'Brecht reconciled me to German. The rasp of the Sprechgesang, the cynicism, the stylishness, the economy. It was German I could be proud of, identify with'
I was 14, going to an antic boarding school in England ? call it Christminster ? and spending the holidays with my mother and sisters and sometimes my father in a weirdly but comprehensively grim little upstairs flat on the outskirts of the town of Klagenfurt in Austria. I hated both ends of my life, but especially the new place, the perceived humiliation of relegation. My family had betrayed me by moving at the end of an English decade; Austria had nothing to offer me; I was there under protest. If I'd been given one wish, it might have been to unlearn German, and decontaminate myself. I might be stuck with the place, but I could at least try to take the place out of me.
I left "not a single good hair" on Germany or the German language: ungainly, boring, fussy, and in its contemporary version ? what passed for a teenagers' argot ? merely grotesque. It was that silly paradox: a rigid language full of fiddly moving parts, the predictable verb at the end like the tsching of a typewriter bell. The German virtues ? interiority, earnestness, profundity ? were parp of Wagner and fog of miserable Friedrich. A new parliament begins, and Chancellor Kohl speaks for three hours ? speaks it dead. Why? Because he can. Why couldn't German be witty, dashing, curt, tough?
Without knowing what I was doing ? I was 14 ? I reached a record down from my father's collection, and began listening to Brecht songs: "Surabaya Johnny", "Mahagonny", "Whisky Bar", The Threepenny Opera. Brecht reconciled me to German. The rasp of the Sprechgesang, the cynicism, the stylishness, the economy. It was German I could be proud of, identify with, wrap myself in like a flag. And then Brecht in person: the leather jacket, the spectacles, the cigar, the egghead crop. I read the poems. "The Hollywood Elegies", "Changing the Wheel". Not an angel or a duchess or a rose to be seen. No souls. No innocence. No stupidity. No soul.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/bertolt-brecht-hero-michael-hofmann
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