by Peter Weiss
For today, let’s leave it at what the experts are telling us, Brecht said, chanting hollowly: there will be no war. That sounded as if it came from the prologue of a play, but it was part of the introduction to a series of work conversations that initially stretched over some two weeks. If the studies, which generated a mass of detailed plans, did not lead to the production of the work about Engelbrekt, it was not so much because in mid-September Brecht began to develop and write Mother Courage, and in October was preoccupied with the composition of the radio play The Interrogation of Lucullus, commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Service, but because the material we examined in connection with Engelbrekt’s epoch was so broad that it was not yet possible to find a dramatic form for it. It was certainly not that there had not been enough time to conceive and produce a piece: he had needed a month for Mother Courage, fourteen days for Lucullus. He approached a work as if it already lay finished within him, needing only to be coaxed out into the light of day. But the story of Engelbrekt could not be made into the fable which he—to my bemusement—desired. Now and then he would grow tired, dismiss the topic, and then he seemed to set to work drafting a dramatic epic that could do justice to the continual bifurcations and ruptures, the contradictions and ambiguities of the events. The snatches of conversation that I caught as I entered implied that, despite the looming threat of war, indeed, even if war were to break out, the work was to be continued. Under all circumstances, the craft of writing was on a par with political events. On the afternoon of the thirty-first of August and on the first of September, during the hourly radio transmissions, after a short discussion of the state of the world, Brecht steered the conversation back to the day’s workload. Especially now that external forces were gaining ascendency, he urged us to cling to that which we had created under our own steam. He would circle his way into the material that Matthis and Ljungdal had put together for him, turning back to revisit, reinterpret, and delve deeper into specific images. This time, Brecht’s constant need for impulses that could be elaborated upon was focused upon an event about which Matthis had provided information. With short strides, hunched over, Brecht paced back and forth through the room along the paths created by the tables. He had interrupted Ljungdal, who had come from the public library after his shift and was reading out loud from the books he had brought, and ordered Matthis to go back over the course of events which had produced the original impetus to develop the piece. Who is she anyway, he yelled. Doesn’t she know who she’s dealing with. Treating my work like that. We should storm the building. Seize possession of the stage. He wanted to hear how she had sat up there on her high horse, in her stronghold. Matthis had given Brunius, the director of the Royal Dramatic Theater, the manuscript for Galileo, and her response had been that they don’t do religious plays. Him: it is not about the Galileans but about an Italian scientist from the Renaissance. That could hardly be of interest either, she said, and placed the booklet among other texts on the shelf, where it would probably lie unread for twenty years. Embittered and outraged after this initial report, Brecht had asked Matthis which forces there had been against the rulers, which freedom fighters, popular leaders, there had been in Sweden. The mention of Engelbrekt—or Engelbrecht, as Brecht called him at first, after his original German name—had immediately made an impression on him; he placed his ferocity, his wrath, in this figure, was already sketching him out before he even learned the details of his character and deeds. By taking on Engelbrekt, he could also take a stance on the history of this country in which he had ended up. A prevailing sense of horror seemed to preside here in the face of the foreign, the different; he was distressed by the apparent tendency to capitulate to the flattening of thought that had driven him out of Germany. And yet he wanted to stay in Sweden. He had been provided with a house here as well as in Skovsbostrand, on the island of Fyn, where he could work; he was also interested in observing how the tussles between democratic and reactionary forces would pan out. When he said he would be willing to interrupt his work at any time and continue on to somewhere else, however, he was merely describing his method of adapting to the condition of life in exile. In Sweden, as in his six years previous in Denmark, he remained close to Germany: he wanted to be able to return as quickly as possible should the opportunity arise. But the chance of that was now growing increasingly remote, and, by way of precaution, he had asked friends to resume their efforts to obtain the American visa that he had previously rejected and then reapplied for. Ljungdal went to make a gesture as if he wanted to encompass the panorama of the fourteenth century, but Brecht was not done with the Royal Theater yet, and Matthis had to recommence with the description of the setting. The director’s office was not pompous