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A House on Chausseestrasse
In October 1948 Bertolt Brecht and his wife, the Austrian born actress Helene Weigel, returned to Berlin after spending fifteen years in exile. Back in February 1933 Brecht had been in a Berlin hospital on the night the Reichstag was set on fire, as the prelude to Hitler's seizure of power, and this probably saved him from being rounded up by Nazi stormtroopers and put in a concentration camp. He slipped away to Prague the next day and eventually made his way to Denmark, where he lived for six years. After brief spells of residence in Sweden and Finland he travelled across Russia to Vladivostok then made his way to California, where for six years he eked out a living on the fringes of the Hollywood film industry. On 30 October 1947 he was hauled before the US Congress's House Committee on Un-American Activities, then investigating communist influence in the American film industry. Experience had taught Brecht that it was unwise to hang around when trouble loomed and the next day he left for Switzerland. A year later he made his decision to live in the eastern sector of Berlin. Ideologically Brecht was drawn to the Soviet zone and some of his old communist friends now had jobs there and they welcomed him back. Brecht and Helene Weigel were given permission to form their own theatrical company - the Berliner Ensemble - and they began to perform Brecht's plays. The Brechts lived for a time in the Adlon Hotel until they were allocated a villa in the prestigious Weissensee district of the city.
In October 1953 the Brechts moved to 125 Chausseestrasse, a three-storey building in the centre of East Berlin. Brecht occupied an apartment on the first floor and his wife moved into an apartment on the second floor of the same building. When Bertolt Brecht died in August 1956 his widow moved to an apartment on the ground floor. She faithfully preserved Brecht's apartment and its effects, and used the vacated second floor to house the Bertolt Brecht Archive, containing the playwright's correspondence and manuscripts. After Helene Weigel's death in 1971 her apartment was preserved and the building - to be known thereafter as the Brecht-Weigel House - was retained as a memorial to the famous couple. It is currently funded by a grant from the German Federal Government.
The house was built in 1840 and Brecht's apartment contains a large room, formerly a sculptor's studio, which Brecht used as a study and conference room. The room is sparsely furnished with desks and chairs, and has a bookcase along one wall containing books in several languages, including some volumes obviously collected during Brecht's stay in the USA, such as a biography of Joe Hill and several books on American folklore. Somewhat surprisingly there is a long run of old Penguin crime fiction paperbacks on Brecht's shelves. The room also contains various items of theatrical memorabilia associated with Brecht's plays. The Brecht-Weigel House is not open directly to the general public but it can be viewed by appointment, with parties limited to eight people. On learning that we were a British group the curator arranged for an English-speaking guide to conduct us around the house. Researchers wishing to use the Brecht Archive are also expected to book an appointment.
The window of Brecht's study overlooks the Dorothea Cemetery. Established in 1763 this cemetery contains a section known to Berliners as the 'French Cemetery' because it was the burial ground used by the city's Huguenot community. The main cemetery contains the graves of the philosophers Fichte and Hegel, and the architect Schinkel. When Brecht died in 1956 he left a request that he be buried in the Dorothea Cemetery and his grave is marked by a boulder bearing only his name. When Helene Weigel died she was buried beside her husband and her grave is also covered by a rough stone enscribed 'Helene Weigel Brecht'. After the burial of Brecht the Dorothea Cemetery became a kind of VIP's burial ground for the German Democratic Republic's leading cultural figures including the writers Johannes Becher, Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers and Arnold Zweig; the Dada luminary and inter-war photomontage exponent, John Heartfield, and the composers Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau.
The building next door to the Brecht-Weigel House is currently hidden by scaffolding and plastic covers as it undergoes refurbishment. This house is the property of the Stauffenberg family, relatives of the man who attempted to blow up Hitler in July 1944. The Stauffenbergs lived in the west after the war and their property in Chausseestrasse was requisitioned by the East German authorities. In the wake of reunification the Stauffenbergs have successfully reclaimed their property and called in the builders to carry out renovations. This house was not the home of Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who planted the bomb that failed to kill Hitler, his Berlin residence survives in the leafy Wannsee district in the former British zone of the city. Von Stauffenberg and the other bomb plotters, who were executed in the courtyard of the old German War Ministry in the Bendlerstrasse, are commemorated by a plaque on the site and a permanent exhibition in the Museum of the German Resistance located in the Bendler Block itself. Together with the rebuilding of synagogues and restoration of Jewish cemeteries destroyed by the Nazis, the opening of the Jewish Museum, and the building of the Holocaust Memorial no one can accuse modern Berlin of trying to airbrush the Nazi period out of its history.
It is a short walk from the Brecht-Weigel House to the Berliner Ensemble. The original theatre was opened in 1892 and was then called the Schiffbauerdam. In 1928 it staged the world premiere of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera. The theatre was severely damaged in a bombing raid but rebuilt after the war and in 1954 Brecht and Weigel were appointed its directors. After Brecht's death Helene Weigel carried on the Brechtian tradition at the 'Schiff' for another fifteen years. In her own words she gave up acting when she found she no longer had the strength to pull the wagon in Mother Courage, however she retained an iron grip on the company until her last gasp. After the death of Helene Weigel the rights to Brecht's plays passed to the Brecht children, Stefan and Barbara. Stefan Brecht chose to remain in the USA but Barbara moved with her parents to Berlin, where she still lives. She keeps a firm control on what rights are granted to which theatres and carefully monitors productions of Brecht's plays to see that they conform to her father's ideas.
Both Brecht and Weigel were communists, although Brecht was never a card carrying member of the German Communist Party (KPD) or its East German successor the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Helene Weigel, on the other hand, was a party member and could usually be relied upon to follow the party line. Brecht was always something of a marxist maverick but because of the special position he held in the cultural life of the GDR he was allowed considerable latitude in expressing his views. He was on friendly terms with Wilhelm Pieck, the old Comintern stalwart who became the GDR's first President, but his relationship with the SED leader Walter Ulbricht was never close or cordial. The Brecht-Weigel directorate was given a free hand to, quite literally, run its own show and the result was a period of great theatre.
The Berliner Ensemble no longer receives a state subsidy: it has to survive by attracting audiences and it manages to do this. Plays by Brecht are still included in its repertoire and people flock to see them. However ageing theatregoers who remember the Brecht-Weigel productions of the fifties and sixties claim that something is missing from contemporary performances of Brecht's plays, and maybe they are right. Perhaps the Brecht-Weigel partnership did produce something special. In the same way there are veteran theatre-goers in this country who look back with nostalgia on the Old Vic's productions of 1944-48 when Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Sybil Thorndike trod the boards at the grand old theatre in the Waterloo Road. Golden ages never last, but the work of great dramatists does and Brecht's plays are still popular with modern German theatre audiences. A visit to the Brecht-Weigel House, followed by a stroll around the Dorothea Cemetery, rounding off with an evening at the Berliner Ensemble is a must for any Brecht buff visiting Berlin.
Archie Potts
Acknowledgement: I am grateful for the assistance provided by the Curator and staff of the Brecht-Weigel House, Chausseestrasse 125, 10115 Berlin-Mitte.
