Stories of Mr. Keuner

Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner (1930, 1971, 2004)

The Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner / Stories of Mr. Keuner were written between 1929 and 1956. Most of them are very short, only a paragraph or a page long. The stories are a small collection of gems to be treasured by the reader. In terms of genre, they have a certain kinship with The Treasure Chest by Johann Peter Hebel, a collection of short pieces which were intended to popularise the Enlightenment.

The first set of eleven stories appeared in Brecht’s Versuche / Experiments (1930). In Brecht’s lifetime, 44 Keuner stories were published. More were found after his death. In December 2000 an additional 15 new Keuner-texts were found in the estate of Reni Mertens (née Renata Bertozzi) (1918-2000), a Swiss filmmaker. She had founded a debating club in Switzerland in the 1940s which included Brecht and Georg Lukács. The new Mr. Keuner stories and fragments mean that the total number of Keuner texts is 121. The new texts were edited by Erdmut Wizisla and published in 2004 under the title ‘Zürcher Fassung’ (Zurich edition). This edition does not contain a complete set of Mr. Keuner stories, but it does include a short biography of Mr. K.:

K. stammte vermutlich aus dem bayrisch-schwäbischen Raum und lebte in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Er war Schriftsteller, mußte emigrieren, wobei er alle seine literarischen Arbeiten verlor. Berichtet wird von einer Konfrontation mit einem Offizier einer Besatzungsmacht. K., heißt es, blieb Zeit seines Lebens in Kämpfe verwickelt. Einmal soll er sich öffentlich gegen Gewalt ausgesprochen haben. […] K. scheint als Lehrer gearbeitet zu haben. K. war Anhänger einer Lehre, unklar ist, ob er einer Partei zugehörte […] K.s Tendenz zum Asketischen ist aufgefallen; er könne überall hungern, sagte er einmal. (Source: Brecht, Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner: Zürcher Fassung, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2004)

K. probably originated from Bavaria or Swabia. He lived in the first half of the twentieth century. He was a writer and had to emigrate, in consequence losing all his literary works. There are reports of a confrontation with an officer of the occupying forces. It is said that all his life, K. was engaged in struggles. It is reported that he once spoke out in public against violence. K. seems to have worked as a teacher. He was a follower of a doctrine, it is unclear whether he belonged to a party. K.’s ascetic tendency has been noted: he once said that he could go hungry anywhere. [Translation E.S.]

‘Keuner’ perhaps recalls like the German word ‘keiner’, meaning ‘nobody’. This would characterise him as an anonymous, de-personalised figure. According to Walter Benjamin, however, the name may also refer to the Ancient Greek word κοινός (koinós), meaning ‘common’, ‘public’, ‘general’ (See Walter Benjamin, ‘Bert Brecht’, in Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927-1934, trans. by Rodney Livingstone, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 660-67).

Mr. Keuner, the ‘thinker’, is in fact Brecht’s alter ego. Like Brecht, Mr. Keuner enjoys a good cigar and a good argument. Like Brecht, Mr. Keuner is nobody’s fool. Like Brecht, Mr. K. believes in ‘blunt thinking’ (see Brecht, Werke, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 16, pp. 172-73). Walter Benjamin explains that ‘a thought must be blunt, in order to come into its own as an action.’ (see Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 446). K.’s thoughts are not idle, they are intended to be useful.

While Mr. Keuner offers valuable advice, he rarely advocates a specific course of action. Michael Opitz observes that ‘[er] gibt eher zu bedenken, als dass er Positionen bezieht’ / ‘Rather than taking a position, he submits points for consideration.’ – Michael Optiz, in Brecht-Lexikon, ed. by Ana Kugli and Michael Opitz (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2006), p. 130.

Get this book and read it. It is useful.

The West German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger published a riposte to the Mr. Keuner stories: Herrn Zetts Betrachtungen / Mr. Zed’s Reflections (2013).

English Translation

Bertolt Brecht, Stories of Mr. Keuner, trans. by Martin Chalmers (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2001)

German Editions

Bertolt Brecht, Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1971)

Bertolt Brecht, Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner: Zürcher Fassung, ed. by Erdmut Wizisla (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2004). This is not a collected edition of Brecht’s Keuner-stories: it only contains the 58 (out of a total of 121) that were found in the ‘Zürcher Mappe’ discovered in Decmeber 2000 in the estate of Reni Mertens.