Brecht's Pocket Bible

Author(s): G. Ronald Murphy

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Nov., 1977), pp. 474-484
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE

G. RONALD MURPHY

For some time now there has been interest in the paradoxically
prominent role of biblical elements in Brecht's drama. Grimm,1
Mayer,2 Brandt,3 and Fuegi4 and others have long commented on the
life-long persistence of biblical language, scenes and incidents in
Brecht's writing. To me there has long seemed to be present a con-
sistent pattern of use of four basic sections of the Bible in a highly
predictable and frequently dialectical pattern: I. Genesis, Exodus and
the historical books for satirical and war material; II. Job, Ecclesiastes
and Proverbs from the wisdom literature for the role of death and
futility; III. Isaiah and Jeremiah from the prophetic books for social
comment, and IV. Matthew (and John) for the Passion and Death
accounts. This I originally endeavored to establish on the basis of
the plays themselves (cf. Brecht and the Bible diss.; Harvard, 1974),
since I never dreamed it would be possible to do so on anything but a
werkimmanent basis. This has now been changed. We now have
Brecht's Bible.

In April of this year, I received the news from the Brecht-Archiv

in East Berlin that, in response to my request that a search for such a
text be undertaken, a small pocket Bible was located in Brecht's pri-
vate library. This find should prove quite a boon to Brecht research
since this Bible contains numerous markings by Brecht and is inscribed
in the flyleaf: bertolt brecht / 1926.5 The following article will at-
tempt to relate these findings and to suggest possible correlations with
Brecht works-before and after the above date.6

The edition of the Bible was printed in Berlin in 1924 by the

British Foreign Bible Society in a thin-paper, pocket-size version. The
time of its purchase corresponds both with that of his working on the
Berlin production of Baal and, most interestingly, with that of his first
reading of the Communist classics.7 It is the time of Mahagonny and
the Dreigroschenoper.
In his pocket Bible he has both left bookmarks at the places where
he was reading and marked the text in red and in pencil, giving evi-
dence of a very widely distributed reading among the biblical books.
There are in all thirteen texts noted by Brecht. One should, of course,
be cautious about thinking that these thirteen are exhaustive, since
they give evidence of ongoing reading of the text and since they do not
include many loci communes which Brecht used repeatedly in his

474

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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE 475

plays. Of the thirteen texts noted by Brecht in the Old Testament,

three are from Genesis, four are from the historical books, two are
from the wisdom literature (Job and Proverbs). In the New Testa-
ment, two are from Matthew's Gospel, one from Mark and one ex-
tensive section is from John. In the case of many of these texts it is
not difficult upon examination to speculate upon Brecht's possible in-
terest in them based upon his works, but there are also some surprises.
I. Old Testament
A. Genesis

1. Genesis 1. Here Brecht has written in (in pencil) the num-

bers 1-7 next to the corresponding verses for the seven days
of creation. In the satirical "creation" of the city of Ma-
hoganny, Brecht used this text of Genesis frequently, includ-
ing a slight change in the duration of the sabbath rest:
"Und eine Woche ist hier: sieben Tage ohne Arbeit."8
Trinity-Moses sings this line in the first scene. Curiously
enough Brecht has marked nothing in the book of Exodus
even though Moses and the Ten Commandments is exten-
sively used as a motif in the same play.
2. Genesis 26:12 Marked in red.
"Und Isaak siite in dem Land und erntete in jenem
Jahre hundertfiltig; denn der Herr segnete ihn."
The frequent biblical presumption (cf. Job's antagonists)
of the intimate connection between material prosperity and
divine approval may be the reason for Brecht's red ink.
Mahagonny reveals that the capitalist city has quite a differ-
ent founding principle.
3. Genesis 32:15-17 Marked in red. (I cite in German, since
English does not attach as much importance or humor to
animal types.) Jacob is bringing a small present to his
brother Esau:

. . zweihundert Ziegen, zwanzig Bcke, zweihundert

Schafe, zwanzig Widder und dreissig saiugende Ka-
mele mit ihren Fiillen, vierzig Kiihe und zehn junge
Stiere, zwanzig Eselinnen und zehn Esel, und tat sie
unter die Hand seiner Knechte, je eine Herde beson-
ders und sprach zu ihnen: Geht vor mir her und lasst
Raum zwischen einer Herde und der anderen.