but of restrained appearance, the walls a matte gray, divided by strips of wood. Squat bookshelves, green plush curtains on the two windows looking out onto Nybrogatan, a green sofa in front of the empire desk in the corner, a conference table made of russet mahogany, about two and a half meters long, the seats upholstered with burgundy fabric. Which floor was it on, how do you get there, asked Brecht. From the front office up two wide flights of stairs, then up a spiral staircase to the antechamber. After checking in at reception and a long wait, in through the paneled door. Inside, the windows were open. The tower of the insurance company Fylgia was visible on the corner of Birger Jarlsgatan, its flag flapping. Red company name on a white background. The wind was blowing over from Berzelii Park and carried the scent of the acacias. The traffic hummed around the roundabout at Nybro harbor, one of the skerry steamers let out its huffing departure signal. Behind the brass lamp with the green shade sat the mistress of the house. Matthis handed her the copy of the piece. The large format alone, the brownish paper of the manuscript, was unusual for her, displeased her. She weighed it in her hand. She was familiar with Brecht as the author of the text of The Threepenny Opera. She thought of him primarily as someone who adapted old plays. Rustling on the wall beside her were theater bills, announcing Gustav Vasa at the top, directed by Sjöberg. What was her face like, asked Brecht. Expansive, cool, said Matthis. It couldn’t be called beautiful, as it lacked personal features. More like a mask. As if she were playing the role of a queen. A high brow. Hair brushed back slick. White pearls in her ears. White pearls around her neck. In order to understand Engelbrekt and the revolution of fourteen thirty-four, said Ljungdal, we first of all need to address the era of Margaret and the Kalmar Union. As if he hadn’t heard the remark, picturing the director’s office with its open windows, Brecht said: that’s so we know which way the wind blows. He asked if anything else had stuck out to Matthis. There was a glass door on the left, half covered by a curtain, he said. Through a pane decorated with Jugendstil vines, a section of the colonnade in front of the theater’s upper circle could be glimpsed. The closed nature of the room in which his play had been dismissed was pierced by the glass door. The direct access to the auditorium, to the stage, this seemed to preoccupy Brecht, who never went to the theater. We should try to win over Sjöberg, said Matthis. Brecht waved that away in an instant. Just as he had met with a lack of understanding from the director of the theater, he now showed disdain toward the other representatives of the establishment. The piece could only be realized under our own direction, said Brecht. The directors here are unfamiliar with our theories. And when he spoke of us, he meant his willingness to engage in collective work on the text, his openness to a range of suggestions, while the task of deciding on a selection remained his—although particular images, confrontations, and plot developments were then put back up for discussion. His digressions from the topic, which could have the appearance of inattentiveness, interruptions—something he didn’t tolerate in others—quickly revealed their relevance to the discussion. Right from the start, the form of the work was lit up before us. It was to comprise two distinct parts, each full of contradictions, but in the first the powers from above would prevail, and in the second, the forces from below. Developing commerce, building cities, the early bourgeoisie
rose up against the society of the knights and prelates in their fortified castles and churches. For a century, a new class had been forging ahead, its contours still hazy, here dependent upon the local nobility, there linking up with foreign enterprises, gaining advantages over static, landed property with mobile capital. The clash of two worlds: one losing its old means of compulsion yet still capable of retaining its privileges through diplomacy and military supremacy; the other progressive, in that it removed feudal forms of exploitation, while simultaneously grasping for a new, economic form of despoliation. The great majority of them, the peasantry, descending from the primal society of the freeholders who had kept workforces under their yoke. This is where the broad, enduring strength was to be found; in the village communities the vestiges of independence had been maintained. Individual landowners reached the rank of lords and squires, and, driven by the upheavals, they turned to the lucrative business of mining; the smallholders, by contrast, found themselves on a downward trajectory, weighed down ever more by the burden of taxes. Lacking rights, scarcely able to break free of their abasement, in their exodus into the mining districts, during the initial phases of industrialization as day laborers and wage laborers, the peasants formed the foundation for the emergence of an insurrectionary class. Initially as a result of the encroachment of the aristocracy and later of the expansion of the middle classes, the king had been forced to forfeit his despotism; to maintain his power he now