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Stephen Parker. Bertolt Brecht. A Literary Life. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 689 pages.
Now we know it all! Although Werner Hecht's Brecht Chronik 1898-1956 (1998) and his Brecht Chronik. Ergänzungen (2007) already gave the German- speaking public an extremely detailed chronicle of Brecht's life and his literary endeavors, Parker's book provides English speakers who are still interested in Brecht with an incredible amount of new insights into the highly complex personality of this author, whom many critics still consider the most important playwright of the 20th century. And the Anglo-American press—among them the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review, and the Washington Post—acknowledged this effort in the most laudable terms, calling it the best written and the most convincing treatment of this author in the English language ever. And for good reason. While former works on Brecht, especially Martin Esslin's Bertolt Brecht, A Choice of Evils: A Critical Study of the Man, His Works, and His Opinions (1959) or John Fuegi's The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht (1994), were written in a Cold War spirit by portraying Brecht as a politically misguided opportunist or even a morally corrupt personality, Parker's book presents Brecht mainly as a highly gifted individual who excelled also as a writer of the highest rank.
So far, so good. The Cold War is over, as many would say. But is it really? We know attacks of this nature were quite effective for a long time and led to the disregard or even neglect of many leftist authors, even in the Germanspeaking countries. Who is still interested in Peter Weiss, Friedrich Wolf, or Arnold Zweig, among others, who were so prominent in the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany? In the case of Brecht these ideologically motivated critiques have by and large failed. Although he is not as prominent a figure as he was earlier, he is still considered even by conservative or mainstream critics as a writer to be reckoned with. His importance could not be repressed as easily as in the case of other outspokenly leftist authors. Although his works are not staged as often any more, his former fame still lingers on.
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