The shock of such a present suddenly appearing before

the front door may well have amused the author who has a

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476 G. RONALD MURPHY

delightfully parallel imagined scene in Baal. There the be-

wildered farmers were to be tricked by Baal into trekking in
with their steers and standing around bewildered with them
in front of the bar.9
B. The Historical Books
1. I Samuel 17:24-28, 39, 43-44 'Marked with a red diagonal
line. Chapter seventeen is the famous war story of the battle of
David and Goliath between the battle lines of the Israelites
and the Philistines. Brecht marked out three particular pas-
sages: the first, 24-28, deals with the question of profit.
What wealth will be gained, asks David, by the man who
slays Goliath? The second is a small detail which might
have been interesting from the point of view of pacifist sym-
bolism: David refuses to wear the sword of Saul on the
grounds that he is not used to it and he finds it impossible
to walk with it on. He, therefore, fights the giant and over-
comes him, without using the symbolic weapon of war.
Brecht's third underlining (43-44) is of the animal imagery
used as Goliath threatens David with death (imagery quite
remarkably akin to that of the Choral vom grossen Baal):
Komm her zu mir, ich will dein Fleisch den Vbigeln
unter dem Himmel geben und den Tieren auf dem
Felde.

Brecht seems to have been very much taken with the Da-
vid story and often alludes to David's tragic cry: "Absalom,
Absalom, my son Absalom," but this passage is not under-
lined in the present Bible.
2. I Samuel 18:4 Marked with a red diagonal line. This short
but eloquent verse deals with the love between David and
Jonathan, a love which leads to the Brechtian "mistake" of
generosity and kindness, giving away money and possessions.
[Und Jonathan schloss mit David einen Bund, denn er
hatte ihn lieb wie sein eigenes Herz.] Und Jonathan
zog seinen Rock aus, den er anhatte, und gab ihn
David, dazu seine Riistung, sein Schwert, seinen Bogen
und seinen Gurt.

One thinks immediately of Brecht's touching accounts of

tragic generosity inspired by love: Jimmy Mahonny (Paul
Ackermann), Kattrin, Grusche and others. Though com-
mended here in the Bible, in the 1st Book of Samuel, Brecht
sees generosity as fatal in "the city."

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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE 477

3. 1 Kings 11:11-13 Marked with a vertical pencil line. In the

context of this passage, God is supposed to be passing severe
judgment on Solomon for all his unspeakable crimes of idol-
atry and infidelity which the previous verses of the chapter
have described with a lively degree of directness. Brecht's
interest, however, is not in this vivid speech of accusation,
but in the subsequent verses (11-13) where the Lord mani-
fests a delightfully human inability to maintain his severe
mood for more than several lines. Brecht marked the pro-
gressive "weakness" of the Lord as He retreats from His
position:
Weil das [vorherige] bei dir geschehen ist und du
meinen Bund und meine Gebote nicht gehalten hast,
die ich dir geboten habe, so will ich das K6nigtum von
dir reissen. . . . Doch zu deiner Zeit will ich das noch
nicht tun um deines Vaters David willen. . . . Doch
will ich nicht das ganze Reich losreissen. ...
The sequence well . . doch noch nicht; doch nicht das
ganze, must have appealed to Brecht's love of "fudging"--
the inability to carry out in deed, what one should be obliged
to because of principle (or ideology). Brecht's Vater in Die
Bibel'o is Brecht's first hero of such "weakness" (as opposed
to the strong Grossvater and Bruder) and Grusche's gradual
"weakening" as she takes a longer look at the endangered
baby, may be a later example of a Gedankenform that would
underline a depiction of God as not absolute, but capable of
gradual weakening.
4. 2 Kings 18-19 A piece of paper inserted here to mark the
place. While we cannot be certain here which particular pas-
sages might have interested Brecht, we can be sure that he
was engaged in the entire matter of chapters 18 and 19.
Once again we have a dramatic war scene (as in David and
Goliath), the siege of the city of Jerusalem. This is a com-
monplace situation in Brecht (cf. the besieged city in re-
ligious warfare in Die Bibel, Mutter Courage, Der Augsbur-
ger Kreidekreis). Powerful religious and moral confronta-
tion stem from the scene of the besieged city-here in the
contest between Hezekiah and Sennacherib.
The reader familiar with the issue of the use of the vernacu-
lar in Leben des Galilei might speculate on Brecht's approv-
ing reaction to verse 26 in chapter 18 in which Hezekiah's

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478 G. RONALD MURPHY

delegates from the city attempt to deal privatim with the

delegates of the investing army:
Rede mit deinen Knechten aramiiisch denn wir ver-
stehen's und rede nicht mit uns hebr~iisch vor den
Ohren des Volkes, das auf der Mauer ist.
The scene also contains prayer (rather than the more ap-
propriate deeds) as the high point in the efforts of the be-
sieged to protect the city (18:15-19). One thinks of the
eleventh scene of Mutter Courage and the empty praying of
the peasants. As in the same scene, the city is saved because
of action taken because of concern for people, so also is
Jerusalem saved:
Und ich will diese Stadt beschirmen, dass ich sie
errette um meinetwillen und um meines Knechtes
David willen.

