Fatzer

Fatzer (unfinished project)

Fatzer is an unfinished play about four deserters in World War One. 

Fragments of it were first published in 1930 in Brecht’s Versuche.

In his journal on 25 February 1939, Brecht contrasts Fatzer with the ‘overly opportunistic’ work, Leben des Galilei; Life of Galileo.

The world premiere took place at the Schaubühne in West Berlin in 1976, based on a transcription of Brecht’s notes produced in 1972 by Reiner Steinweg.

In 1978 the East German playwright Heiner Müller adapted the material for a production at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

German editions

Bertolt Brecht, Werke, Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe (BFA), volume 10.1: Stückfragmente und Stückprojekte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp; Berlin: Aufbau, 1997), pp. 387-529

Bertolt Brecht, Notizbücher, volume 7 (1927-30), ed. by Peter Villwock (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010)

English translation

Bertolt Brecht, Fatzer, trans. and ed. by Tom Kuhn, in Bertolt Brecht, Brecht and the Writer’s Workshop: Fatzer and Other Dramatic Projects, ed. by Tom Kuhn and Charlotte Ryland (London: Methuen Drama, 2019), pp. 69-179

Web Link

https://ravenrow.org/exhibitions/brecht-fragments

brecht: fragments, a major exhibition in London, 15 June to 18 August 2024