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SASKIA FISCHER
musical arrangement by Hanns Eisler with the music of socialist oratorios.”
Especially influential for literary research was the interpretation by Helmuth
Kiesel, whose reading is based on the thesis that Brecht’s play is socialist agit¬
prop." In contrast, I, however, would like to stress that Die Mafsnahme is more
ambiguous than these one-sided readings by some critics of the didactic play
suggest, as Brecht does not simply stage the death of the young comrade af¬
firmatively in the sense of political agitation but, by accepting and suffering his
“Passion,” the young comrade’s self-sacrifice pushes the principles governing
the revolutionary movement and its norms and values in all their ambiguity
and inhuman cruelty to the forefront and makes them transparent.
Brecht’s play Die Mafsnahme is loosely based on the Japanese Noh play
Tanikö, which Brecht’s long-time employee Elisabeth Hauptmann translated
for him at the end of the 1920s, drawing on the English version written by the
sinologist Arthur Waley. Brecht had already explored and used this Noh play as
a basis for his dramatic texts Der Jasager and Der Neinsager in 1930. However,
Brecht simplifies the complex religious-cult structure of the Japanese original
and transfers it into a modern context and style. Thus, the journey, in Taniko,
on which a boy, some students, and their teacher set out on as a pilgrimage,
becomes a research trip (or expedition) in Brecht’s Jasager. But Brecht adopts
the basic traits of the fable: the boy falls ill on the way and cannot continue
the journey. The participants of the expedition are now faced with the choice
of either returning home or continuing the journey without the boy. Follow¬
ing an old custom, they decide not only to leave the boy alone but to kill him
by throwing him into the valley. The custom requires that the boy be asked
whether he agrees with his killing. But the custom also demands that he af¬
firms this question. The boy behaves as expected, and so the expedition group
“complains” about the “bitter law,” as the Jasager puts it and carries out the
killing “full of pity.” It is radically challenging that none of the participants of
the expedition question the old custom, not even the victim himself. This is
what the play unmasks with its dramatic plot.
Brecht proceeds similarly with the adaptation of the Japanese Noh play in
Die Mafsnahme. Here Brecht gives the action a strong political dimension and
frames the plot within a trial situation:
2° Howard E. Smither: A History of the Oratorio, Vol. 4, Chapel Hill/London, University of North
Carolina Press, 2000, 644.
3° Helmuth Kiesel: DIE MASSNAHME im Licht der Totalitarismustheorie, in I. Gellert - G.
Koch - F. Vaßen (eds.): Massnehmen. Kontroverse, Perspektive, Praxis. Bertolt Brecht / Hans
Eislers Lehrstück, Die Maßnahme, Berlin, Theater der Zeit, Recherchen 1, 1998, 83-99. See
also the list of reactions to the premiere by Pasche. He interprets the use of ritual forms in
Die Maßnahme as Brecht’s aesthetic strategy to ultimately disavow these forms: Wolfgang
Pasche: Die Funktion des Rituellen in Brechts Lehrstücken Der Jasager und Der Neinsager,
Acta Germanica 13 (1980), 137-150, 137.
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