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Rationality and the Poet. Recollections of Bertolt Brecht and Selected Writings

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Published Nov 2025

Fritz Sternberg

Author: Fritz Sternberg
Editor: Helga Grebing
Translator: Joel Rasbash
Rationality and the Poet is a lively account of the discussions between the young Bertolt Brecht and the Marxian Political Economist Fritz Sternberg. 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. In this volume a number of his writings have been selected from the period of his most intensive friendship with Brecht to highlight the versatile and independent socialist cast of Sternberg’s mind.

Here published in English 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.

Biographical Note

Fritz Sternberg was a major German author on political economy, author of the classic Imperialism (1929) and Brecht’s ‘first teacher’ in Marxism.

Helga Grebing (1930–2017) was a historian and political scientist.

Joel Rasbash has translated a number of German works for the Historical Materialism Book Series, most recently Alex Demirovic’s The Nonconformist Intellectual: From Critical theory to the Frankfurt School.

Readership

This book is especially relevant for general readers with an interest in 20th-century socialism, communism, Bertolt Brecht, and related topics. It is also well-suited for institutions and libraries focused on areas such as 20th-century German cultural history, dramaturgy, socialist and communist movements, and critical theory.

Table of Contents

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