needed both the favor of the nobles and the support of the artisans and tradespeople. Margaret, daughter of the Danish King Valdemar IV Atterdag, betrothed to the king of Norway at the age of ten, raised by Märta, the daughter of the seer Bridget, of Swedish royalty, was elected to elevate the status of the royal line once again, and, following the establishment of the union between Denmark and Norway, to take Sweden as well and unite the three Nordic realms, creating a single great power under Denmark’s leadership. First scene, fitting of the child as a model for the queen, as she is later to appear. Anointed and combed by the maids, in a gown of golden, shimmering brocade, her face tiny in the headscarf falling over her shoulders, enveloped by the bell-shaped robe held together by an enormous gemstone brooch, the child stood like a doll before the stamping royal household. The child was then passed to the sickly, gauche king, who, in his tight-fitting jacket, covered in embroidered axe-wielding lions, with a low-sitting belt, his dagger hanging from the middle, in two-tone stockings, his feet in pearl-embroidered poulaines, his shoulders broadened by his ermine-lined robe, straining to hold his head up under the heavy crown, holding his slack hand toward her. Surrounding them, the knights, in basinets with nose guards, pointed helmets with visors raised, tall chain-mail collars, polished breastplates, leather vests, arm guards, and greaves, clasping hefty swords. To litanies, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and drumming, on the Sunday after Easter, the ninth of April, thirteen sixty-three, Margaret was wed to Haakon by an archbishop and two bishops. In the fall of the same year, Albert of Mecklenburg rode into Stockholm to have himself named king of Sweden. Brecht was considering a simultaneous scene in the style of medieval drama, in which Margaret’s antagonist would be introduced. Then, in working with the historical documents, the necessity of creating a contrast arose. The mention of the long-running feud between the Swedish noble families, of the battle for the crown, between son and father, brother and brother, the reference to the struggle for castles and fiefs, the continual shifting of the borders of the three monarchies in the north, the pillaging and plundering, the selling off and pawning of provinces and shipping channels, the devastation of the soil, the blind robbery of the people through exploitative tributes, the starvation, the treacherous murders and unsuccessful military campaigns of the Folkung dynasty, and finally the reports about the era reigned over by angels of death, by death dances and Black Masses—all of this gave form to the backdrop to Albert’s appearance for Brecht. The aftereffects of the Great Plague—which had taken more than a third of the population and rendered idle large sectors of agriculture and mining—hung over the arrival of the man from Mecklenburg, who did not master the language of the land, who represented the business interests of the Hanseatic League, and who drew his legionnaires from the armed forces of the Teutonic Order. His appointment by the ruling classes, who needed a dictator from outside of their competing clans—their enmity fueled by the intrigues to secure the throne—and who would resolve the grievances with terror while remaining their instrument; the calculations of the risks and the gains associated with his installation; the hope of the ruling classes that Albert, supported by his powerful coastal cities, could stave off the Danish advance and allow them to retain their position of power; the expectations harbored by the territorial lords, mine owners, and merchants of generating an increase in their capital, an economic boom, a boost in production through the consolidation of their connections with the Hanseatic League; all the efforts to curry favor with foreign princes, with all manner of self-interest lurking in the backs of their minds; and then also the peasants’ fears of raised interest rates and tax payments, the unrest of the cottagers, who saw no escape from their plight; all this had to find expression in the presentation of the new monarch. The ten-year-old girl was still standing in wait, only hinting at what was to come. The German, on the other hand, was immediately able to unfurl the full breadth of his thirst for power, boasting about his connections, which stretched from Novgorod to Bruges, his people also having long ago infiltrated Stockholm. Thanks to their diligence and skill, they’d got hold of the transshipment centers, the commerce, and guilds; the harbors held the freight ships from Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund; for the most part, the most eminent families of the capital were of German extraction. He entailed something of the epoch of upheaval, a cunning representative of the nobility, hungry for the lucrative evolution of his office; at the same time, however, he was open to the social changes in Europe, where feudal domination was being shattered by peasant insurrections and the bourgeoisie were asserting themselves against the courts, where emperor and pope were losing authority, government administration was moving toward centralization, and