Re: why is it so quiet (in the US)

[Alexander Karschnia]

Interestingly, the best articles on this situation came from one researcher
of stalinism, Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic and one historian of the
holocaust, Timothy Snyder in the Boston Globe. While the first reminded us
that Trump's political career began with spreading the "birther myth" to
render Obama's presidency illegitimate, the latter compared the current
strategy to the "stabbed-in-the-back"-myth after WWI in Germany and how
that poisoned German democracy for the years to come. Both researchers are
well-read in Hannah Arendt's theories of "totalitarianism". In fact, after
the US elections Arendt's book was sold out for months on Amazon. It is
actually the parallel to Stalin that is most illuminating: If you wanted to
know what Stalin was up to next, just check what he accused the opposition
of: It was less an accusation but an announcement. Similarly many
commentators understood his accusation of voter fraud in 2016 when he
declared that Hillary Clinton did not win the popular vote with 3 million
votes, but only collected "illegal votes". Now in 2020 he takes this to the
next level.

While the Republican Party has a long tradition in voter suppression, they
could now also use an old trick to rig the election. There has been an
example: the elections of 1824 using the 12th amendment. For people who
read German, this is the historical background:
https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/corrupt-bargain-die-us-praesidentschaftswahlen-1824-und-2020/?no_cache=1

The twitter-posts used in this article show that this scenario is already
present in the discourse of the Trump base. The reference to the 12th
amendment is like a code-word for a right-wing version of cancel-culture: a
Trump fan answers "Lation4Biden" with this reference: "Your Vote no longer
matters."

For that reason it is premature to think that only because his legal
strategy is failing, we are safe. It seems that the legal battle is only of
a fund-raiser. More importantly it is a way to keep up the false claims
about voter fraud. Trump needs to continue this confusion until the date
when the electoral college is voted in mid-dec. Then he could either rig
the vote of the electoral college. Or he could manage that the vote is
passed on to the House of Representatives. In both cases he has real
chances to stay in office.

In Germany there was a similar situation in February in the state of
Thuringia. Although all parties agreed to not use the votes of the extreme
right-wing AfD, the liberals did use them to make their candidate
prime-minister. He did not last long, but it was a shock. It could happen
that we will have a déjà-vu on the night of 8th to 9th 2016 after Dec.
13th, when the Electoral College got together. There would be no way to
legally stop that. In this case only a "colour revolution" would help.

But what are the Democrats doing? Instead of getting ready, they
marginalize those people in their party who have the ability for
grass-roots-mobilization, in fact the same people who Joe Biden owes his
victory. History is repeating: German democracy was attacked over and over
again between 1919-1933. The workers beat back all attempts for a putch.
And over and over again they were betrayed by their leaders. At the end, a
"democratic putsch" is what got Hitler into power. He was "hired" by the
conservatives who believed they could use him for their goals (just like
Mitch McConnell and the Reps thought they could use - and control - Trump.)
And then Hitler could use legal means to destroy democracy: the
state-of-emergency act. We are very close to the abyss. Hopefully we will
collectively get a hold of a floating barrel - just like the sailor in E.
A. Poe's maelstrom. But I would not count on it.






Am Sa., 14. Nov. 2020 um 18:32 Uhr schrieb Eric Beck :

> It seems to me that the chance of a Trumpist coup is slim, as his support
> among the forces that might assist him doesn't seem to be there. But I try
> not to put myself in the position of thinking like those forces, so what do
> I know.
>
> But that possibility isn't the only reason to be frightened of the US
> election results. Trump being ousted aside, it's clear from what transpired
> that the US electorate is a more conservative and more nationalist place
> than it was four years ago. More than two-thirds of Trump's voters were
> enthusiastic about him. The extremely high turnout that is supposed to lead
> to more left-leaning outcomes instead saw Trump accruing as much of the
> vote as Democrats did, and the Democrats lost seats in the House and failed
> to take control of the Senate, which they should have coasted to. In
> California, 65% of the population voted *for* Biden but almost the same
> number voted *against* protections for casualized workers and against
> reinstituting affirmative action. Those results deserve underscoring: in
> the midst of a deep recession, voters decided for regulations that would
> further immiserate precarious workers, and after a summer of uprisi

Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch

[Alexander Karschnia]

It would be really interesting to get a report on the gathering in Rome.

