¹ Arendt, Hannah, Denktagebuch 1950 bis 1973, ed. Ludz, Ursula and Nordmann, Ingeborg, vol. 1 (Munich, 2002), 469Google Scholar.

² Hannah Arendt, “What Is Permitted to Jove,” New Yorker, 5 Nov. 1966, 68–122; Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht, 1898–1956,” in Men in Dark Times (New York, 1968), 207–49Google Scholar; and Arendt, “Quod Licet Jovi . . . Reflexionen über den Dichter Bertolt Brecht und sein Verhältnis zur Politik,” Merkur 23/6–7 (1969), 527–42, 625–42Google Scholar.

³ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 209.

⁴ David Littlejohn, “Homage to Many,” Saturday Review, 7 Dec. 1968, 51; John Willett, “The Story of Brecht's Odes to Stalin,” Times Literary Supplement, 26 March 1970, 334–5; Anthony Lewis, “Briton Calls Essay by Arendt Faulty,” New York Times, 28 March 1970, 25; Henry Raymont, “Dramatist's Praise of Stalin in Dispute,” New York Times, 28 March 1970, 25. See also Willett, Brecht in Context: Comparative Perspectives, revised edn (London, 1998), 227–34Google Scholar; Hannah Arendt Papers (HAP), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box 55, “Brecht, Bertolt, controversy 1968–1971.”

⁵ Fischer, Ruth, “Bert Brecht, Minstrel of the GPU,” politics 1/3 (1944), 88–9Google Scholar. On Fischer see: Kessler, Mario, Ruth Fischer: Ein Leben mit und gegen Kommunisten (Cologne, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Hecht, Werner, Brecht Chronik: 1898–1956 (Frankfurt, 1997), 929Google Scholar, quoting Rheinische Post, 30 July 1950; see also Johannes Jacobi, “Stoßtrupp Brecht,” Die Zeit, 13 July 1950, at www.zeit.de/1950/28/stosstrupp-brecht, accessed 19 April 2016.

⁷ Friedrich Torberg, “Post Scriptum,” Wiener Kurier, 20 March 1952, 2; Torberg, “Soll man Brecht im Westen spielen?” Der Monat 14/159 (1961), 56–62Google Scholar; Stephan, Alexander, Im Visier des FBI: Deutsche Exilschriftsteller in den Akten amerikanischer Geheimdienst (Stuttgart, 1995), 39, 228–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palm, Kurt, Vom Boykott zur Anerkennung: Brecht und Österreich (Vienna, 1983), 93–177Google Scholar; Autorenkollektiv, “Brecht in der Öffentlichkeit der BRD: Bühne, Presse, Parlemente,” Alternative 16/93 (1973), 275–83Google Scholar.

⁸ Sol Stein, “Bert Brecht,” New Leader, 3 Sept. 1956, 28.

⁹ Heinrich von Brentano's remarks of 9 May 1957 are quoted in the response by Peter Suhrkamp, “Brief an den Außenminister,” 18 May 1957, in Wagenbach, Klaus, Stephan, Winfried, Krüger, Michael, and Schüssler, Susanne, eds., Vaterland, Muttersprache: Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat seit 1945 (Berlin, 2004), 136–7Google Scholar.

¹⁰ John Willett, “Bertolt Brecht: An Iconoclast in the Theatre,” Times Literary Supplement, 9 March 1956, 141–2, at 142; Willett, Brecht in Context, 232.

¹¹ Willett, “Story,” 334; Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 249, 242. For the idea that Arendt identified Brecht's sin with his praise of Stalin or his return to East Germany see e.g. Pachet, Pierre, “The Authority of Poets in a World without Authority,” Social Research 74/3 (2007), 931–40, at 936Google Scholar; Caute, David, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford, 2003), 298Google Scholar; Horsman, Yasco, Theaters of Justice: Judging, Staging, and Working through in Arendt, Brecht, and Delbo (Stanford, 2011), 131Google Scholar.

¹² Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 242.

