The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 50

The Brecht Yearbook, published by Camden House on behalf of the International Brecht Society, is the central scholarly forum for the study of Brecht's life and work and of topics relevant to him.


Embracing a variety of perspectives and approaches, the yearbook is committed to the concept of the use-value of literature, art, performance, and theory in a global context. Volume 50 begins with a conversation about the first major collection of interviews with Brecht and a chronicle of the publication history of the 30-volume edition of Brecht's works. The contributions featuring new research cover a wide range of topics related to Brecht, including his use of "pastology," racialization in his early plays, the 1932 production of The Mother as a campaign against Nazi misogyny, the first English-language productions of Señora Carrar's Rifles in 1938, and an unrealized African-American production of The Threepenny Opera in the early 1940s. This section also includes articles about the Brecht circle involved in the French chanson of the 1930s, the first French translation of the Short Organon for the Theatre in 1955, Brechtian aspects of Navid Kermani's interreligious dialogues, Mark Fisher's concept of "capitalist realism," and the connection of Brecht's ideas to a pedagogy of revolution.

Edited by Elena Pnevmonidou and Markus Wessendorf. Book reviews edited by Noah Willumsen. Contributors: Martin Brady, Robert Cohen, Laura Ginters, Helen Hughes, Torben Ibs, Liam Johnston-McCondach, Sabrina Kanthak, Sabine Kebir, Jan Knopf, Sean Larson, Jakob Ribič, Hanife Schulte, Vera Stegmann, and Noah Willumsen.