I wrote a report on the Berlin gathering in German, luckily someone
translated it into English and republished it here:

https://opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/alexander-karschnia/we-are-building-strange-left-towards-democratic-modernity

An important topic that came up in the discussions here was the economic
question. How to combine the economic with the democratic question. The
latest books of the Berlin-based theorist Joseph Vogl is called „The
Sovereignity-effect“. It deals with the institution of central banks. In
his genealogy of central banks it is striking to see how they are
deliberately designed to be intransparent and undemocratic. How they have
become a sovereign of their own. Vogl tells their fascinating story,
focussing on the Bank of England (as opponent to the French revolutionary
government), and the founding of the Fed 100 years ago – but it really
becomes explosive when he describes how the German Bundesbank was founded
after the war and how the ECB was modelled after it. The peculiar
cirumstances about the foundation of the German Bundesbank is that it was
founded before any other political institution came into existance in
Western Germany: it existed prior to the government or parliament! This
tells a lot about how it is conceived: it is intended to be isolated or
„immunised“ from the democratic sovereign. It is really worthwhile to
compare the description of the eurogroup by Varoufakis with the analysis of
Vogl: informal networks that form exclaves or islands within the
governments, a club of central bankers who become the highest authority in
all question related to money. With no democratic mandate whatsover!

Now in this context it is interesting to re-read Foucaults lecture on the
„birth of bio-politics“: in depth he describes the rise of neoliberalism
with respect to German and Austrian liberals, the so-called „Ordoliberals“
from Freiburg. If we want to discuss neoliberalism, we should start with
them, for example Hayek who inspired the anarcho-capitalists from the US.
(It was Hayek after all who came up with the idea of a „denationalization
of money“.) If we want to discuss the „deficit of democracy“ in Europe, we
have to discuss how it is a structural requirement of the working of the
ECB. Democracy in Europe has been re-defined after WW II in this way: as
„market-confirm democracy“. This term is younger, it is product of the
ongoing crisis. It was put in Merkel's mouth by her opponent and now
partner from the social-democrats. But it is much older – from 1948: the
founding of the Bundesbank that put „price-stability“ as highest value:
much higher than the unstable will of the people. If we want to discuss the
situation in Europe, we should start here, looking back on 1948. Since the
EZB started working in 1998, it is 1948 all over Europe. It is the
realization and radicalization of the „ideal of a market liberated from
politics by politics“. If it continues to work this way, maybe soon it will
be 1933.


2016-03-24 11:47 GMT+01:00 Geert Lovink :

>
> Dear nettimers, below is a digest of a few recent messages sent to the
> DiEM members, which might be of interest for the discussion on this list. I
> promise not to forward everything. Was anyone there last night in Rome?
> Best, Geert



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Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch

[Alexander Karschnia]

   Dear Armin,

   I am afraid that the picture you got from the DiEM meeting was
   incomplete: the second of the three sessions during the day-time
   meeting of the "working group" was about economy. The DiEM initiative
   seems inspired by the "modest proposal" that Varoufakis made last year
   together with Stuart Holland Galbraith and James K. Galbraith: the
   bottom-line is that the existing institutions and contracts do not have
   to be changed, but just used in a different way. This
   bottom-line-sentence was repeated by Varoufakis during the evening. In
   that respect, the proposed change is not radical, but very pragmatic,
   reformist: a kind of PERESTROIKA of the EU. Combined with GLASNOST:
   radical about DiEM is the unconditional demand for transparency. Thus
   more important than his "modest proposal" was Varoufakis role as
   "megaphone of the whistle-blowers" since his legendary interview about
   the eurogroup. It is no coincidence that the most pathos that this day
   generated culminated in the repeated demand: "Asylum for Edward
   Snowden! Free Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning!"

   Is it the economy, stupid?