¹³ Arendt to Gershom Scholem, 2 June 1950, in Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom, Der Briefwechsel, ed. Knott, Marie Luise (Berlin, 2010), 279–82, at 281Google Scholar. While Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven, 1982), 116Google Scholar, reports that Arendt met Brecht in Paris in or after fall 1933, Arendt recalled that she and Brecht met “back in Berlin when I was very young,” i.e. between 1930 and early 1933. Hannah Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht, Party, and Politics,” Walter Turner Candler Lecture, 4 May 1964, audio recording, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

¹⁴ On the reception of Origins see King, Richard H., Arendt and America (Chicago, 2015), 43–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Arendt's rejection of the parameters of the Cold War see Isaac, Jeffrey C., “Hannah Arendt as Dissenting Intellectual,” in Isaac, Democracy in Dark Times (Ithaca, 1998), 59–73Google Scholar; for examples of Arendt's unorthodox stances in the early Cold War see her “Rand School Lecture,” in Arendt, Hannah, Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954, ed. Kohn, Jerome (New York, 1994), 217–27Google Scholar; Arendt, “The Eggs Speak Up,” in ibid., 270–84, and Arendt, “The Ex-Communists,” in ibid., 391–400.

¹⁵ For the fullest exploration so far see the editorial apparatus in Arendt, Hannah, Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. Young-ah Gottlieb, Susannah (Stanford, 2007)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lüthy, Herbert, “Vom armen Bert Brecht,” Der Monat 4/44 (1952), 115–44Google Scholar; Lüthy, “Du pauvre Bert Brecht,” Preuves 3/25 (1953), 30–43Google Scholar; and (revised) Lüthy, “‘Of Poor Bert Brecht’,” Encounter 7/1 (1956), 33–53Google Scholar. Willet, Brecht in Context, 227, says that Arendt “joined in” with Lüthy; see also Kruger, Loren, “Wir treten aus unseren Rollen heraus: Theater Intellectuals and Public Spheres,” in Geyer, Michael, ed., The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany (Chicago, 2001), 183–212, at 205Google Scholar; others claim that Lüthy followed her, e.g. Autorenkollektiv, “Brecht in der Öffentlichkeit der BRD,” 278. Affiliations of Arendt with Fischer include Autorenkollektiv, Hamburger, “Literaturwissenschaftliche Strategien der Brecht-Rezeption in der BRD,” Alternative 16/93 (1973), 290–317, at 291Google Scholar; Mews, Siegfried, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Knopf, Jan, ed., Brecht-Handbuch, vol. 4 (Stuttgart, 2003), 499–523, at 511Google Scholar; Glahn, Philip, Bertolt Brecht (London, 2014), 106Google Scholar. For Arendt on Fischer see Arendt, “Rosa Luxemburg, 1871–1919,” in Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 33–56, at 55.

¹⁷ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 209.

¹⁸ Villa, Dana R., Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton, 1996), 266Google Scholar; see also Taminiaux, Jacques, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker, trans. Michael Gendre (Albany, 1997), 24–55Google Scholar; Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958), 220–30Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Villa, Arendt and Heidegger, 241–70.

²⁰ Here this article joins, inter alia, Young-ah Gottlieb, Susanna, Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden (Stanford, 2003)Google Scholar; Jaussen, Paul, “Speaking and Making: Arendt, Stevens, and the Poetics of Public Discourse,” New Literary History 45/4 (2014), 665–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lupton, Julia Reinhard, “Judging Forgiveness: Hannah Arendt, W. H. Auden, and The Winter's Tale,” New Literary History 45/4 (2014), 641–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Storey, Ian, “The Reckless Unsaid: Arendt on Political Poetics,” Critical Inquiry 41 (Summer 2015), 869–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It also extends the trajectory of my “Arendt's Work: On the Architecture of The Human Condition,” College Literature, 38/1 (2011), 15–44Google Scholar, and “Arendt, Aesthetics, and ‘the Crisis in Culture’,” in Kompridis, Nikolas, ed., The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (New York, 2014), 61–88Google Scholar.

²¹ Arendt's tenure at Schocken occassioned her one surviving (apparently unanswered) letter to Brecht, a 1946 request for help with Schocken's unrealized plans for an English edition of Walter Benjamin's essays. Wizisla, Erdmut reprints the letter in Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: The Story of a Friendship (New Haven, 2009), 177–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also infers from the appearance of Arendt's address in Brecht's notebooks that they met in Berlin in 1949, in Wizisla, Benjamin und Brecht: Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt, 2004), 274Google Scholar and Abbildung 37; but Arendt wasn't in Berlin until 1950 and didn't see Brecht there; the notation was probably from a meeting between Brecht and Gershom Scholem: Scholem to Arendt, 30 April 1950, Arendt to Scholem, 2 June 1950, in Arendt and Scholem, Briefwechsel, 271–7 and 279–82.

