Coup d'état at Bertolt Brecht's theater

Babylon Berlin, the successful German TV-series based on Volker Kutscher’s novels, is an excellent introduction to Weimar Berlin. Not that every detail in the series is historically accurate. But the general atmosphere rings true, 

If I was a history professor, I would certainly use it and maybe even build up my course around it. In every episode, there is material for at least five lengthy essays. About political parties, women fashion or even sports.

Take for instance  fifth episode of season one. We see a planned coup d’état by reactionary forces. Their aim is to kill German and French dignitaries during a representation of The Threepenny Opera, a world famous play by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. The play had really been played there, and had its premiere in 1928. Moreover, it went on playing for many years in the same scene and with the same stage production. Not during the nazi-years, of course, but I had the chance to see one of the performances as late as in 1990.

The coup d’état is to take place on occasion of a state visit to Berlin by Aristide Briand, the French Foreign Affairs minister. I was unable to check if that visit is historically true. At the time, his German equivalent was Gustav Stresseman, who was to die in october, that is, six months later. Stresseman and Briand had a close relationship, and they both worked for a peaceful relationship between their respective countries, which had for so long been sworn enemies. They had jointly been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

One may of course wonder if a performance of a work by the communist Brecht was really conceivable for a foreign state visit. Two months earlier, the same theater had just had a scandal with Pioneers in Ingolstadt, by Marieluise Fleisser, with the participation of the same Brecht and of Peter Lorre in one of his first roles. Moreover, neither Stressemann nor Briand were known for any leftist ideas, they were rather center-right. No, I think a visit, not to the Threepenny Opera but to the Deutsche Oper would have seemed more realistic.

But a historically authentic visit to Berlin by Monsieur Briand, accompanied by Prime Minister Pierre Laval (who would finish his days before a firing-squad after WWII), did take place in september 1931. Here, a vidcap of the Deulig Woche film-journal, by courtesy of Bundesarchiv.