Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht

An illuminating history of the intimate group around Bertolt Brecht which produced some of the most important works of 20th-century drama, literature, and theory while in exile from Nazi Germany.

Bertolt Brecht is recognized as one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. But was he a charismatic genius or an exploitative plagiarizer, and how did his commitment to socialism inform his art? For decades, opinions on Brecht have been polarized by these questions.

Building on new archival research and previously unconsidered sources, Katherine Hollander offers a fresh historical perspective by de-centering Brecht and contextualizing him within a small group of peers. This book investigates how the members of this group understood their collaborative work in the context of their commitments to fighting fascism and building socialism. It illuminates a community that coalesced first in Vienna and Berlin and intensified as it moved into exile in Denmark after 1933. Beginning not with Brecht but with the actor Helene Weigel and her mentor, the Danish feminist Karin Michaëlis, the book takes seriously the women of the group and their ideas about socialism, gender, collaboration, and art.

By the time the group shifted its center to Denmark, it included dramaturg and editor Margarete Steffin and social philosopher Walter Benjamin, and saw an increase in productivity and interdependence. Through careful study of writings and correspondence, this book reveals not just how the group worked but how they understood that work as an embodiment of their evolving ideas about socialism, antifascism, and collectivity. It suggests the understudied ways that collaboration has contributed to intellectual history, dissolving the false binary around Brecht and making way for new understandings of co-creation.