²² Arendt, “Beyond Personal Frustration: The Poetry of Bertolt Brecht,” Kenyon Review 10/2 (1948), 304–12Google Scholar; HAP, Box 30, “‘K’ miscellaneous, 1946–1975”; Eric Bentley, “Galileo (II) 1967,” in Bentley, Bentley on Brecht, 3rd edn (Evanston, 2008), 244–50, at 244Google Scholar.

²³ Arendt, “Beyond Personal Frustration,” 310–11.

²⁴ Bentley, “Galileo (II) 1967,” 244.

²⁵ Nearly a month after Brecht's departure, Arendt's review was still pending (Maja Bentley to Hannah Arendt, 24 Nov. [1947], Nahum Glatzer Collection, Special Collections, Vanderbilt University, Box 2, Folder II.B.1.c).

²⁶ Arendt, “Beyond Personal Frustration,” 310–12. Arendt's copy of Selected Poems is in the Hannah Arendt Collection, Stevenson Library, Bard College.

²⁷ On Lasky see Maren Roth, “‘In einem Vorleben war ich Europäer’: Melvin J. Lasky als transatlantischer Mittler in kulturellen Kalten Krieg,” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2014), 139–56; Lerg, Charlotte A. and Roth, Maren M., eds., Cold War Politics: Melvin J. Lasky: New York—Berlin—London (Munich, 2012)Google Scholar; Hegewisch, Helga, ed., Melvin J. Lasky: Encounter with a 60th Birthday (London, 1980)Google Scholar; on the founding of Der Monat see Scott-Smith, Giles, “‘A Radical Democratic Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” Journal of Contemporary History 35/2 (2000), 263–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hochgeschwender, Michael, Freiheit in der Offensive? Die Deutschen und der Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit (Munich, 1998), 119–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Wald, Alan, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, 1987), 277–8Google Scholar.

²⁹ This is emphasized by Scott-Smith, “‘A Radical Democratic Political Offensive’,” 266–7, in contrast to Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York, 1999), 27–31Google Scholar.

³⁰ See Roth, “In einem Vorleben war ich Europäer,” 145–7.

³¹ Lasky, Melvin J., Und alles war still: Deutsches Tagebuch 1945, ed. Schuller, Wolfgang, trans. Christa Krüger and Henning Thies (Berlin, 2014), 296–304Google Scholar; readers interested in this episode should not rely wholly on Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 212–13, but also consult the correspondence among Lasky, Arendt, Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, and Dwight Macdonald in HAP, Box 31, “Der Monat, 1945–1970”; Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl, Correspondence, 1926–1969, ed. Kohler, Lotte and Saner, Hans, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (New York, 1992)Google Scholar; and Dwight Macdonald Papers (DMP), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 6, Folder 98.

³² Though it is possible, I have found no evidence that Arendt and Lasky knew each other before this. Arendt's initial letter to Lasky apparently referred to the two of them as “strangers”; Lasky's first replies were formal in address and tone; and Lasky's late 1943 induction into the army meant he was absent when Arendt was establishing contacts among the New York intellectuals. A 19 July 1944 letter from Daniel Bell to Dwight Macdonald, for example, still refers to Arendt as if she were not widely known in their milieu (DMP, Box 7, Folder 138).

³³ Melvin J. Lasky, “From Hitler to Chaos,” New Leader, 9 Aug. 1947, 9, 14, at 9; Lasky, “World Politics or World War?” New Leader, 10 Jan. 1948, 6, 12; at 12; Lasky, “Berlin Letter,” Partisan Review 15/1 (1948), 60–68, at 60Google Scholar. See also Lasky to Macdonald, 22 Nov. 1945, DMP, Box 27, Folder 706 (German translation in Lasky, Und alles war still, 373–80). For Arendt's similar critiques see Arendt, “Approaches to the ‘German Problem’,” in Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 106–20; and Arendt, “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” in ibid., 121–32.

