Brecht boycott in Vienna

In 1948, Leopold Lindtberg directed Mother Courage and Her Children at Vienna's La Scala with Therese Giehse in the title role and in 1952, the Volkstheater staged The Threepenny Opera with Hans Putz and Inge Konradi.

At a meeting of the Salzburg Festival Board of Trustees on October 31, 1951, Klaus insulted von Einem as a "disgrace to Austria" and a "liar" and demanded his immediate dismissal.

[4] In the climate of the Cold War, a polemical media campaign had raged against Brecht's work and person, making it almost impossible for Viennese theaters to perform his plays.

Brecht's dismissive attitude toward the June 17, 1953 uprising in the GDR, whose violent suppression by Soviet troops he apparently approved of, strengthened the front of his Western opposition.

[8] Only the New Theater at La Scala, an ensemble of returned émigrés and committed anti-fascists (many of them communists), located in the Soviet occupation sector of Vienna, devoted itself to Brecht's plays.

In 1953, under the artistic direction of Bertolt Brecht himself, Manfred Wekwerth staged Die Mutter with Helene Weigel, Ernst Busch, and Otto Tausig, a re-staging of the Berliner Ensemble's production from January 1951.

The performance was a gamble; the press spoke of a "blockade breaker" premiere on February 23, 1963 (with Dorothea Neff, who was awarded the Kainz Medal for her performance, in the title role, Fritz Muliar as the cook, Ulrich Wildgruber as Schweizerkas, Ernst Meister as the army chaplain, Hilde Sochor as Yvette, Kurt Sowinetz as the canvasser, and Paola Löw, later Friedrich Torberg's partner, as the mute Kathrin).

Manker subsequently staged The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1964), Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1965) and The Good Person of Sezuan (1968) at the Volkstheater, thus setting a reappraisal of Brecht's work into motion.

[13] The Caucasian Chalk Circle (with Hilde Sochor as Grusche, Fritz Muliar as village judge Azdak and Kurt Sowinetz as Schauwa) earned "unanimous, almost demonstrative applause for Vienna's bravest theater" in 1964 (Ernst Lothar on April 27, 1964 in the "Express").

The Salzburger Nachrichten wrote: "If Brecht's banishment was interrupted for the first time with 'Mother Courage', it now seems to have been lifted with the 'Chalk Circle'" and "Die Bühne" called the performance a "theatrical event".

The Wiener Montag, however, still saw in the play "a pure Marxist doctrinal demonstration" and wrote: "After three hours of 'pleasure,' one left the theater ice-cold to the fingertips and disgusted by such political rallies on stage.

Club, Alfred Kolleritsch and Klaus Hoffer called Friedrich Torberg a "Brecht-blocker" and "CIA protégé" in the magazine manuskripte, which resulted in a libel case.