The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

A desire to reveal evidence of biographic truths also motivated John Fuegi’s search in
the Bertolt Brecht Archive and the Schiffbauerdamm Theatre in the German Democratic
Republic, where he encountered “tight controls” and “enormous obstacles” to
understanding how Brecht’s plays had been written. Indeed, there seemed to be a “tight
institutional edifice” of theatrical associations, archives, societies and yearbook
publications, which protected a Brechtian legacy. However, after a widespread search
for information that had been “carefully hidden” by Brecht, Fuegi was able to access
unpublished correspondence and diaries made available by Brecht’s widow and son. 28
Read together with evidence from “many deeply scarred witnesses”, tape recordings
with contemporaries and letters that escaped the police, these sources revealed what
Fuegi has interpreted as “deliberate lies and theatrical facades” and “a lifetime of
personal and political deception”. Fuegi revealed that Brecht was a millionaire, whose
“expensively tailored” clothes had been specially made to obtain “that special Brechtian,
down‐at‐heel look”. More importantly, Brecht had used his sexual charisma “to enslave
and exploit” lovers and colleagues, and took the credit for plays written mostly by them.
According to Fuegi, the vast majority of Bertolt Brechtʹs plays, including The Threepenny
Opera and Mother Courage, had been written by those around Brecht, especially by his
lovers, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin and Ruth Breslau. 29
Fuegi’s biography of Brecht was an empirical reassessment by a long‐time Brechtian
scholar, who was one of the founders of the International Brecht Society in 1970 and
who had edited its annual journal up until 1990. 30 While other studies of Brecht’s life
28 Fuegi had “no item off‐limits” access to copies of all Brecht’s files, which had been donated to
Harvard University. See John Fuegi, The Life and Lies, pp xiii‐xviii.
29 See John Fuegi, The Life and Lies, pp xvi‐xix.
30 The International Brecht Society was founded in 1970, modelled on Brecht’s own unrealised
plans for a ʺDiderot Societyʺ. As an educational institution with an international membership, the
Society promotes the performance and understanding of Brechtʹs texts and addresses issues of
politics and culture in contemporary life. It is committed to maintaining Brecht as a living force in
the theatre as well as in the political and cultural arenas. It seeks to provide a service to scholars,
critics, students and theatre people around the world who are interested in the life, thought and
works of Bertolt Brecht. See the website . While he
was a member of the society, John Fuegi had published an earlier book about Brecht. See John
Fuegi, Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, According to Plan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
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