³⁴ Lasky, “World Politics or World War?,” 12; Lasky, “Memo: Prospectus for DER MONAT, new American-sponsored magazine (German-language),” 20 June 1948, and Lasky, “Memorandum: On the Need for a New Overt Publication, Effectively American-Oriented, on the Cultural Front,” 7 Dec. 1947, both in Der Monat Records (DMR), Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, Box 73, Folder 7. On this strategy see Scott-Smith, “A Radical Democratic Political Offensive.”

³⁵ Der Monat, unlike Encounter, pre-dated the CCF and became formally affiliated with it only in 1958; its connections to the US Army (through 1949) and then the State Department (until 1954) were overt. On the CIA revelations see Wilford, Hugh, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 225–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Liberal Anti-Communism Revisited: A Symposium,” Commentary 44/3 (1967), 31–79Google Scholar. Saunders (The Cultural Cold War) presented the CCF as a top-down covert project of the CIA; Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer, 254, and others emphasized the relative independence of CCF intellectuals while criticizing the “secrecy and deception” involved in the CIA's role; Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-war American Hegemony (London, 2002)Google Scholar, usefully displaces the question of “who controlled whom” by casting the relationship between CCF intellectuals and the state as a hegemonic formation.

³⁶ Lasky to Shepard Stone, 30 Aug. 1951, International Association for Cultural Freedom Records (IACF), Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, Box 249, Folder 1; quoted at length in Scott-Smith, Politics of Apolitical Culture, 165.

³⁷ Lasky to Arendt, 15 June, 18 June, and 29 September 1948, HAP, Box 31, “Der Monat, 1945–1970”; Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 231–5.

³⁸ Arendt to Lasky, 17 Oct. 1948, DMR, Box 1, Folder 1; Parker, Stephen, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (London, 2014), 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Brecht to Caspar Neher (28 Jan. 1949) and to Erwin Piscator (Feb. 1949) in Bertolt Brecht, Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York, 1990), 454–5, 457–8.

⁴⁰ Merritt, Richard L., “Politics, Theater, and the East–West Struggle: The Theater as a Cultural Bridge in West Berlin, 1948–1961,” Political Science Quarterly 80/2 (1965), 186–215, at 208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Müller, Henning, Theater der Restauration: Westberliner Bühnen, Kultur und Politik im Kalten Krieg (Berlin, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ “Bertolt Brecht: Zur deutschen Erstaufführung seiner ‘Mutter Courage’,” Neues Deutschland, 12 Jan. 1949, 2.

⁴² Jaesrich, Hellmut, “Der Schnitt durch die Kunst: Die Geschichte eines Berliner Boykotts,” Der Monat 1/7 (1949), 90–97, at 97Google Scholar.

⁴³ Arendt, “Der Dichter Bertolt Brecht,” Die Neue Rundschau 61, 1 (1950), 53–67; abridged English translation (omitting longer quotations from Brecht and some of Arendt's framing prose) published as “The Poet Bertolt Brecht,” in Peter Demetz, ed., Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962), 43–50; I use this translation but cite both texts.

⁴⁴ Arendt to Lasky, 19 Nov. 1948, DMR, Box 1, Folder 1.

⁴⁵ Arendt, “Dichter,” 53 (“Poet,” 43).

⁴⁶ Arendt to Lasky, 6 March 1949, DMR, Box 1, Folder 1.

⁴⁷ See e.g. William Barrett, “Comment: A Prize for Ezra Pound,” Partisan Review (April 1949), 344–7.

⁴⁸ Arendt, “Dichter,” 53 (“Poet,” 43); the line appears to come from Goethe's fifth Venetian Epigram: von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Roman Elegies and Venetian Epigrams: A Bilingual Text, ed. end trans. Lind, L. R. (Lawrence, KS, 1974), 84–5Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Arendt, “Dichter,” 54–5 (“Poet,” 43–4).

⁵⁰ Ibid., 65 (49).

⁵¹ Brecht, Bertolt, “The Ballad of the Waterwheel,” in Brecht, , Poems and Songs from the Plays, ed. and trans. Willett, John (London, 1990), 127–8, at 127Google Scholar; Arendt, “Dichter,” 65–6 (“Poet,” 50).

⁵² Arendt, “Dichter,” 66 (“Poet,” 50, translation modified). The last clause prefigures Arendt's own oft-repeated account of the hierarchies sustained by the ideology of “rule,” e.g. in The Human Condition, 189–90; see Markell, Patchen, “Rule of the People: Arendt, Archê, and Democracy,” American Political Science Review 100/1 (2006), 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Arendt's reading of this poem see Gottlieb's “Introduction” to Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture, xvii.

