Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

The reception of the literary output of an author politically engaged like Bertolt Brecht depends on a specific political situation. Despite the fact that in post-war Poland Brecht was one of the German writers whose works were published at the earliest, as early as 1948 and 1949, the Polish audience had to wait much longer for the first theatrical staging of his works. The obstacle was the cultural policy of those times. The performances of the Berliner Ensemble in 1952 led to an increase in the popularity of Brecht’s works in Poland, but also to the tightening of cultural policy by the Polish communist authorities. The political arrangement between Poland and the GDR contributed significantly to this. This article discusses the first phase of the reception of Bertolt Brecht’s works in Poland in 1948‒1953.