Oldal 44 [44]
SASKIA FISCHER
But with this unmasked individual claiming for empathy, the risk arises
for the whole group to be exposed as revolutionary agitators. In order to con¬
tinue their revolutionary mission, they must remain unrecognized. As they
flee, as the riots break out, they kill the young comrade, not without asking
him — very much like in the Jasager and Tanikö — for his approval of their
deed. In contrast to the Japanese original and the Jasager, however, Brecht
replaces the unconditional trust in the rightness of the old custom with the
obligation to realize the communist revolution, and thus also with historical
necessity. The fundamental conflict between the suffering of the individual,
on the one hand, and the subordination of individual life to the dictates of
a higher “power” or cause, on the other — be it fate, custom, or revolution
— remains in Taniko, in the Jasager, and in Die Mafsnahme. The comparison
shows that in Die Mafsnahme, it is now the revolutionary strategy that is of the
highest value to the agitators. The realization of the communist idea becomes
the power of fate — as in ancient tragedies or Noh theater — that determines
their actions. For someone like Brecht, who from the very beginning of his
writing and staging challenged precisely this trust in a higher value and the
determination of individual actions by fate, this way of presenting can hardly
be meant affirmatively but is, rather, highly critical.
Besides the allusions to Japanese Noh theater, Die Mafsnahme is also full
of references to the Passion of Christ. Thus, in the play, the young comrade
observes and experiences various situations of suffering until he himself is
eventually killed, remarkably because he shows empathy. Thereby, the play
explicitly refers to and rejects the category of compassion [Mitleid], as Lessing
conceptualized it, by drawing on the Christian commandment of brotherly
love (see Mt 25). Instead, Die Mafsnahme unfolds an aesthetic of coldness and
rationality, but which — similar to the young boy’s demise in Taniké — leads
straight into the abyss and, respectively, into death. It seems that here Brecht
is drawing the line at his own negation of compassion. A suggestive, strongly
emotionalizing theater that demands compassion at all costs is for him highly
manipulative. But if a culture is based on sheer rationality, it becomes brutal
and totalitarian. His plays repeatedly demonstrate that he does not give up
compassion once and for all, especially for the weak and helpless.*° Not only
Augsburger Religionsunterricht und zu den literarischen Versuchen des Gymnasiasten, Göt¬
tingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983; Karl-Josef Kuschel: Der andere Brecht. Versuch einer
theologischen Analyse seiner Lyrik, Stimmen der Zeit 202 (1984), 629-643; Dick Boer: Die
Gewalt, die Armut und das gute Leben. Bertolt Brecht und die Religion, Texte und Kontext 28
(2005), 30-42. How fundamental the Bible and the reference to religious and ritual forms and
genres is also for his later work, I demonstrated in Fischer: Ritual und Ritualität, 137-180.
Franz Norbert Mennemeier: Von der Freundschaft zur ‘Freundlichkeit’. Zu Bertolt Brechts
Ballade von der Freundschaft und Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf
dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration, in G. E. Grimm (ed.): Gedichte und Interpretationen.
Deutsche Balladen, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1988, 340-424; Detlev Schöttker: Bertolt Brechts
s 42 e