About the work
The Decision (Die Maßnahme) is a learning-play by Bertolt Brecht with music by Hanns Eisler, premiered in Berlin in 1930. It is the most radical of Brecht's Lehrstücke and conceived as pure discussion theatre without audience illusion.
Plot
Four communist agitators return from a mission in China and report to a "control chorus" that they have killed a young comrade. In enacted flashbacks they reconstruct the events: the young comrade acted out of compassion but, through his spontaneous, undisciplined actions, repeatedly endangered the common cause. In the end he himself consents to be killed in the interest of the movement. The control chorus is to judge whether the "measure" was justified.
Cultural significance
The Decision is Brecht's most controversial work and was fiercely debated for its apparent justification of subordinating the individual to party discipline. Brecht himself at times forbade performances. As a model of the pure learning-play, in which the performers themselves become learners, it is a key text of twentieth-century theatrical theory and a living document of the political debates of the Weimar era.