With Brecht on the Uttingen beach

Created: 06/17/2022, 17:04

By: Susanne Greiner

Friedrich Schloffer (on the microphone), Silvia Kellner (at the mailbox) and the musicians Engels & Jankovic (front left) gave the audience a poetic summer evening at the vernissage of "The Story of Brecht's Country House in Utting" in front of raumB1.

© Greiner

Utting – It's complicated.

Whoever wants to understand the story of the rescue of Berthold Brecht's country house from the National Socialists has to go through a labyrinth of names and feints: to be found in the "Utting-Konvolut", a collection of letters about Brecht and his country house story.

Excerpts from the bundle including photos have been on display in Harry Sternberg's raumB1 since last week.

To make the complicated easy, there was a vivid, atmospheric perspective at the vernissage on a mild Thursday evening: BR spokesman Friedrich Schloffer read and commented on the story, Silvia Kellner unraveled the knot of names on the flipchart and Engels & Jankovic provided musical accompaniment.   

"I looked at it for more weeks than I lived in it," Brecht writes about House 100, now Im Gries 3. The old trees, the pond with "mossy carp", rhododendron floods, the ends of the garden can hardly be guessed at.

His stay in the house in 1932 was short-lived: "I was rich for seven weeks of my life." Then, in 1933, Brecht fled from the National Socialists to exile in Denmark.

He will not come back until 1949.

His love for the lake begins at an early age.

In 1928 he wrote the last bars of the Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill at Pension Thalmeier, Seestraße 10.

A year later he stayed with Helene Weigel in Schondorf - Brecht already had two children by two women.

In the end there will be four children by three women: the poet is a womanizer.

Two are enough for the Landhaus story: Weigel and the opera singer Marianne Zoff, with whom Brecht had a relationship until 1925.

Hanne was born in 1923.

In 1929 Brecht married Helene and continued to have affairs, for example with Margarete Steffin in the Uttingen country house.

Polyamorous, so to speak.

In 1932, Brecht bought the house he wanted on the Ammersee from the Bavarian ex-police chief Josef Ritter von Reiß.

According to his own statement "from the proceeds of a piece", probably the Threepenny Opera.

On the other hand, a written "confession of guilt" by Brecht from the year of purchase testifies that his father mortgaged the house for the necessary 11,400 Reichsmarks (even then Utting was expensive) and lent it to his son.

Brecht even gives his father power of attorney.

Now who paid?

One does not know.

At the end of the story, Brecht's brother Walter swears that Brecht did not contribute a tired Reichsmark.

1933, Brecht in exile.

Nevertheless, the house is safe from confiscation by the Nazis, which Brecht angered with clear criticism - until Brecht was expatriated in 1935 and thus lost all rights in Germany, including that of owning a house.

But his father still has the power of attorney.

And Brecht acquitted him of possible sympathies for the naughty son: with a fake letter writer who, as a middleman between father and son, sham-corresponded and pointed out the political distance between the two.

Even Brecht's daughter Hanne has nothing to do with her father's activities, the imaginative writer lets slip into the letter.

Does Brecht already intend to choose Hanne as the owner of the house?

Because the real problem is at the door,

when Brecht's father dies in 1939 - and with his death the power of attorney fizzles out into nothing.

Now the house is fair game.

Enter Walter

This is where Brecht's brother Walter comes into play.

He is the heir – Brecht does not exist, so to speak – and thus also inherits the mortgage on the Uttingen house.

Whoever is going to buy the house – and Walter knows that has to be done quickly, the Nazis are already pawing at the doorstep – owes Walter the purchase price.

Walter manages to appoint his lawyer, the Augsburg Judicial Councilor Adolf Deiler, as house manager.

As?

Who knows.

However, Walter was a member of the NSDAP from 1940, allegedly on the instructions of his exiled brother, in order to protect the family – says Walter.

Anyway, Walter doesn't want to buy the house.

Because the Nazis smell the agreement, they would confiscate the house immediately, he says.

His idea: Hanne should buy the house.

But she is not yet of legal age, so she cannot buy a house.

Her mother Marianne, Brecht's ex, is now married to Theo Lingen (it's really complicated): Lingen, the actor who was also extremely popular with Göbbels.

Theo even wants to adopt Hanne – but she insists on the name Brecht.

Then Lingen should make an offer to the legal advisor Deiler to buy the house, Walter suggests: for Hanne, from her compulsory share of the substantial inheritance.

But alas, Theo has no money, puts everything in the house he just bought on Lake Wolfgang – at least that's what he writes in a letter to Walter.

Even if the theater and film star from "M - The city is looking for a murderer" and "Dr.

Mabuse” delights the masses every day in the Berlin State Theater.

Well then.

Another solution is needed.

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Deiler succeeds in having Marianne installed as Hannes' guardian.

now the house purchase can go ahead without interference from the authorities.

The bill is as follows: Hanne's compulsory portion is around 23,600 Reichsmarks.

Of this she cedes to Walter: 12,000 Reichsmarks for the house plus 136.60 Reichsmarks for Deiler's work plus 681 Reichsmarks for inheritance tax.

Her guardian Marianne receives the rest.

Hanne now owns the house by the lake.

She will sell it as Hanne Hiob in 1953.

Brecht does return to Germany in 1949 – but never to Utting again.

In 1952 he and Helene bought the country house in Buckow, today's Brecht-Weigel house.

In 1956 he dies.

Today the house at Gries 3 is rented to Berliners.

The exhibition in raumB1 mixes letters, diary entries and summaries of the events.

Plus photos from the Berlin Brecht Archive.

Still, that's a lot of text.

If you want to read the texts, which are wonderfully equipped with stylistic capers, you should have time.

The vernissage

... last Thursday evening packed the texts with reading, picture and music for the balmy summer evening miracle.

Schlöffer (“thanks to Harry Sternberg, who made all this possible”) draws the conclusion: a house purchase “without any money ever having flowed”.

His voice brings the letters to life and gives the name emotional volume.

Silvia Kellner does the categorizing: Brecht's family tree grows out of her brush on the flipchart, along with a plot scenario around the house.

Sybille Engels and Jank Jankovic enrich with bass and guitar.

The audience swims melancholically beautifully through their own compositions on the warm Uttinger summer lake beach evening and finally comes to the poetic end: "In the pale summer, when the winds whistle overhead / Only in the leaves of the big trees / Do you have to lie in rivers or ponds / Like the plants,

where pike live.” Schloffer reads Brecht's “About Swimming in Lakes and Rivers”.

And when Engels picks up trombone and voice to intone Brecht's "Song of the Inadequacy of Human Striving," it seems as if Brecht has come again after all.

To his country house in Utting.