Refugee Conversations

Flüchtlingsgespräche; Refugee Conversations

Written in 1940-1941 in exile in Helsinki, and first published in German in 1960, Brecht’s Refugee Conversations are particularly relevant today, in the context of the global refugee crisis and the rise of nationalism. The text features a series of philosophical dialogues between two refugees: Ziffel, an intellectual (a physicist), and Kalle, a worker. Their exchanges are often ironic, for, as Ziffel points out, ‘emigration is the best school for dialectics’ and ‘Die schärfsten Dialektiker sind Flüchtlinge’; (BFA vol. 18, p. 264); ‘The sharpest dialecticians are refugees.’

There is a caustic analysis of the education system in section 3.

In section 8, there is an ‘Appeal to the vices and virtues’, giving an insight into the moral distortions of fascism.

Section 10 on patriotism (especially the French variety) delivers an elegant critique of nationalism. Kalle wonders how people can be expected to love their country without giving them a choice. He argues that people should be offered a selection of different countries before they have to decide which country they want to love. Ziffel responds that this is a ‘cynical, rootless’ point of view. Kalle replies that the only living beings with roots are trees – and even trees would enjoy flying in airplanes, if only they could. And he adds: ‘Ich denk manchmal: was für ein hübsches Land hätten wir, wenn wir es hätten!’ (BFA vol. 18, p. 257); ‘Sometimes I think: what a fine country we would have, if only we had it!’ Kalle means, of course, that in most cases a country does not belong to its people, but only to a small minority of property owners. The chapter concludes that people who say patriotic things tend to have a sheep-like expression (‘das Schafsmäßige [...], das alle haben, die etwas Patriotisches äußern’; BFA vol. 18, p. 258).

The Refugee Conversations deliver a critique of liberalism, too, when Ziffel argues that liberals are mistaken if they think that they can have capitalism without warfare (BFA vol. 18, p. 285).

Brecht also provides a summary of his language philosophy in Refugee Conversations, when Ziffel observes:

‘Die Begriffe, die man sich von was macht, sind sehr wichtig. Sie sind die Griffe, mit denen man die Dinge bewegen kann.’ (BFA vol. 18, p. 263)

‘The concepts [Begriffe] that we make of things are very important. They are the grips [Griffe] we can use to get things moving’.

In this way, Brecht regards language as a grip or handhold used to grasp reality, and to change it.

English Translation

Tom Kuhn (ed. and intro.), Bertolt Brecht’s Refugee Conversations, trans. by Romy Fursland (London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2019)

References

BFA = Bertolt Brecht, Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, edited by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei and Klaus-Detlef Müller, 31 vols, Berlin, Weimar and Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989-98