⁵³ Arendt, “Dichter,” 67 (“Poet,” 50, translation modified). The quoted phrase is from Emil Luckhardt's 1910 German “Internationale”; see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Internationale, accessed 18 March 2010.

⁵⁴ Scott-Smith, Politics of Apolitical Culture, 100.

⁵⁵ Reuben Nathan to Director, Information Services Division, OMGUS, 27 April 1949; Melvin Lasky to Reuben Nathan, 10 May 1949, DMR, Box 6, Folder 4. The content of the memo from Reuben Nathan was probably provided by Nathan Glick, a City College friend of Lasky's who worked as the “New York editor” of Der Monat; see the biographical note accompanying Nathan Glick, “In the Bronx, and After . . .,” in Hegewisch, Melvin J. Lasky, 2–3, at 2; Lasky to Glick, 10 May 1949, DMR, Box 2, Folder 6.

⁵⁶ Arendt to Lasky, 4 May 1949; Hellmut Jaesrich to Hannah Arendt, 12 May 1949, DMR, Box 1, Folder 1; Jaesrich's letter is also in HAP, Box 31, “Der Monat, 1945–1970.”

⁵⁷ Nathan to Lasky, 4 Aug. 1949; see also Nathan to Lasky, 23 May and 10 June 1949, DMR, Box 6, Folder 4.

⁵⁸ This is Arendt's gloss; Arendt to Sternberger, 26 Aug. 1949, in Arendt, Hannah, Wahrheit gibt es nur zu zweien: Briefe an die Freunde, ed. Nordmann, Ingeborg (Munich, 2013), 86–8, at 88Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Arendt later told Scholem that Brecht “certainly resents my article . . . for obvious political reasons” (2 June 1950, in Arendt and Scholem, Briefwechsel, 281); in context this seems to be a prediction, not a report; I have found no evidence of Brecht's reaction to Arendt's article, if he saw it.

⁶⁰ Arendt to Sternberger, 26 Aug. 1949; see also Sternberger to Arendt, 4 Aug. 1949, HAP, Box 15, “Sternberger, Dolf, 1946–1953”; Sternberger, “Versuch zu einem Fazit,” Die Wandlung 4/8 (1949), 699–710Google Scholar; Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, 12 Dec. 1949, in Köhler, Lotte, ed., Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936–1968, trans. Peter Constantine (New York, 1996), 113Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Arendt planned to leave Berlin on 17 February “unless I decide at the last minute to stay until Saturday morning and see Brecht's Mother Courage. Lasky wants to take me to it” (Arendt to Blücher, 14 Feb. 1950, in Köhler, Within Four Walls, 135); in a subsequent “Field Report” to Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Arendt gave the dates for her Berlin trip as “February 11–18.” Arendt and Scholem, Briefwechsel, 507.

⁶² Lasky, “Die Antwort des Westens,” Der Monat 2/22–3 (1950), 479–80, at 480Google Scholar; Sidney Hook, “Encounter in Berlin,” New Leader, 14 Oct. 1950, 16–18; Scammell, Michael, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York, 2009), 360Google Scholar; Lasky, memorandum to Michael Josselson, 3 June 1957, IACF, Box 249, Folder 7.

⁶³ Lasky, “Berliner Tagebuch,” Der Monat 7/76 (1955), 376–9. On Torberg and Brecht see Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive, 351; on Torberg and the CCF see Corbin, Anne-Marie, “‘Das FORVM ist mein Kind’: Friedrich Torberg als Herausgeber einer publizistischen Speerspitze des kalten Krieges,” in Atze, Marcel and Patka, Marcus G., eds., Die “Gefahren der Vielseitigkeit”: Friedrich Torberg, 1908–1979 (Vienna, 2008), 201–21Google Scholar; on Lasky's rejection of the boycott see Lasky, letter to the editor, Times Literary Supplement, 3 Feb. 1984, 111. Lasky's letter rightly highlights disagreements about Brecht within the Congress, but understates both the degree of coordination among Der Monat and CCF publications, and the prevailing sense that, as Lasky put it at the time, “the ‘Battle of Brecht’ is one of the Congress’ real tasks in Germany today.” Lasky to Josselson, 15 April 1957, IACF, Box 249, Folder 8.

