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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 associating 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, acknowledging 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. * 50 °
