A lively account of discussions between the young Bertolt Brecht and the Marxian Political Economist Fritz Sternberg, published in English here for the first time.
Rationality and the Poet casts a new light on the development of Brecht’s politics and the relationship between society and drama that informed his art. Set in the late Weimer Republic, these reminiscences chart the rise and fall of the friendship between the poet and the theoretician, from their initial encounters and Brecht’s induction into Marxist political economy to their increasing tensions over the Soviet Union.
Sternberg charted an independent position between the Second and Third Internationals and remains a largely undiscovered theorist of the period spanning the end of the First World War to the Cold War. This volume presents a selection of his writings from the period of his most intensive friendship with Brecht, highlighting the versatile and independent socialist cast of Sternberg’s mind.
Publication date: November 13, 2026
Translator’s Preface
Introduction
Helga Grebing
Part 1: Rationality and the Poet
Recollections of Bertolt Brecht
Appendix 1: The Decline of Drama: Letters to a Dramatist by Mr. X
Appendix 2: Extract from Der Imperialismus
Appendix 3: Dialogue – Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Sternberg and Erwin Piscator
Appendix 4: Sternberg on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Appendix 5: Note on Ruth Berlau
Appendix 6: Letter to Heinz Paechter 15 July 1963
Appendix 7: Entry in Brecht’s Work Journal
Appendix 8: Letter from Lucinde Worringer 18 August 1956
Part 2: Selected Writings
The Social Lessons of the German Revolution for the Reconstruction of Palestine (1918)
Der Imperialismus and the Critics (1929)
Fascism and the Middle Classes (1932)
Draft of an Economic Programme of the Fourth International (1933)
The Sociology of Repression: Karl Marx and the Centenary of Freud (1961)
Chronology of Rationality and the Poet
Biographical Information
References
Index