“I Can Go Hungry Everywhere”: Brecht, Mr. Keuner, and Cosmopolitanism

Summary

Introduction: Brecht's Dialectical Cosmopolitanism

Shortly before his death in 1956, Bertolt Brecht remarked on an oftenoverlooked and often-misunderstood topic in his theoretical oeuvre, namely the concept of cosmopolitanism. Aware of twentieth-century cosmopolitanism's blithe conflation of the economy, politics, and art, Brecht expressed dissatisfaction with the then popular usage of the term in the following short paragraph titled “Cosmopolitanism 2” (1956):

Modern cosmopolitanism has nothing to do with that of the German classical writers. It blurs the concrete contours of national cultures and replaces them with the odious, abstract utility of monopolies. / 1 The truly international works are national works. / 2 The truly national works incorporate international tendencies and innovations. (BFA 23, 384–85)

In this paragraph, Brecht explains that there is a notable difference between the earlier formulations of philosophical cosmopolitanism by canonical German authors such as Friedrich Schiller, Immanuel Kant, and Heinrich Heine, and a contemporary concept encompassing the global hegemony of capitalist modes of production. From Brecht's perspective, there is virtually no relation between the political, moral-philosophical literary works and the expansion of capitalist markets leading to monopolization for the sake of utility. As will be elaborated, Brecht stood on the precipice of what would eventually become the discourse on globalization, which, for him, was an empty perversion of traditional understanding of the concrete concept: cosmopolitanism. Instead of opposition toward cosmopolitanism, Brecht implies that there is a compatibility between emancipatory aesthetic praxis and the theory of cosmopolitanism. This compatibility is made intelligible through the depiction of the dialectic between the national and the international, which, by means of artistic practice, illuminates the interdependence of localized culture and humankind across the world. As Philip Loeser has previously argued, Brecht was “eager to point out how contemporaneous cosmopolitanism should be based on the acknowledgment of national particularities.”

Throughout his life, Brecht maintained that there is an inextricable relationship between culture and politics, and the contradictions of the latter can be emphasized and possibly even reconciled in the former. A main intention behind Brecht's work was bringing these contradictions—be they political, economic, or social—to the surface so that their tensions may be further processed or synthesized. The cosmopolitical is thus not an abstraction divorced from local and national culture.