   What is at stake is to understand economy as political economy: to
   re-politicise economy. To fight for the priority of politcs. Autsterity
   is not a natural consequence of economic "mistakes" (and moral
   misbehaviour or cultural differences), but a political project! In this
   respect I would say: it's not the economy, stupid, it's politics. But
   this was not consensus, some of the participant did insist that it  i
   s  the economy and thus what is needed foremost a new social policy:
   return to the national welfare state or the transformation of the EU
   into a European social state? a European basic income? What impressed
   me the most were the activist-trade unionist RIGHT2CHANGE from Ireland
   who had a clear agenda demanding democracy, equality and justice. For
   this goal they did not only manage to mobilize the street in an
   impressive numbers, but also started a huge educational campaign for
   municipalities and working-class communities. These are trade unions of
   the future that transform themselves into political reforming
   catalysts. Compared to them, Hans-Jürgen Urban, the German
   representative of the trade unions, sounded lame and defensive when he
   spoke of "also economic democracy". In earlier days this would have
   been called "socialism". (But while Bernie Sanders is running an
   amazingly successful grass-roots-movement, not denying to be a
   "democratic socialist".) It is obvious that in Europe we do have
   socialism: a "socialism of the rich" which transfers the burden of debt
   from the banks to the shoulders of the citizens. A "recovering banker"
   reminded us that the idea that all debt has to be paid back was quite
   novel. Bankruptcy is part of the game. Capitalism without bankruptcy
   was like catholicism without sin (it keeps us straight). When the
   British banker heard that Ireland would pay back all their debt, they
   couldn't believe their luck! What happens if you don't do that?
   Nothing! Look at Iceland. When the bankers demanded their money back,
   they said: "We don't have any. We can pay you in fish." And then? A few
   years later, they borrowed them money again. It's just like in a bad
   relationship...

   What was consensus among the economists was that there is an
   investement-crisis in Europe. If there was echoes of the past in the
   city of Berlin, than it was the ghost of deflation: deflation is the
   enemy. Not inflation (which is the nightmare of the German government
   and public). It was deflation that paved the way for Hitler, not
   inflation. Thus the German austerity-politics has been called
   "Brüning-politics" by German critics after the infamous chancellor who
   preceded Hitler: It was the same vicious circle of
   austerity-authority-recession that Varoufakis described for the whole
   of Europe. Germanys investment-rate today is the lowest in 40 years -
   that is a huge political scandal! This was said by Varoufakis, but this
   should have been repeated over and over again, because it did not make
   it into the discussion or the media. And because of this
   investment-crisis, wages are too low throughout Europe. But to change
   that, the European trade-unions must "help Hans" (as a campaign by
   French trade-unions called it a few years ago) to return to a struggle
   for higher wages. It seems to me that this is the really difficult part
   and Hans-Jürgen Urban knows this all too well. But as long as the
   trade-unions in Germany do not insist on their RIGHT2CHANGE and start a
   educational campaign, this will not change. The reactions of the
   workers during last year's "Greece crisis" showed that it takes a
   looong way. Too long, I am afraid. We don't have time for a long march.
   Thus it might be smarter, not to use the word "socialism" an

Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch

[Alexander Karschnia]

   As a person who watched the evening on live-stream, but spend the day
   in the Volksbühne to listen to the discussions of the âworking groupâ
   I just want to add: the âworking groupâ was not working â too many
   people who spoke too short, no real discussion. BUT it was good to get
   an impression on who-is-who of the activist scene in Europe. Not big
   names (âIs Negri not coming?â), but groups and initiatives. To catch
   the spirit of the Catalanian municipalities, the determination of the
   Irish RIGHT2CHANGE-movement, the Belgian Alter Summit (to name only a
   few). Their contribution made it very clear that an European
   democracy-movement has to combine both: pushing for the transformation
   into a transnational democracy AND strengthening the local level at the
   same time (municipalities, town hall meeting etc.) Striving towards a
   constitutional assembly to turn the EU into a real republic AND working
   on the ground in assemblies. Peaceful co-existence between a sovereign
   European parliament (not just a loose collection of national parties
   vaguely working together) AND a network of ârebel citiesâ (like
   Barcelona) as well as a wide-spread network of smaller assemblies: a
   âthird wayâ between representative democracy and direct, basic or
   âpresentistâ democracy. This is also a question for the âthought
   collectiveâ that Geert proposed.

   So much about the future, now about the past - the future of the past.
   I want to mention Boris Buden's contribution who spoke very strongly
   about the far-right government of Croatia, pointing towards their
   mission of historical revisionism. The discourse on âtotalitarianismâ
   that was developed in Germany during the 80's to relativize the German
   guilt-question, now has become a political weapon in the hands of the
   successors of their former collaborators. Buden's resumee: âIt is not
   yet clear anymore who won the second world war: ANOTHER PAST IS
   POSSIBLE!â It is clear who were the forces that had a vision for a
   democratic Europe: the antifascist resistance-movements. A movement to
   democratise Europe ought to be â no: IS an antifascist movement! It is
   the merit of Stephane Hessel to have called this legacy back into mind.
   Hannah Arendt had written about that long before. It was also her who
   worried that a pan-European movement would inevitably develop into an
   anti-American one. The anti-American affect was not very present at all
   at DiEM, that is already a lot taking into consideration how strong it
   is in some of the contemporary movements: the so-called âpeace-movement
   2.0â (around Ken Jebsen) in Germany has been mentioned before, there
   are other examples of right-wing movements who want to join forces with
   left-wing movements to form a so-called âQuerfrontâ (political
   crossover-front). DiEM might be an alternative to this
   left-right-crossovers by trying to open a âpopular front 2.0â from
   liberals and greens, socialdemocrats and socialists to the
   post-autonomous movements such as blockupy, anarchists with the little
   @) or Bookchin-style democratic federalists. I hope my impression is
   correct, because that is what is urgently needed from my point of view.