The drama of the siege of Jerusalem, however, is ended

not by heroic deed but by an angelus-ex-machina-at which
I'm sure Brecht railed (and smiled) as he relit his cigar and
thought again of the end of the Dreigroschenoper, and per-
haps of Happy End.
C. Wisdom Literature

1. Job 15:21-34 Marked by a long pencil line in the margin.

It is no wonder that Brecht ran the line of his pencil down
the second half of the fifteenth chapter of Job. Here is an
eloquent, almost apocalyptically terrifying description of the
blind lot of man, the condition humaine. Eliphaz is attempt-
ing to tell Job the evil man is capable of. Man is a horrible
creature, "der greulich und verderbt ist, der Unrecht saiuft
wie Wasser," and gives a description of his head-long flight
into darkness in terms of war fright and the search for food.
It is not hard to hear the tone of Baal and Mutter Courage:
Stimmen des Schreckens h6rt sein Ohr, und mitten
im Frieden kommt der Verderber iiber ihn. Er glaubt
nicht, dass er dem Dunkel entrinnen k6nne, und
fiirchtet immer das Schwert (21-22). . ... Er zieht
hin und her nach Brot und weiss, dass ihm der Tag
der Finsternis bereit ist (23).... Er briistet sich wie
ein fetter Wanst und macht sich feist und dick (27).
. . Er wohnt in zersthrten Stdidten, in H~iusern wo
man nicht bleiben soll, die zu Steinhaufen bestimmt
sind (Mahagonny?!) (28).... Doch wird er nicht reich
bleiben. . ... Er wird der Finsternis nicht entrinnen
(29-30).

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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE 479

2. Proverbs (die Spriiche Salomos) 16:19 Marked with pencil

in the margin. This single verse from the wisdom tradition,
I am sure, needs no comment or explanation and could
come as easily from the Marxist tradition as from the
Judaeo-Christian.
Besser niedrig sein mit den Demiitigen, als Beute
austeilen mit den Hofflihrtigen.

Thus end Brecht's markings in the Old Testament. It is curious

that there is nothing to be found in the Prophetic literature. This he
surely read and must have found sympathetic, due to its condemna-
tion of religious hypocrisy and advocacy of the poor and helpless,
"the widow, the orphan, the resident alien." He appears not to have
underlined all that he knew and read and used from the Bible.

II. New Testament

A. Matthew

1. Matthew 15:28-33 Marked with a long red line. The scene

is that of the second Multiplication of the Loaves. We know
of Brecht's interest from the Feldprediger's disparaging re-
mark concerning it in the second scene of Mutter Courage:
Not kennt kein Gebot nicht? . . . in der Bibel steht
der Satz nicht, aber unser Herr hat aus fiinf Broten
fiinfhundert herzaubern ksnnen ... da konnt er auch
verlangen, dass man seinen Ndichsten liebt, denn man
war satt. Heutzutage ist das anders.11
As long as one can solve the problems arising from the strug-
gle to maintain existence (and the primary evils originating
therefrom), it is then possible to address oneself to the second-
ary types of evil arising from our essence as communal moral
creatures who do not always get along or do right. Erst
kommt das Fressen, dann Kommt die Moral.
In this passage perhaps Brecht saw Jesus as at first con-
cerned with the secondary evils and ills of the people.
0.. und er heilte sie, so dass sich das Volk verwun-
derte, da sie sahen, dass die Stummen redeten ...
(30-31)
Then, however, Jesus has to face the primary origin of
evil, the "pre-religious" problem of hunger:
Und Jesus rief seine Jiinger zu sich und sprach: es
jammert mich des Volkes; denn sie sind schon drei

Tage bei mir und haben nichts zu essen. .... (32)

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480 G. RONALD MURPHY

Brecht may well have seen here an existential approach

to the problem of hunger and the origin of evil. The first
part of Chapter 15-which Brecht did not underline-deals
with the Pharisee's religious question, "Why do your dis-
ciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not
wash their hands when they eat." Why wash or not wash
when you have nothing to eat?
Primary evil may thus stem not from not washing your
hands before eating, but from what your hands may do if
they have nothing at all to eat. Not kennt kein Gebot. This
passage may thus have provided him with a perspective
linking both a biblical and a Marxist concern:
Woher sollen wir so viel Brot nehmen in der Wiiste,
dass wir so viel Volks siittigen?
It may also have appealed to him that the motive given for
the miracle by the evangelist is not so much a metaphysical
one as a simple humane one, "ich will sie nicht ohne Speise
von mir lassen, auf dass sie nicht verschmachten auf dem
Wege."
But today things are different, we can't multiply loaves by
miracle-what should we do? I find it highly significant
that Brecht's long red line does not continue on to the actual
miraculous multiplication of the loaves, but stops quite poign-
nantly at Jesus' question:
Woher sollen wir so viel Brot nehmen in der Wiiste,
dass wir so viel Volks siittigen?
Marxism must have seemed like the answer.

2. Matthew 21 and 22 A piece of paper inserted to mark the

place. Chapter twenty-one is the beginning of the account of
the Passion and Death in Matthew's gospel, describing the
entry into the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday-an incident
alluded to at the beginning of Kattrin's death scene in Mut-
ter Courage.12 One can imagine the young Marxist-student
Brecht's reaction to the chasing of buyers, sellers and money-
changers from the temple in the same chapter. The parable
of the vineyard and the unjust tenants concludes chapter
twenty-one. The moral of this parable is in language remark-
ably akin to that of the well known principle of ownership
in the parable of The Chalk Circle.

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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE 481

Das Reich Gottes wird von euch genommen und einem

Volke gegeben werden, das seine Friichte bringt.
3. Mark 6:45-50 Marked with a long red line in the margin.
If the reader has followed me kindly up to this point, I
think he will be as shocked as I was at the identity of this pas-
sage. Verses 41-44 (unmarked by Brecht) are Mark's ac-
count of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. What
Brecht did mark is the incident immediately following: the
walking on the water! Since this incident is one of the more
clearly transcendental descriptions of Jesus, and is not easily
susceptible to socially useful (let alone socialist) interpreta-
tion, one may justly wonder at the reason for Brecht's inter-
est in it. Though Brecht may well have had a semi-religious
interest in the dramatically metaphysical nature of the scene,
I think a simpler explanation may also be possible. Brecht
dated his pocket Bible 1926. In 1927 Lindbergh flew across
the waters of the Atlantic and deeply impressed Brecht with
this daring feat. I think we can safely speculate on a possible
connection here, at least on the level of visual symbolic
imagery, between the red line next to this passage of Mark's
gospel and the 1928-1929 Flug der Lindberghs. I base this
on Brecht's enormous pleasure in any triumph (physical or
metaphysical, apparently) over his primary natural symbols
for human death and futility: night, wind and water. Brecht
fairly rhapsodizes in the Flug over any triumph over what he
calls "the primal" or "the primeval" (das Primitive). He has
the pilot say:
Indem ich fliege
IKimpfe ich gegen mein Flugzeug und
Gegen das Primitive.13
There is, however, such a thoroughgoing, joyfully atheistic
attitude in the Flug der Lindberghs, and such a contrastingly
divine and serene tone to the passage in 'Mark, that one is
amazed that even the old master dialectician could be broad
enough to find intellectual room for both. Perhaps it is simply
the statement of Christ's concern for his disciples' existential
welfare that again drew his pencil to this spot.
Und am Abend war das Schiff mitten auf dem Meer
und er auf dem Lande allein. Und er sah, dass sie Not
litten beim Rudern, denn der Wind war ihnen entge-
gen. Und um die vierte Nachtwache kam er zu ihnen
und er wandelte auf dem Meer.... Ich bin's; fiirchtet
euch nieht!

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482 G. RONALD MURPHY

4. John 9:1-34 Marked with a long pencil line; verse 34 at the

end, marked with a cross. This is indeed the most remark-
able passage of all and, to my knowledge, has no immedi-
ately obvious parallel in Brecht's works. It is entering a re-
served area to speculate on another's private thoughts when
reading the Bible or any religious literature, and one feels
this all the more upon encountering a totally unexpected
passage. This section of John may well have been marked
not because it was "usable," but perhaps for reasons more
personally felt. Nonetheless, like Brecht's Lindbergh, we go
on.

Chapter nine of John is the incisively told story of the

cure of the man born blind. The miracle is performed by
Jesus with a mixture of spit and earth. The story itself con-
sists of four parts: 1) the curing by Jesus, 2) the interroga-
tion of the former blind man and his cowed parents by hostile
authority, 3) the cured man's expulsion, 4) Jesus' return to
the cured man to question him on his faith.
Brecht must have relished the well-drawn dramatic con-
flict between the individual and public authority in the
scene. The parents' public display of hesitation in the face
of the authorities even though their son is at stake reminds
one immediately of the behavior of the peasants regarding
their son in scene eleven of Mutter Courage, as well as Mother
Courage's attitude throughout. The cured man, however, de-
fies the authorities and stands up to them by defending the
necessary divine origin of the person who gave him sight-
with the usual result: he is expelled. It is at this point that
Brecht marked his cross in the margin.
Sie (die Pharisdier) antworteten und sprachen zu
ihm: Du bist ganz in Siinden geboren und lehrst uns?
Und stiessen ihn hinaus.

I do not know at what point in his life Brecht placed the

small cross next to this verse, but it speaks eloquently of the
feelings of an exile. Brecht's long pencil line stops at this
point in the story. The fourth part of the story, in which
Jesus returns to ask the man for a personal statement of
faith, is, significantly, not marked by Brecht. He would not
have wanted, perhaps, to go that far.

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 BRECHT'S POCKET BIBLE 483

Brecht, the poet of Verfremdungseffekt, may have also

been attracted by what makes this story unique among all
the accounts of the curing of the blind in the New Testa-
ment. The method by which the eyes of people born blind
are opened is by rubbing them in a mixture of human spit
and dirty reality. A pedagogic method, which, I might ven-
ture, Bert Brecht should have found both rather appealing
and resoundingly familiar.
In summary we might group Brecht's marked passages in his
pocket Bible under four headings. First, Scenes of Amusement and/or
Satire. Under this heading I would put his interest in the parade of
animals in Genesis 32:14 and in the seven-day period of creation.
Second, War and Confrontation Situations: David and Goliath, He-
zekiah and Sennacharib in the siege of Jerusalem; Jesus vs. the Phari-
sees: Palm Sunday, the cleansing of the Temple; the man born blind
(and his parents) vs. the Pharisees. Third, Love as the Motivation for
Action: Isaac's prosperity because of God's favor; Jonathan's giving
away all his possessions to David; God's weakening in his punitive ac-
tion because of love of David; the multiplication of the loaves out of
fear the people would faint on the way home; "Better to be with the
humble, than share spoils (Beute) with the arrogant." Fourth, The 'Con-
dition Humaine': man's head-long flight into darkness in Job; hunger in
the miracle of the loaves; being born blind; triumph over physical
restriction in the walking on the water; the mixture of spit and earth
to give sight.

In 1928, two years after he had written his name on the flyleaf of
his pocket Bible, Brecht was asked in the Berlin magazine Die Dame
what der stdrkste Eindruck on his writing was. His answer was: Sie
werden lachen: die Bibel."4

Georgetown University

1 Cf. Reinhold Grimm, Bertolt Brecht: Die Struktur seines Werkes

(Niirnberg: Verlag Hans Carl, 1959), pp. 44-45.
2 Cf. Hans Mayer, Bertolt Brecht und die Tradition (Pfullingen:
Neske Verlag, 1961), p. 50.
3 Cf. Thomas O. Brandt, "Brecht und die Bibel" in PMLA, LXXIX,
No. 1 (1964), p. 172 et passim.
Cf. his interesting interpretation of the role of the cross in Mutter
Courage und Ihre Kinder in John Fuegi, The Essential Brecht (Los
Angeles: Hennesy and Ingalls, 1972), pp. 89-90.

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484 G. RONALD MURPHY

5 The handwriting has been authenticated as Brecht's by Herta Ram-

thun of the Brecht-Archiv, for whose generous and careful labors
the present author is deeply grateful.
6 For a more complete discussion and interpretation of Brecht's use
of the Bible, cf. my forthcoming Brecht's Bible: A Study of Re-
ligious Nihilism and Human Weakness in Brecht's Drama, under
consideration at Princeton University Press.
7 Cf. Fuegi, op. cit., p .182.
8 Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, Band II (Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp, 1967), p. 502. Hereafter this will be cited as G.W.
9 G.W. I, pp. 34-36.
1o This is Brecht's earliest drama now available. G.W. VII, pp. 3029-
3038.

11 G.W. IV, p. 1364.

12 The prologue echoes Christ's reply to the Pharisees' demand that
he silence his followers' Hosannahs: Der Stein beginnt zu reden
(G.W. IV, pp. 1430).
13 G.W. II, pp. 575-576.
14 In Martin Esslin, Brecht, the Man and His Work (New York:
Doubleday, 1960 (also: Anchor, 1961), p. 106.

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