Tributes continue to pour in from over the world for the great boxer Max Schmeling, who died last week at the age of 99. Much has been written about Schmeling’s complicated relationship with Hitler and the Nazis. But Schmeling had also been friendly with many of the leading lights of the literary scene in the Weimar Republic – including the young Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht was born on this day (Februrary 10, 1898) and it is worth remembering on his birthday that sports – especially the sport of boxing – was extremely important to him. "We should go to the theater like we go to a sporting event." Brecht once said. "What is entertaining is not knowing who will win and who will lose." Brecht was something of a boxing connoisseur and some have even described him as a "frustrated boxer". Boxing represented the elemental human drama, and so was inherently engrossing to the audience. For Brecht, the stage is a boxing ring and it is the goal of the dramatist through the actors to achieve the knock-out. In a short piece he wrote about boxing "Die Todfeinde des Sports" (The Archenemies of Sport), Brecht complained that the elaborate point
system in boxing was ruining the sport.
Im Boxsport äußert
sich diese sportsfeindliche Tendenz in der Propagierung des Punktverfahrens.
Je weiter sich der Boxsport vom K. o. entfernt, desto weniger hat er mit
wirklichem Sport zu tun. Ein Boxer, der seinen Gegner nicht niederschlagen
kann, hat ihn natürlich nicht besiegt
(the more boxing is removed from the K(nockout), the less it is a true sport. A boxer who can’t knock down his opponent has not really beaten him.)
And certainly Brecht always sought to land a punch with his words, as he expressed in one of his last poems "Und ich dachte immer" – "And I always thought":
Und ich dachte immer, die allereinfachsten Worte
Müssen genügen. Wenn ich sage, was ist
Muß jedem das Herz zerfleischt sein.
Daß du untergehst, wenn du dich nicht wehrst.
Das wirst du doch einsehn.
And I always thought that the simplest words
Must be enough. That when I say how things are
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up.
Surely you see that.
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Never knew that about Brecht. Thanks for this post. It was also nice to see Schmeling getting–upon his death, in the US press at least–his just due and proper severance from association with Hitler and Nazism. He was good man caught up with foul forces–and he came out of it in one piece.