   A central theme was, of course, the ârefugee-crisisâ: Europe once was
   not a place to escape to, but to escape from. The concept of âfortress
   Europeâ has this background: Nazi-Germany at the end of WWII. In the
   late 70's a book was published by the new nazi-networks in Germany
   called âEurofascismâ which elaborated on how many European volunteers
   came to Germany to join the German army to fight against Russians and
   Americans. The author distanced himself from Hitler and most of the
   nazis for being too german-centric, but he praised some fringe of the
   German army to develop a âEuropean visionâ. The concept of âfortress
   Europeâ has to be seen as the manifestation of what Buden called
   âanother pastâ.

   Last, not least: EU-colonialism. It was a Belgian artist Sven
   Augustijnen who pointed out that the EU was not only founded by civil
   servants who made their experiences as administrators in Congo, but
   also the EU-flagg resembles the flagg of Belgian-Congo! The EU was a
   neocolonial project. And it is our duty to change it into a
   postcolonial one. For these reasons I am hoping for a DiEM25 meeting in
   the near future in Brussels and I would suggest to invite Sven
   Augustijnen. All in all there were not enough artists involved, I felt.
   But most of all: there was a real lack of involving
   Europeans-without-European-background for a movement that says: ANOTHER
   EUROPE IS POSSIBLE!

   2016-02-13 20:42 GMT+01:00 Felix Stalder :

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA256

 On 2016-02-13 19:05, morlockel...@yahoo.com wrote:

 > The trend(s) that Europe is seeing itself dragged to are not result
 > of 'wrong' thinking and misbehaviour 

Fwd: The Greek elections?

[Alexander Karschnia]

   In Germany an appeal was started by Jürgen Link (editor of the
   magazine kultuRRevolution), because the media-coverage of the Greek
   elections has been extremly distorted:

   http://appell-hellas.de/?page_id=105

   The appeal is directed towards "German Greeks and Greek Germans", but
   now it is also translated into English, so I guess the spectrum it
   adresses has broadened.

   Very interesting to see, how "Europe" begins to be a point of reference
   also for the far left, for example in the mobilization to come to the
   opening of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt/M. on March 18th:

   http://www.thecommuneofeurope.org/

   2015-01-28 11:10 GMT+01:00 Pavlos Hatzopoulos :

 > On 01/28/2015 02:44 AM, Flick Harrison wrote:
 >> The militant nationalism that Tsipras displayed by visiting the
 >> Resistance memorial makes me think Syriza is stupid, or talking to
 >> the stupid.  The fascist threat isn't rolling into Greece in
 >> panzers; it's a few inches to the right of their coalition partners
 >> ANEL.  Maybe this theatrical bow to violence was actually intended
 >> for a far right audience, either to attract them, or threaten them,
 >> or both?  Surely the Germans are inured to WWII references by now?

 This is really too perverse a reading of this event. Syriza is
 becoming the first truly European political party that has emerged in
 the context of this freaky organisation we call the European Union.
 One needs only to see how Syriza's political agenda is always-already
 European. Its electoral success is inherently linked to the analysis
 of the problem of Greek debt and of Troika austerity policies in
 Greece as a European problem and to the imagining of building a
 European movement against them. More so, it's proposed solution to
 this problem is again inherently European: asking for a European
 conference on debt to deal with the writing off of state debt in
 several countries, demanding a new architecture for the Eurozone,
 proposing some type of European new deal, etc. The worst case
 scenario in the ongoing negotiations with the EU is that Syriza will be
 offered some kind of compromise within the "national horizon" on easing the
 Greek debt and the existing austerity policies, so that the larger
 European problems can remain under the carpet. If Syriza takes this
 possible deal, then it will be transformed to a regular national
 political party.
 <...>


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OUT OF JOINT: The 'new spirit of capitalism', creative class struggle and the ghosts from the future.