handiwork, commodities trading, and finance were finding increasingly stronger forms of organization. In addition to the war specialists, his staff included representatives of the merchant class, the shipping companies, and banks, as well as experts in mining, who were supposed to get to work driving forward the extraction of iron in Dalarna. From ancient times, the Germans—who had acquired stakes in the mines and ironworks—had been entitled to privileges in the form of exemptions from taxes and duties. The production of copper and valuable iron was the foundation for the increase in exports. Apart from wax—always in demand with the continental church administrations—and furs, Sweden scarcely had goods to offer. The far-sighted, enterprising landowners, in alliance with the wholesalers, were the ones who had organized Albert’s recruitment. During the period of decline, of the shortage of labor power, they had secured themselves the majority of the ownership of the pits; the discovery sites were rich with ore, inexhaustible even, and anybody who rose to prominence here could be sure not only of a leading role in the realm, but also of gaining a foothold in international commerce. The most powerful local lord, Jonsson Grip, who had taken the farms of one peasant after another and had acquired most of the mines in Dalarna, now stood as one of the preeminent members of the high council that was preparing to receive the duke. With both the accoutrements of the royal child and the inauguration of the prince from Mecklenburg, the aim was to present a symbol of sovereignty to represent the two respective quests to establish a great power. The forces standing behind each would have to measure themselves against each other, dragging the lower classes along with them and gradually driving them to revolt. The institutions were the same on both sides, shot through with conflict, their internal divisions already containing the seeds of their rupture. With the well-equipped fleet from Warnemünde and heavily armed mercenaries behind him, the emissary of the Hanseatic cities addressed
the Swedish nobility with condescension. They were unable to read and write, nor could they express themselves in a global language, and were at a loss among the modern rules of business. Regardless of whether they possessed enormous swaths of arable land, forests, and mines, in his eyes they were nothing but filthy farmers, dressed in stinking rags and animal skins; they stepped before him as supplicants, relying on interpreters, which allowed him to keep his remarks ambiguous. Grip, having never been knighted because he was too stingy to turn up with armor and charger at the annual weapons show and place himself at the services of the royal armed forces, was nevertheless from the upper nobility, that of the financiers, and held the title of steward, his coat of arms bearing the griffin’s head with a drop of blood on its beak. Well-versed in all manner of intrigue, he thought himself a match for the man from Mecklenburg, capable of getting anything he wanted out of him. Picturing the offices, homesteads, and castles that he would receive, the mountains of grain, the herds of livestock, the iron ingots, he led the welcoming party for the new arrival. In a violent shift from the rigid hierarchies of the wedding—with its blank, metallic procession and the rustling carmine and violet of the church elders—creaking carts smeared with feces and packed with corpses drove in, followed by grave diggers, wailing women and monks. At the foot of a beam structure swarmed the lowly and the impoverished, the beggars, some crawling crippled, hobbling on crutches, petty sinners and outlaws sat locked in the stocks, other prisoners, ropes around their necks, were shoved past by henchman with kicks and blows of the lance; conjurors and acrobats attracted small groups of onlookers around them; another mob, in provincial dress, knives and axes in their belts, stood off to the side waiting. We discussed how we could convey something of the character of the Stockholm of the day, that stilt city. Thick stakes, posts, ringed the islet, and double rows of planks, connected by roughly hewn trunks, had been rammed into the water in front of the city wall to protect against waves and attacks from seamen. We gathered impressions from looking at old images. Before sketching out the play’s plot, Brecht decided on the appearance of the stage. Only once a material space had been produced could the figures also become concrete in their arrangement and distribution, their relations to one another. The notion of a below and an above formed part of the fundamental conception. Yet contained within these were the internal divisions, the contradictions that were constantly emerging. The wooden platform was at once bulwark, walkway, and castle floor, uniting inside and outside. Brecht was considering a mystery play which, accompanied by shawms, pipes, and fiddles, could be performed by jugglers who, swinging scythes and dressed as skeletons, evoked the calamity that primarily affected the poorest, while the rich were not only able to remain unscathed but, in the midst of the terror and desolation, to indulge in the pleasures of life. The mention of the rhymed chronicle, in which the