⁶⁴ Lüthy, a Swiss-born journalist and historian, was Paris correspondent of the St Galler Tageblatt, wrote for Der Monat regularly, attended the Berlin Congress, and contributed regularly to Preuves, Encounter, and Commentary in the 1950s; see Herbert Lüthy, “Biographical note,” Oct. 1955, IACF, Box 231, Folder 16.

⁶⁵ Herbert Luethy, “Selling Paris on Western Culture: Report on an American-Sponsored Exhibition,” Commentary 14 (July 1952), 70–75, at 72; Lüthy, “Vom armen Bert Brecht,” 124.

⁶⁶ Lüthy, “Vom armen Bert Brecht,” 117–18, 130, 134–5.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 126. I have found no evidence that Lüthy knew Arendt's essay, though he would have had ready access to Neue Rundschau during his time working with Der Monat in Berlin in fall 1951, which also seems to be when he conceived of writing on Brecht (see his correspondence with Lasky and Jaesrich in DMR, Box 13, Folder 8).

⁶⁸ Lüthy, “Of Poor Bert Brecht,” 34, 52; in the German version of the second passage (“Vom armen Bert Brecht,” 143) Lüthy acknowledged Brecht's use of the metaphor; and see e.g. Brecht, Bertolt, “700 Intellektuelle beten einen Öltank an,” in Brecht, Gedichte I, vol. 11 of Werke (Berlin, 1988), 174–6Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Arendt's correspondence with Der Monat indicates that she was receiving the magazine as early as 1948 and as late as 1953, though she was out of the country for months in 1952.

⁷⁰ Muschg, Walter, “Dichtung und Kultur,” in Marchionini, Alfred, ed., Untergang oder Übergang: Erster Kulturkritikerkongress in München (Munich, 1959), 83–105, discussion at 183–204, at 87Google Scholar; Muschg mentions the Horst Wessel comment in the discussion at 189; for Arendt's comments see 201–2; for “forbearance” see Brecht, Bertolt, “To Those Born Later,” in Brecht, Poems, 1913–1956, ed. Willett, John and Manheim, Ralph (London, 1976), 319–20, at 320Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Arendt to William Shawn, 14 April 1965, HAP, Box 31, “New Yorker 1964–1967,” quoted in Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 396; for the Northwestern lecture see “Calendar,” Daily Northwestern, 3 March 1961, 12. After Arendt's death, Heller recalled their discussions of Brecht without mentioning any fundamental disagreement between them: Heller, “Hannah Arendt as a Critic of Literature,” Social Research 44/1 (1977), 147–59. Arendt's Emory lectures were in April and May 1964, HAP, Box 37, “Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., 1961–1967”; for the Cornell lecture see “Daybook,” Cornell Daily Sun, 14 Dec. 1965, 3.

⁷² Arendt, in Marchionini, Untergang oder Übergang, 201; Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 246, 217. Arendt's use of the word “journalese” to describe Brecht's late poetry (“Bertolt Brecht,” 243) also echoes Lüthy's use of the same word in “Of Poor Bert Brecht,” 41.

⁷³ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 231 n. 37; for the full poem see Bertolt Brecht, “Hymn of Baal the Great,” in Brecht, Poems and Songs from the Plays, 9–11.

⁷⁴ Lüthy, “Of Poor Bert Brecht,” 37, 40; corresponding passages in “Vom armen Bert Brecht,” 118–119, 122.

⁷⁵ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 230.

⁷⁶ E.g. Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.

⁷⁷ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 228–9.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 212.

⁷⁹ Arendt, “Brecht,” HAP, Box 72, “‘Brecht,’ lecture, undated.” The paragraph containing “attorney for the defense” is struck through by hand in the typescript, which appears to have been revised multiple times; the Emory recording suggests she skipped over this portion of the text there.

⁸⁰ Arendt, Hannah, Vita Activa oder vom tätigen Leben (Stuttgart, 1960), 7Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Isaac, Joel and Bell, Duncan, “Introduction,” in Isaac, and Bell, Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War (New York, 2012), 3–16, at 6Google Scholar.

⁸² Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 215.

