Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (German : Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches), also known as The Private Life of the Master Race, is one of Bertolt Brecht's most famous plays and the first of his openly anti-Nazi works. It premiered on 21 May 1938 in Paris. This production was directed by Slatan Dudow and starred Helene Weigel. [1] The production employed Brecht's epic theatre techniques to defamiliarize the behaviour of the characters and to make explicit the play's underlying message.
The play consists of a series of playlets, portraying National Socialist Germany of the 1930s as a land of poverty, violence, fear and pretence. Nazi antisemitism is depicted in several of the sketches, including "the Physicist", "Judicial Process", and "the Jewish Wife".
It was followed by many more plays that were openly anti-Nazi ( Arturo Ui , etc.) and attempted a Marxist analysis. They were written while Brecht was in exile in Denmark and were inspired by a visit to Moscow, where he experienced the growing significance of the anti-Nazi movement there.
In 1974, the postmodern East German dramatist Heiner Müller wrote an 'answer' to Brecht's play, titled The Battle: Scenes from Germany (revised from a text first written in the early 1950s; first theatrical production opened on 10 October 1975 at the Volksbühne). [2] Tony Kushner's 1985 play A Bright Room Called Day was also based on this play.
There are six other scenes, which Brecht eventually cut out:
We'll watch them follow the band till
The whole lot come to a standstill –
Beaten, bogged-down elite.
We'd laugh till we were crying
If it weren't for our brothers dying
To bring about his defeat.
(Brecht, 1957, Methuen Drama)
The play was the basis of a 1942 Soviet film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin entitled The Murderers are Coming .
A BBC Radio production in 1965 starred Maurice Denham, Celia Johnson and Timothy West. The production featured some of the earliest radio work of TV and film composer Carl Davis; one of the songs in the production – "The German Song" – was sung by Dominic Behan, the Irish folk singer/songwriter and playwright, accompanied by the BBC Radio orchestra, arranged and conducted by Carl Davis.
In his 2007 work Ravenhill for Breakfast and its 2008 published edition Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, British playwright Mark Ravenhill reworks the themes of fear, suspicion, and the effect terror has on the mind from Brecht's play – especially from the vignette "The Spy" – into the fourth play of his own cycle, Fear and Misery. Ravenhill's play briefly tells the story of Harry's confrontation with his wife Olivia, over dinner, about moving to a safer, gated community for the psychological good of their son Alex, who has been having dreams about a headless soldier. The play, however, is a deeper discussion of the entrenchment of fear and insecurity in both Harry's and Olivia's lives, and in modern society as a whole.
In 2020, Jeremy O. Harris remixed this play into Fear and Misery of the Master Race (of the Brecht) which was performed in the Red Bull Theater's Short New Play Festival.[ citation needed ]
In September 2, 2022 - the troupe "Theater of the Transitional Period", directed by Vsevolod Lisovsky, gave a street performance in Moscow, which was interrupted by the police. The director, the participants of the performance and the audience were arrested.
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated Gestapo, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, primarily known for being a main architect of the Holocaust.
Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a German politician, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich until 1943, later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, subtitled "A parable play", is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II.
Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office, as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision".
The Night of the Long Knives, or the Röhm purge or Röhm Coup, also called Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
The Sturmabteilung was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Roter Frontkämpferbund of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and intimidating Romani, trade unionists, and especially Jews.
Hans Michael Frank was a German politician, war criminal and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in German occupation of Poland during the Second World War.
Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families. He was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime. Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, and other terms were already in use during the Weimar Republic. Finally, some are taken from Germany's cultural tradition.
Downfall is a 2004 historical war drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by its producer, Bernd Eichinger. It is set during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, when Nazi Germany is on the verge of defeat, and depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler. The cast includes Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Alexander Held, Matthias Habich, and Thomas Kretschmann. The film is a German-Austrian-Italian co-production.
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has been represented in popular culture ever since he became a well-known politician in Germany. His distinctive image was often parodied by his opponents. Parodies became much more prominent outside Germany during his period in power. Since the end of World War II representations of Hitler, both serious and satirical, have continued to be prominent in popular culture, sometimes generating significant controversy. In many periodicals, books, and movies, Hitler and Nazism fulfill the role of archetypal evil. This treatment is not confined to fiction but is widespread amongst nonfiction writers who have discussed him in this vein. Hitler has retained a fascination from other perspectives; among many comparable examples is an exhibition at the German Historical Museum which was widely attended.
Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer, Nazi Party leader, and theoretician from Darmstadt. He was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany. As a deputy of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, he organized the World War II SS-Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads that carried out mass-murder in Nazi-occupied territories.
Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil is a 1985 American made-for-television war drama film about two German brothers, Helmut and Karl Hoffmann, and the paths they take during the Nazi regime. The movie was directed by Jim Goddard and starred John Shea, Bill Nighy, Tony Randall, David Warner and John Woodnutt. The film shows Karl, who was originally enthusiastic about the Nazi Party, becoming disillusioned and Helmut, who was at first wary of the Nazi Party, joining the Schutzstaffel (SS) and later being an accomplice to war crimes.
Wolf-Heinrich Julius Otto Bernhard Fritz Hermann Ferdinand Graf von Helldorff was an SA-Obergruppenführer, German police official and politician. He served as a member of the Landtag of Prussia during the Weimar Republic, as a member of the Reichstag for the Nazi Party from 1933, and as Ordnungspolizei Police President in Potsdam and in Berlin. From 1938 he became involved with the anti-Nazi resistance, and was executed in 1944 for his role in the 20th July plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler's regime.
Wilhelm Eduard Schmid, better known as Willi Schmid, was a German music critic, and an accidental victim of the Night of the Long Knives in a case of mistaken identity.
Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of Nazism by the Nazi Party (NSDAP), which promoted exclusion of women from the political and academic life of Germany as well as its executive body and executive committees. On the other hand, whether through sheer numbers, lack of local organization, or both, many German women did indeed become Nazi Party members. In spite of this, the Nazi regime officially encouraged and pressured women to fill the roles of mother and wife only. Women were excluded from all other positions of responsibility, including political and academic spheres.
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