took away his German citizenship, and who remained silent while Stalin persecuted his friends in the Soviet Union. Fuegi's brilliant, graphic portrait of Brecht and his circle is certain to spark controversy. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Fuegi, a major Brecht scholar, has been compiling this book since the middle 1960s. The result is a detailed, thoroughly researched critical biography of an icon of modern drama. Its revisionist view meticulously portrays the famed poet/playwright as an exploiter and thief of the work of his closest friends, lovers, and collaborators, especially such women as Elizabeth Hauptmann and Ruth Berlow. It has long been suspected-but until now inadequately documented-that Brecht made a career out of artistic parisitism. Perhaps new editions/translations of Brecht will now have to carry the names of several authors. This book will be controversial and corrective, but it will also generate much new and important work in Brecht studies. For most serious theater collections.
Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 732 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; 1st edition (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802115292
• ISBN-13: 978-0802115294
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,668,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Readable, Provocative Bio, September 12, 2006

By 

James J. Paul (Raleigh, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brecht and Co.: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (Grove Great Lives) (Paperback)

I read this book when it first came out, and was blown away by it.

I've read (and dearly love) some of Brecht's plays and poems, but I'm not a Brecht scholar by any means, so I'm not qualified to judge its accuracy.

However, as a piece of writing, the book is superb. Its portrayal of Brecht and his (alleged) thievery and (definite) all-round knavishness is stunning. Its common-sensical and jargon-free analysis of Brecht's contriubtions to theater is refreshing.

If the book is inaccurate, though, all of that must go by the wayside. Still, two questions:

1) Why hasn't any comparably epic-sized, thorough, attention-getting book on Brecht been published in the past dozen years as a corrective to this book? (If one has been published, it's escaped my notice.)

2) Don't you think the negative reaction to this book has something to do with politics? Brecht is an icon of the Left, and people get mad when their idols are smashed.

And a final thought: Why haven't more bios of Brecht's alleged female collaborators been written in the wake of this book?

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars True Brecht Scholars Agree -- This is Garbage, July 10, 2004

By 

A Lorre Fan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (Hardcover)

John Fuegi is no student of Brecht's career. Real scholars do not mistranslate material and improvise their own meanings. They do not embellish and even invent quotes. Fuegi has done all this and more. To say he is "inaccurate" is putting it mildly. In fact, German Brecht scholars were so outraged by this trash, they collectively authored an article listing every error -- and there was enough misinformation to fill 80 pages. An example: Their careful study of Brecht's manuscripts reveals that first drafts were in his own hand. They are not the work of his mistresses. If you want to know the truth about Bertolt Brecht's life and career, skip this nonsense and consult any work of author James Lyons, a true Brecht scholar.

12 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Badly written and full of misinformation., September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (Hardcover)

This is a terribly bad book. It is full of factually incorrect assertions woven together into a distorted picture of the most influential and complex theater worker of the twentieth century. There is a total absence of critical perception or analysis, and for someone who claims to have been working so long in the field, Fuegi betrays a remarkable lack of insight into the dynamics of theater production. He pays lip-service to what he seems to believe are feminist principles, but underneath them, he shows great disregard for the opinions and achievements of the remarkable women who worked with Brecht throughout his life. Fuegi seems to have learned nothing from Brecht;his writing is plodding and turgid - all the more so in the context of Brecht's own sharpness and economy of language. Any other book on Brecht would provide a better introduction; I have only given it one star because I can't figure out how to give it less