⁸³ Günther Nenning, “Warum Brecht im Westen gespielt werden soll,” Forvm 5/54 (1958), 230; Melchinger, Siegfried, in “Brecht soll trotzdem gespielt werden: Antworten auf eine Forvm-Umfrage,” Forvm 5/57 (1958), 329–34, at 333Google Scholar; see also [Dwight Macdonald] on Pound, Ezra in “Homage to Twelve Judges: An Editorial,” politics 6/1 (1949), 1Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 215.

⁸⁵ Arendt, Hannah, “The Crisis in Culture,” in Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York, 1968), 197–226, at 203Google Scholar; Markell, “Arendt, Aesthetics, and ‘The Crisis in Culture.’”

⁸⁶ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 215, 209, 241.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 215–16.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 242–3.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 243; see also Hannah Arendt, “Social Science Techniques and the Study of Concentration Camps,” in Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 232–47, at 236–7; and Arendt, , The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 2006), 545Google Scholar. Thanks to John McCormick for pressing me on this point.

⁹⁰ Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 102 (and, on Stern's proximity in these years to Communist intellectuals, 99); see also Anders, Günther, “Günther Anders im Gespräch mit Konrad Paul Liessmann (13. Oktober 1990),” in Liessmann, Konrad Paul, Günther Anders zur Einführung (Hamburg, 1993), 151–69, at 155Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Bertolt Brecht, “Burial of the Agitator in a Zinc Coffin,” in Brecht, Selected Poems, 120–23; translated as “Burial of the Trouble-Maker in a Zinc Coffin” in Brecht, Poems, 1913–1956, 216–17.

⁹² Brecht, Bertolt, Lieder Gedichte Chöre (Paris, 1934)Google Scholar; Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 324.

⁹³ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 243; Arendt, “Social Science Techniques,” 236–40; on the SA camps see Wachsmann, Nikolaus, “The Dynamics of Destruction: The Development of the Concentration Camps, 1933–1945,” in Caplan, Jane and Wachsmann, Nikolaus, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories (London, 2010), 17–43, at 18–20Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ “Kreuz und Quer durchs dritte Reich,” Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, 25 May 1933, 356–7, at 356; World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitler-Terror (Basle, 1933), 321; the editors of vol. 11 of Brecht's Werke, at 380, mention one line in the Braunbuch—“mutilated corpses are carried out of SA barracks in sealed [geschlossenen] coffins” (328)—as a likely source for Brecht's “Burial of the Agitator.” On the Brown Book see Rabinbach, Anson, “Staging Antifascism: The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and the Hitler Terror,” New German Critique, 35/1 (2008), 97–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Gumpert see Hesse, Wolfgang, Körper und Zeichen: Arbeiterfotografien aus Dohna, Heidenau, und Johanngeorgenstadt, 1932/33 (Dresden, 2012), 107–31Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 243; see Brecht, “Burial of the Agitator,” 121.

⁹⁶ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 243; Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht, Party, and Politics.”

⁹⁷ Brecht, Bertolt, “Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth,” trans. Laura Bradley and Tom Kuhn, in Brecht, Brecht on Art and Politics, ed. Kuhn, Tom and Giles, Steve (London, 2003), 141–57, at 148Google Scholar; Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 399.

⁹⁸ On “social fascism” see Fowkes, Ben, Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic (London, 1984), 157–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenhaft, Eve, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933 (Cambridge, 1983), 28–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁹ Parker, Bertolt Brecht, 262.

¹⁰⁰ Brecht, “Five Difficulties,” 145–6.

¹⁰¹ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 246.

¹⁰² Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future, 227–64, at 238–9.

¹⁰³ Arendt, The Human Condition, 168–9; Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 246; Beiner, Ronald, “Rereading ‘Truth and Politics’,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 34/1–2 (2008), 123–36Google Scholar. On the political relevance of (some) truth-claims in Arendt see Zerilli, Linda, “Truth and Politics,” in Elkins, Jeremy and Norris, Andrew, eds., Truth and Democracy (Philadelphia, 2012), 54–75Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Arendt, Hannah, “Lying in Politics,” in Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York, 1972), 4Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 240.

¹⁰⁶ See also Zerilli, “Truth and Politics.”

¹⁰⁷ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 241, 251; see also Arendt, “Lying and Politics,” 6.

¹⁰⁸ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 251; for affinities between this understanding of factual reality and Mary McCarthy's work see Nelson, Deborah, “The Virtues of Heartlessness: Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, and the Anesthetics of Empathy,” American Literary History 18/1 (2006), 86–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for resonances with Hans Magnus Enzensberger see Wild, Thomas, Nach dem Geschichtsbruch: Deutsche Schriftsteller um Hannah Arendt (Berlin, 2009), 174–97Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 251–4.

