About the work
Between 1926 and 1930 Bertolt Brecht worked with Elisabeth Hauptmann on this play fragment, which he never finished and did not publish in his lifetime. Only in 1976, twenty years after Brecht's death, did Frank-Patrick Steckel bring a version reconstructed from the fragments to the stage, premiering on 11 March at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in West Berlin. Two years later, Heiner Müller, together with Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff, produced their own widely noted stage version.
Plot
Four German soldiers desert during the First World War near Mülheim an der Ruhr. The self-absorbed Fatzer talks his comrades Büsching, Kaumann and Koch into fleeing with him, promising shelter at Kaumann's family home. As Fatzer's recklessness endangers the group and he seduces Kaumann's wife, their solidarity collapses; after a failed suicide attempt, the four are surrounded by the military and die in an explosion. The fragment centres on the conflict between self-interested individualism and collective discipline.
Cultural significance
The unfinished Fatzer material is considered by Brecht scholars to be among his most radical work, and Heiner Müller's engagement with it made it a touchstone for later collage-based, author-open forms of theatre.