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SASKIA FISCHER
to what is being shown. Here, too, Brecht implicitly draws a connection to
the ritual in his critigue. Because, as in a ritual — where the performance is
encompassed by a marked beginning and ending — a coherent structure in
theater also leads the viewer to entrust and give himself up unreflectively to
the dramatic course of events.
In the speech by the agitators quoted above and the compassionate approval
of the control choir for what the agitators did, Brecht now turns his critical
eye to the class struggle and its functionaries. For the agitators, the killing of
the young comrade is independent of their own will. Like ancient destiny, in
the agitators’ depiction the necessity of realizing the communist idea seems to
demand the deed itself. Thereby, Brecht’s play situates itself in the tradition of
tragedy and, at the same time, makes a critical and non-affirmative reference to
it. For, with the agitators, the play presents a world view that not only demands
the sacrifice of the individual for the purposes of the revolution but also, from
a poetic perspective, justifies the theatrical forms that Brecht fundamentally
criticizes. Precisely because the agitators allude to Brecht’s own criticism of
tragedy and the tragic, they are presented in a much more subversive and
critical way than Kiesel understood it. Yet, one has to admit that apart from
such criticism, Die Mafsnahme lacks a clearly exposed critical corrective. There
is no character in this play criticizing the murder of the young comrade, not
even the young comrade himself. Thus, it is a risk that the play takes by as¬
sociating the death of the young comrade with self-sacrifice without openly
subverting it. But what the play truly demonstrates in a didactic way is the
unity of politically revolutionary interests, which for the agitators are based
on rational principles, and ritual-sacral meaningfulness. The play uses the
symbolism of the sacrifice to make the mechanisms and political strategy of
the communist system obvious and to show how strongly it already operates
with the ritual and sacral as powerful instruments and media of propaganda.
This problem is not dissolved in Die Mafsnahme. It is made transparent but not
generally rejected. The challenging and also complex claim of the play is that
Brecht does not simply identify the justification and meaningful interpretation
of suffering as political strategy and propaganda, but rather as a fundamental
need of all those involved. That is why the young comrade agrees, and that is
why the control choir says to the agitators, we have sympathy for you, acknowl¬
edging the tragedy of the situation, and by doing so stressing the supposedly
‘holy’ necessity to murder him. Thus, Die Mafsnahme points beyond its fable
to a problem that is open to modern art and culture as a whole: a rational
® A close and differentiated examination of Brecht‘s Maßnahme was developed by Hillesheim:
“Instinktiv lasse ich hier Abstände...,” 453-459. See also Rainer Grübel: Die Ästhetik des
Opfers bei Brecht und in der russischen Literatur der 20er und 30er Jahre, in T. Hörnigk - A.
Stephan (eds.): Rot = Braun? / Brecht Dialog 2000. Nationalsozialismus und Stalinismus bei
Brecht und Zeitgenossen, Berlin, Theater der Zeit, 2000, 153-181.
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