Brecht's War Primer: the "photo-epigram" as poor monument

Afterimage, March-April, 2003 by David Evans

In 1949, two German states were founded. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was oriented towards the U.S. and its allies in Western Europe. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was under Soviet influence. Containment of Germany had been a major concern of the allies meeting in Potsdam in 1945, however, the formal division of Germany into two states registered the ways in which attempts to create a postwar order merged into what became known as the Cold War. The term was first used in 1947 to describe the emerging tensions between the former allies of World War II. The Soviet Union confronted the U.S., and each power laid claim to a different part of the former German enemy.

The origins of the two Germanys ensured the interpretations of World War II became an important factor in their ideological rivalry from an early date. The inauguration of commemorative days was complemented by exhibitions, monuments and school curricula. Cumulatively, the two German states sought legitimation with rival histories and, ultimately, rival political theories. What was National Socialism? What was Communism? What was representative democracy? How were these different state forms related? The two Germanys asked the same questions but offered divergent answers. West Germany Stressed its democratic constitution and political institutions, bringing it in line with Western partners like the U.S. National Socialism was treated as a regrettable antidemocratic aberration that terminated in 1945 Defeated, it posed no threat to the revival and extension of the Weimar experiment. Rather, the danger came from Soviet Communism. Not only had this authoritarian infamy outlived National Socialism to which it was comparable, but it now menacingly occupied German territory via its equally authoritarian puoppet, the misnamed German Democratic Republic.

East Germany rejected this "fable." National Socialism was treated as a dictatorial response to capitalism in crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Capitalism still existed in West Germany in the 1950s, but, potentially, another economic crisis could cause West Germany to abandort its democratic facade and welcome a new Hitler. Such a seenario was only unimaginable in those states that had gone beyond capitalism: the Soviet Union and its allies. Under Communism, public planning and collectivization created an equitable economic infrastructure. For the first time in human history, popular sovereignty had a material basis. In this respect, the soviet system was an advance on those 50-called representative democracies (like West Germany or the U.S.) that in reality, merely represented the interests of the dominant economic groups. Communism, rather than bourgeots democarcy, represented the surest defense against its reawakening.

War primer was first submitted to an East German publisher in 1949, but various objections delayed its appearance until 1955. In the tense, early years of the Cold War, even orthodoxy caused problems. One disputed "photo"-epigram" deals that the National Socialism invasion of the Soviet Union. Brecht's starting point is an American press cutting in which a protographic portrait of a German soldier is placed next to another of his Soviet counterpart. The similarities of subject matter, size and composition create a mirror image, implying that the invading Wehrmacht and the defending Red Army are somehow compatible. Under the images, Brecht comments: