Rationality and the Poet

Recollections of Bertolt Brecht and Selected Writings
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73843-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 359, 188 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 439 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

Rationality and the Poet is a lively account of the discussions between the young Bertolt Brecht and the Marxian Political Economist Fritz Sternberg. Set in the late Weimer Republic, these reminiscences chart the rise and fall of the friendship between the poet and the theoretician, from their initial encounters and Brecht’s induction into Marxist political economy to their increasing tensions over the Soviet Union. Sternberg charted an independent position between the Second and Third Internationals and remains a largely undiscovered theorist of the period spanning the end of the First World War to the Cold War. In this volume a number of his writings have been selected from the period of his most intensive friendship with Brecht to highlight the versatile and independent socialist cast of Sternberg’s mind.

Here published in English for the first time, Rationality and the Poet casts a new light on the development of Brecht’s politics and the relationship between society and drama that informed his art.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sternberg, Fritz

Grebing, Helga

Weitere Mitwirkende

Rasbash, Joel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Fritz Sternberg was a major German author on political economy, author of the classic Imperialism (1929) and Brecht’s ‘first teacher’ in Marxism.

Helga Grebing (1930–2017) was a historian and political scientist.

Joel Rasbash has translated a number of German works for the Historical Materialism Book Series, most recently Alex Demirovic’s The Nonconformist Intellectual: From Critical theory to the Frankfurt School.