[Alexander Karschnia]

OUT OF JOINT: The 'new spirit of capitalism', creative class struggle and
the ghosts from the future

My question is: Is this ‘new spirit of capitalism’ the ghost of communism?
And is this ghost the ghost from the Communist Manifesto or the ghost of
this ghost? As Jacques Derrida reminds us, Marx himself had a very
ambivalent attitude towards ghosts in general. In The German Ideology he
was not haunted, but hunting the ghosts of others. In a very German
tradition he made a distinction between spirit: Geist (in German: spirit,
mind, psyche, wit and nous) and ghost: Gespenst (spectre). Maybe this
distinction is in itself an expression of a very German ideology: The
spirit gives life, as we know from the Bible, but the letter kills. And the
ghost reminds us, that this distinction is not working. In this case:
Jacques Derrida and his criticism of the phantasm of pure presence. „Has
this thing appear’d again tonight?“ asks Horatio, the friend of a prince
formerly known as Hamlet. Just a few moments later this thing does appear
„in the same figure like the king that’s dead“. The guards urge him: „Thou
art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.“ There are already two observations to
make: first that the first appearance of the ghost is a re-appearance.
Ghosts always re-appear. Secondly: it’s scholars who are expected to speak
to it. In Germany this does not come as surprise: the most famous scholar
in German culture, a figure borrowed from England, Faust is from the
beginning of his drama desperartely trying to get in touch with spirits.
Or: ghosts. In German the difference between these two – Geist and Gespenst
– is a structuring element of the whole Geistesgeschichte, a very German
concept that is only roughly translateable into „intellectual history“ or
„history of ideas“. Even more peculiar for non-Germans is the concept of
Geisteswissenschaft, in the English speaking world better known as sciences
of the humanities or arts, here referred to as „spiritual science“. As soon
as the terminological divide between the concept of Geist (spirit) and
Gespenst (ghost) is becoming poriferous, we are leaving the well-lit halls
of academia and enter the twilight zone. This zone would be the space in
which different forms of art and sciences of art begin to interchange. To
my understanding this space is the stage – at least the stage of newer and
newest forms of theatre which don’t reduce themselves to task of staging
literature, even if it is the tragedy of the prince of Denmark or of Faust.
This interchange of different artistic practices – visual art, music,
performance – does not necessarily lead to a Gesamtkunstwerk: it can be as
beautiful as the chance meeting of a sewing-machine and an umbrella on a
dissecting-table; the most important aspect is that these forms contaminate
each other. Therefore theatre is always an impure form of art and thus also
a preferred model for a concept of thinking beyond binary oppositions: high
and low, old and new, but also here and there, before and later – just like
„this thing“: „’Tis here“, „’tis here!“, „’tis gone!“ Exit ghost and
re-enter.

Hamlet’s ghost is a ghost from the past, as Stephen Greenblatt has argued
who identified it as a Catholic lamenting about the new religion of
protestantism, especially puritanism that forbid the old practice of
absolution by money (especially by money being paid by surviving family
members). As we know from Max Weber, protestantism has brought about a new
ethos, a sense of „inner-worldly asceticism“ (innerweltlicher Asketismus)
which he called „the spirit of capitalism“. This spirit is best expressed
in the advice from a father to a son – not of Polonius to Laertes, but by
Benjamin Franklin who coined the phrase: „Time is money.“ – which implies
that time, just like money, could be saved. The double meaning of this
expression – to be saved – is highly illuminating for this spirit: if you
save time or money, you can be saved. This implied a complete break with
ancient and medieval ethics which condemned the behaviour advocated by
Franklin as sinful. Now is it possible that with the rise of a ‘new spirit’
of capitalism which is no longer based on an ascetic, but rather hedonistic
ideals, the old spirit has turned into a ghost? According to Eve Chiapello
& Luc Boltanski this ‘new spirit of capitalism’ is the answer of capital to
the challenge of 1968: In the manuals for the so called ‘new management’
all the points of critique on alienation at the work-place have been
incorporated which lead to the transformation of the work-regime into the
neoliberal idea of an adventureous „entrepeneurial self“ for which artists
have become role-models. Just like the protestant sects of the 16th
century, the creative workers may have unintentionally and from the margins
developed a new way of life, a set of morals: a new ‘spirit’ which does not
simply reflect the changes of the economic base, but anticipates them. In
other words words words: Hamlet’s ghost today ma

V for what? Brecht & Benjamin applied on contemporary activism

[Alexander Karschnia]