events from the end of the fourteenth century up to and beyond the struggles for independence had been delivered in song form, sparked the idea of writing the play—or at least interspersed sections of it—in these simple, stilted verses. Street theater could provide the natural prelude. The actors would be swept from the stage by the noblemen as they arrived, to show who was in charge. Down below: convulsing, scuffling, lying in the muck; up above: a broad, regimented parade, rising up level by level. In front of the flag-bearing mast of the cogs out in the harbor, standards, tufts of feathers, and shields jostling about. Down below: earthy gray, black, umber; above: red, white, silver, gold. The festively dressed citizenry stepped forward from the wings to the blaring of horns and drums, partially concealing the clayey hues with their broad robes and wide-brimmed hats. Once Albert had positioned himself in the middle of the hosts with his retinue, everything below fell to its knees. Only the spokesperson of the hoard of peasants climbed up onto a barrel, tilted his face upward and raised his hand, as if he wanted to break into a desperate cry. But above him soldiers in chain mail beat their spears and crossbows on the ground. Meekly, the compatriot backed off. Albert wore a sleeveless cloak, peppered with uncut rubies and emeralds, which a number of Swedish courtiers admired to such an extent that, when it was removed by a page, they grabbed it and fondled it. Even the bottle of perfume with which he was sprayed aroused such curiosity that, with a dismissive flick of the wrist, he bequeathed it to the noblemen, who couldn’t get enough of splashing it around and then sniffing at one another. In a short, custom-tailored jacket with peacock feathers sewn into it and silken hose, he sat on the throne, behind which the Mecklenburg coat of arms, the black, silver-horned bull’s head against a golden background, was being held aloft. Up above, the confrontation between the free territorial lords—the small group who, thanks to ancient traditions, could afford to brutally maltreat their subordinates and who had become the filchers of the people’s labor—and those exponents of an urban culture that had already revealed that the rates of profit could be increased if the living conditions of the producers were to undergo certain improvements. Up above, peers invested with unlimited powers yet acting according to different principles; on the one side the men of practical speculation, au fait with the global market, and on the other side the barbaric robber barons, with their shortsighted racketeering and frugal planning; the primitive barter economy up against the knowledge of manufacturing processes and large-scale workshops. Up above, the overlords of the worldly and ecclesiastical realms, who under the pressure of crisis were compelled to open their sparsely populated, expansive domain to new members from without, and the experienced travelers, coming from densely populated, exploited regions. Below, the burgeoning bourgeoisie, the representatives of the guilds, and the magistrate officials, who would soon assume the podium up above. On this level too, both solidarity and conflict. United in their rejection of absolute rule from above, the self-assurance of the masters clashed with the hubris of the patricians, who, due to the possessions they had amassed, thought themselves better than the others. Above, the haggling for ranks and titles, for land rights, fiefdoms, and benefices, for tax exemptions and access to trade routes; below, the friction around differences in status, the already emerging division into haute and petite bourgeoisie, the brewing of deeper unrest through a new division between tradespeople and the protoproletarian masses. Standing on the tribune, the councillor of the realm announced that the appointment of Albert as king was contingent upon his pledge to unfailingly govern in accordance with the will of the Swedish nobility. Only in name was he to be at the helm; they intended to manage the affairs of the state themselves. Above, people talked at cross-purposes, false clashes were rehearsed over issues that had already been agreed upon. What was accomplished by the antics of the pickpockets down below was enacted by the conspirators above on a larger scale, accompanied by solemn verbiage. Up there, the future captains, vice regents, bailiffs, and judges practiced their craft; here, a slashed bag was all that could be had. A speech was delivered in the tongue of the Mecklenburger. Albert provided the assurance that had been demanded of him. Was full of gratitude that he could now settle in the country that he and his ilk had considered their home now for some time. He would be sure, he said, turning to face those below, to work for the good of all in this city, whose castle, house of God, monastery, trading posts, and harbor had been constructed by Germans, and whose borders he intended to expand to include the surrounding islets. The adulation that he received from below, the silence from above, revealed the contradictions between town and country. By raising the emblem of Mecklenburg, the two-headed eagle of Lübeck, and the vivid insignia of the guilds of German origin, the bourgeoisie and the tradespeople declared where they considered their loyalties to lie, and the councillors launched into a surprising announcement, pledging their allegiance to the esteemed prince of the cities of the Hanseatic League. That they did this before the knightly and ecclesiastical council had even completed the coronation was a grave violation of custom; it was as if the representatives of the bourgeois classes wanted to get in the first word, ahead of the autocrats, who ha
d never sought their opinion. The peasant used the confusion to mount the barrel again, high-borns, he cried, removing his cap with its flaps that fell down over his ears, most humbly we wish to beseech you, but was instantly knocked down by a man-at-arms. We must, said Brecht, give an impression of the ongoing skirmishes. The attempts by the aristocrats to oblige and pin down the duke were met with his well-honed evasive maneuvers. If, for example, they spoke of the necessity of domestic dominance over the ore mines, then he would have his interpreter convey that, in order to improve output, he had brought with him a shipload of experienced miners from the pits in the Harz Mountains. Bo Jonsson Grip, sensing that the foreigner was trying to cheat him out of what was his, enjoined him to replace the military flag he bore with a different coat of arms that conveyed Sweden’s supremacy; whatever you want, answered Albert, give me a banner with three crowns, and I will bear it for you. Perhaps, said Brecht, the event could be concluded with the voice of the church, with a severe sermon delivered by Bishop de Vadaterra, the emissary of Bridget in Rome. Previously, the worldly powers had featured; now it was time to hear the voice of the power whose weakening had been declared but which would nevertheless continue to assert itself for centuries to come, castigating, casting darkness, provoking confusion and wars. Amassing riches for itself, it preached the virtue of poverty. Smothering revolts, it called for patience, promising rewards in the afterlife for suffering endured in this one. With the delivery of the message, the haggling for arable land and forests, for mines and smelting furnaces, for palaces and castles, taxes and customs was replaced by feigned gestures of piety and contrition. The confidant of the holy woman, in soutane and lace apron, vividly portrayed Bridget’s vision of the death of Christ to the gathering. If she calls herself the bride of Christ, said Brecht during Ljungdal’s discussion of the revelation, then the fate of her fiancé ought to be lamented even more. What an unloading of hatred onto that man, what lust in the description of his humiliation and torture. She saw him before her, her beloved, completely naked, the whip having shredded his flesh down to the ribs. Brecht imagined Bridget composing her Revelationes. How she kneeled on the stone floor, running her fingers over her skin at the sight of the blue-bleached skin of the crucified man, who couldn’t lay a hand on her. His face wet from gobs of spit, his tongue bloody in his open mouth, his stomach pressed flat against his spine because all the liquid had drained from his viscera, his hands and feet wrenched by the nails to the point of tearing apart, at the moment of death the holes still dilated by the weight of his body, his shoulder blades pressed hard against the wood in their final twitching. With the invasion of the German troops into Poland, with the dizzying speed of their advance, we thought of that dreadful and prophetic address, which spoke of the mutilation of the human being and of the pain of taking part in it. I myself, the possessed woman screamed at us, closed his mouth with my fingers and closed his eyes, but no matter how I pressed, as he was taken down from the wooden beams, I couldn’t bend his stiffened arms, and his knee could not be straightened. Now that the knights and the dignitaries of the city had been admonished in this way to look inside themselves and to commemorate the one who had suffered for them, Brecht claimed, the Christian education of the young Margaret could now be portrayed, tying it back in with the opening scene. As a sixteen-year-old, in the burlap robe of a nun, a thick rope tied around her waist, head shaved bare, pale, slender, she would pray on her knees before her foster mother. Before she was to be draped in the king’s bed for copulation, to inculcate in her that she was to face her coming obligations with severe self-discipline, she was given a caning in an elaborate ritual, to which she submitted, lying prone over a wooden railing, her dress hitched up, her hands folded in devotion, her eyes wide open and face unmoved. Kissing the punishing hand. Enter the maids again. They remove her hemp cloth, put on her wig, her brocade dress, its curved neckline tightly clasping the bust, sweeping out widely at the base, with its gold-embroidered pomegranate design over a purple background. The sudden transformation of the gray nun into the triumphant regent, said Brecht, had to be retained as an impression on the retina, so that her form would shine through into the following scenes, as it were, until she reenters the action in Kalmar, to reinstate the Nordic independence and reunite the three realms.