¹¹⁰ Arendt, “Lying and Politics,” 11; Arendt's critique of “theory” in this sense does not deny that factual statements are “theory-laden” in other senses.

¹¹¹ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 40.

¹¹² Arendt, “Lying in Politics,” 41.

¹¹³ Brecht, Bertolt, “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction,” in Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Willett, John (New York, 1964), 69–76, at 71Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Benjamin, Walter, “The Author as Producer,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927–1934, ed. Jennings, Michael W., Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 768–82, at 778Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., 775; Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, 501–30, at 526; Benjamin is quoting Brecht, Bertolt, “The Threepenny Lawsuit,” in Brecht, Bertolt Brecht on Film and Radio, ed. and trans. Silberman, Marc (London, 2000), 147–99, at 164–5Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Hannah Arendt, “Remembering Wystan H. Auden, Who Died in the Night of the Twenty-Eighth of September, 1973,” in Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture, 294–302, at 298; and see Gottlieb, Regions of Sorrow, 188–9.

¹¹⁷ Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” 251. The difference between “changing the world” and “making a start toward changing the world” parallels Benjamin's own insistence that what Brecht called plumpes Denken or “crude thought” was supposed to provide “directives toward practice, not for it.” Benjamin, Walter, “Brecht's Threepenny Novel,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, 1935–1938, ed. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W. (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 3–10, at 7Google Scholar, original emphasis; see also Richter, Gerhard, Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics (New York, 2011), 183Google Scholar. For Arendt on plumpes Denken and “reality” in Brecht and Benjamin see Hannah Arendt, “Walter Benjamin, 1892–1940,” in Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 153–206, at 168.

¹¹⁸ Benjamin, “The Author as Producer,” 527.

¹¹⁹ Brecht, “Five Difficulties,” 144.

¹²⁰ For a brilliant account of the relation between these conflicting imperatives and poetry's dual functions of disruption and conservation see Storey, “The Reckless Unsaid.”

¹²¹ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 246–7.

¹²² Ibid., 220, also 215.

¹²³ Ibid., 225; Arendt, “Der Dichter,” 56 (“The Poet,” 45).

¹²⁴ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 222, 246, 247.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 216.

¹²⁶ Socrates may represent an exception, since for Arendt his practice of philosophy remains worldly; this may also be why Brecht, in her portrait, can sound so Socratic; see her discussion of “Der Herr der Fische” in Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 220–22. On Socrates and Brecht see Puchner, Martin, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010), 106–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for Arendt on Socrates and Plato see Arendt, Hannah, “Socrates,” in Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Kohn, Jerome (New York, 2005), 5–39Google Scholar.

¹²⁷ Hannah Arendt, “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” trans. Albert Hofstadter, New York Review of Books, 21 Oct. 1971, 50–54, at 52–4.

¹²⁸ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 248–9, emphasis mine (“bad deed” is Brecht's own phrase, quoted by Arendt). While Arendt does use the language of forgiveness in relation to Brecht, too, her engagement with Brecht propels her beyond the conception of forgiveness she advances elsewhere, in which forgiveness is always offered gratuitously and for the sake of “who” someone is, not in recognition of “what” they are or have done (Arendt, The Human Condition, 236–43); in Brecht's case, the answer to the question of “who” he was depends on a general characterization of “what” he was, i.e. of his vocation as a poet. Thanks to Ian Storey for pressing me on this point.

¹²⁹ Heidegger, Martin, “Why Poets?” in Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Young, Julian and Haynes, Kenneth (Cambridge, 2002), 200–41, at 204Google Scholar. This divergence marks the limit of the broad affinity readers have found between Heidegger's and Arendt's conceptions of poetry as world-disclosing. Lara, María Pía, “Reflective Judgment as World Disclosure,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 34/1–2 (2008): 83–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dolan, Frederick M., “Worldly Pleasure: Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wallace Stevens, and ‘Political’ Consciousness,” Polity 33/3 (2001), 439–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It suggests that Arendt aims to hold politics apart not from poetry as such, but from what philosophy (including Heidegger's) has made of poetry (and vice versa).

¹³⁰ Arendt, “Bertolt Brecht,” 249.