*V*

*V **for what?* For *Vendetta *as in the famous movie of the
Wachowski-Brothers? for Victory? (or for *Peace*?) Or *V *like the title of
the first novel of Thomas Pynchon? Or *V* like *V2 *? the infamous
nazi-rocket which inspired Pynchon for his next novel *Gravity?s
rainbow?
*in the German translation by Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Piltz *Die Enden
der Parabel* (the ends of the parable). The answer is: yes ? all of this. *V
for Vendetta*, Victory, Peace and as a Thomas Pynchon trope. All of these
references I want to use to talk about the actuality of Benjamin & Brecht
today, in times of crisis. And about hand-signs...

The image that I want to evoke is that of the statue of Bertolt Brecht in
front of the Berlin Ensemble, wearing a *V for Vendetta* mask while someone
is hiding behind him, raising his or her arm to spread fore- and
middlefinger ? as you normally would behind the head of the person next to
you while a picture is being taken. But in this case, Brecht is not being
mocked, but someone lends an arm to indicate victory. *And *peace. If you
put the 2 together you get the outdated German word: ?Siegfrieden? for
?victorious peace?. This was the declared aim of the military leadership in
the First World War: peace through victory. As we all know, history took a
different course and instead Germany saw peace only after defeat. My first
comment would be that Brecht, who witnessed that war in a med-squad,
fancied this kind of peace. Not a ?Siegfrieden? but a Defeat-?Frieden?. In
his unfinished masterpiece *The downfall of the egoist Johann Fatzer *(*Der
Untergang des Egoisten Johann
Fatzer*)
he encourages the victor to quickly leave the site of victory, even: to
escap from the place of his success and to rather ?dive deep under to
experience the lesson of defeat.?

This would be the first lesson by Brecht to be learned: that you can only
learn through defeat, by being defeated. Only the one who is put in an
inferior position, who has lost, the loser is able to learn. One could
argue that exactly this is what did *not* happen in Germany after First
World War, otherwise there would not have been a second one. This is true
and this is also (one of) the reason why Brecht never finished his
masterpiece *The downfall of the egoist Johann Fatzer*. Brecht had worked
for five years on it, rewrote it a couple of times and abondaned it
altogether in 1931. Two years later the nazis took over state-power and
Brecht had to emigrate. In the following war whose inavoidableness Brecht
saw very clearly, the first rocket was shot into space: the so-called A4
(Aggregat 4) which was called *V2* for *Vergeltung*: vengance by the
nazi-minister of PR Joseph Goebbels: a revenge-rocket, a so-called *
Wunderwaffe*, miracle weapon that should turn the tide and bring about a
reversal of fortune and finally lead to peace- through-victory. But once
more, victory was on the other, the allied side, most prominently expressed
in the spreading of fore- and middlefinger by the British prime minister
Winston Churchill. Instead of ?Siegfrieden? Germany was faced with
unconditional surrender: *bedingungslose Kapitulation*, abbreviated as:
U.S. One of the consequences of this unconditional surrender was a military
occupaton by allied forces: the U.S., Great Britain and France in the
Western part, the Soviet Union on the Eastern side.

When Brecht returned to Germany, he chose the Eastern part. In East-Berlin
he was put in charge of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in which he had
celebrated his greatest success with *Die Dreigroschenoper (Three-penny
opera) *in 1928. Heiner M?ller once joked that Hitler saved Brecht ? from
becoming a star of the Boulevard. The truth is that Brecht *had* tried to
continue in this direction ? and failed. What followed after this
commercial failure was: the crisis ? not Brecht?s individual one, but the
Great Depression, the crash. This experience ? and subsequently the rise of
the nazi-movement ? radically altered Brecht?s work. The most radical
plays, the so-called *Lehrst?cke *were written in this period between 1929
and 1933. It was also the time when Brecht & Benjamin started their intense
collaboration: Five years before Benjamin had unsuccessfully tried to make
the acquaintance of Brecht. In the same year he wrote that he was now
convinced of the ?actuality of a radical communism.? By now he had
abandoned his academic career to become a freelance writer. He had decided
to become the most important literary critic of his time.

Thus Hannah Arend wrote about the match between Brecht & him: ?The most
important literary critic working with the most important writer of his
time.? She was one of very few who described their alliance in positive
terms. Most of Benjamin?s friends and colleagues, Gershom Scholem in
Jerusalem, members of the Institute of Social Research, most prominently
Theodor Adorn