The Partnership

October 27, 2014
The culture of Weimar Germany is at its most provocative and profound in this scintillating portrait of its leading theatrical luminaries. Novelist and film maker Katz explores the partnership, starting in 1927, of Marxist playwright and enfant terrible Bertholt Brecht and German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill; their 1928 musical The Threepenny Opera, with its well-known song “Mack the Knife,” gained fame for its tuneful satire of the sharklike soullessness of bourgeois society. She adds vibrant sketches of their female supporting cast: the singer Lotte Lenya, Weill’s perennially unfaithful wife and muse; Brecht’s wife Helene Weigel, an accomplished actress who managed Brecht’s life and tolerated his mistresses; and Brecht’s collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann, who wrote a good chunk of his oeuvre, mostly without credit or pay, and also shared his bed. Katz gives an uproarious view of the ferment of interwar Berlin’s theatrical avant-garde, with Brecht’s tantrums, power plays, preening demands, and ideological conceits. But she also takes seriously the artistic and political ideas that drove Brecht and Weill to their innovations (and eventually estranged them). The result is a thoughtful, entertaining recreation of a watershed moment in 20th-century theater. Photos.

November 1, 2014
The explosive collaboration of two brilliant artists.When composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950) and poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) met in 1927, they were certain they had much in common: Both were artistic iconoclasts; both believed that art must address social, political and philosophical issues; both were intent on "liberating culture from its elitist jail cell." As screenwriter and novelist Katz shows in this deft, incisive cultural history, despite their artistic affinities, what divided them made their six-year partnership volatile and, finally, impossible. Weill was self-disciplined, quiet and unwilling to let distractions-women, political activism-get in the way of his work. When he fell in love with singer/actress Lotte Lenya, he married her. Brecht was messy, noisy, cynical and undaunted by scandal. By the late 1920s, he was involved with three women: his wife, Marianne Zoff, with whom he had a daughter; actress Helene Weigel, with whom he had a son; and writer and translator Elisabeth Hauptmann. Although Weigel and Hauptmann energetically pursued their own careers, they were remarkably devoted to Brecht, acquiescing to his many demands but giving him the space and freedom he desired (Weigel moved into her own apartment after their son was born so the infant would not disturb Brecht). As Weigel described him, he was "a very faithful man-unfortunately to too many people." Katz focuses most on Weill and Brecht's two famous collaborations: the bawdy, irreverent Mahaganny, a musical play about a mythical American town dominated by greed; and The Threepenny Opera, a blatant critique of injustice, corruption and hypocritical morality, which made Lenya a star. Their work incensed the Nazis, and in 1933, both men-and Lenya, Weigel and Hauptmann-fled. Weill eventually had a successful career in the United States; Brecht, after years in exile, returned to East Germany. With a novelist's eye for telling details, Katz offers a colorful, perceptive and riveting portrait of a remarkable artistic partnership.

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December 1, 2014

The period of German rule classified as the Weimar Republic (established in 1919) represents one of the most fascinating and influential times in that nation's history. Though the time was fraught with domestic and international turmoil, some light in the form of cultural and social reform shone on the German people. Screenwriter Katz (film, New York Univ.) paints an intriguing portrait of the complexities of artistic reform by using recent research that considers a creative relationship between poet Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. Katz's ability to incorporate the influence of significant German figures, such as Lotte Lenya, Helene Weigel, and Elisabeth Hauptmann upon these male figures is rare and admirable. The author excels in her ability to interpret previously unconsidered intricacies concerning the partnerships of these two figures and the women who influenced them. VERDICT Katz's poetic license with minor details feels uncomfortably like historical fiction, but plentiful facts bring the reader back to the work's main purpose. Those intrigued by social and cultural transformation during the Weimar Republic will also enjoy Anton Kaes's The Weimar Republic Sourcebook and Eberhard Kolb's The Weimar Republic. [See Prepub Alert, 7/21/14.]--Marian Mays, Butte-Silver Bow P.L., MT

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2014
Katz applies her screenwriter's gifts to limning the most significant collaboration in twentieth-century musical theater, that of Bertolt Brecht (18981956) and Kurt Weill (190050). She brings their association to life, complete with their thinking and occasional outbursts, in scenes of its first bombshell, the pocket opera Mahagonny Songspiel, exploding at a staid chamber-music festival, and of the chaotic rehearsals of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in Berlin in late summer 1928. She richly conjures the domestic, class, social, and political environs in which Brecht and Weill respectively developed as well as those they found and made for themselves as quickly rising young artists even before they met. Though it lasted barely a decade, their association haunted them because of Dreigroschenoper's nonpareil success and influence and because each man brought the women they most loved into their working lives. Helene Weigel was Brecht's star actress, the mother of his children, and the manager of his household. Lotte Lenya was Weill's wife and, more important, his muse, whose voice he wrote for and whose many other men he tolerated. Then there was Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's self-effacing right hand, who discovered for him the English basis of Die Dreigroschenoper and, since he knew no English, actually wrote Alabama Song. Through Katz's insightful and penetrating prose, they all blaze and dazzle as they did in life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)