Ronald Hayman
BRECHT'S DUPLICITY
It
is easy to denigrate the man who said, "Let them grow,
the little Brechts." I know of no one who was more ruthless in his at–
titude to the pregnancies he started, or more casual about starting
them . When Paula Banholzer missed a period, he wrote to his friend
Caspar Neher, "Of course I wasn't careful , not a bit , it would have
ruined the fun . .. . After all, I'm not playing Tarot . I
can't
hold any
trump cards back ."
When he was twenty-two , he fantasized about being rich and
elegant in "wide grey trousers, hitched up well on the waist ; soft hat
squashed down." There was so much to enjoy: "sunny flat, theatre,
good food, music, higher feelings, indolence, people's respect, free–
dom from friction, travel , beauty, youth , health, art, freedom. "
Should he take the risk of "throwing all that into the garbage in obe–
dience to a physiological need that vanishes as soon as satisfied"?
No , he must not marry, "I must have elbow room, be able to spit
wherever I please, sleep alone, be unscrupulous ."
His first illegitimate child had been born inJuly 1919, when he
was twenty-one; in March 1921 he was elated at the thought that "the
unborn are setting their sights on me." "I'm getting a child by the
dark-haired Marianne Zoff, the brown-skinned girl who sings in op–
era. I 'kneel down on the ground, weep, beat my breast, cross myself
repeatedly." He told her that abortion was as bad as killing a child .
"She's getting used,
lento,
to the idea of having the child on her own.
That's where I want her ." He was now thinking seriously about mar–
rying Paula, but he had to face an unexpected challenge when the
two women joined forces to confront him. They made him sit down
between them, saying he must make a choice . Which of them did he
want? "Both," he said, at which they both walked away. But when he
found, afterwards , that Paula was on the same train from Munich to
Augsburg, he beckoned her out into the corridor. Would she agree
to a contractual arrangement by which he would marry Marianne
Zoff to make the baby legitimate and would divorce her afterwards
to marry Paula, legitimating their son, Frank? She let herself be
talked into accepting a written agreement which could have no legal
force. He was furious when Marianne miscarried, and he evolved a
complicated scheme - "N
0
getting away from politics!!!" he wrote–
to "give" her Frank.
