Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays: Includes: In Search of Justice; Informer; Elephant Calf; Measures Taken; Exception and the Rule; Salzburg Dance of Death

by Bertolt Brecht

These six plays represent the best and most humorous of Brecht's shorter works. The Jewish Wife is from the Fear and Misery in the Third Reich cycle of one-act plays, which, along with In Search of Justice and The Informer, chromicles the hardships of life in Nazi Germany. The Exception and the Rule, one of Brecht's most popular short works, grimly depicts the consequences of the mutually dependent -- yet inevitable inequitable -- relationship between the priviledged and the poor; it is included here with The Measures Taken and The Elephant Calf. Though all of these ales of horror, ad Eric Bentley calls them, have tragic undertones, they are also infused with farcical absurdities and cosmic irony so characteristic of Brecht's work.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Theatre, Drama, Anthologies

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1971

About the author

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.

From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."

As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."

There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.

During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short (10 page) play which powerfully presents the thinking of a Jewish woman about to leave her German husband in order that he and his career not be attacked by the Nazis. It suggests the deep underlying Jew-hatred that had by the mid-1930s become an integral part of Hitler's political program. It leaves unsaid the issues of why Germans, and in particular this woman's husband, did not object, ever, even after 6,000,000 Jews had been murdered. Why didn't the husband leave Germany with his wife?

I have been asked to moderate a post-performance discussion of the play in Key West.

[Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

اغلب اثار برتولد برشت به فارسی برگردانده شده؛ "سقراط مجروح" کیکاووس جهانداری / "در انبوه شهرها" عبدالرحمن صدریه / "استثناء و قاعده" محمود اعتماد زاده(م. به آذین) / "ان که گفت آری و آن که گفت نه" مصطفی رحیمی / زندگانی گالیله (گالیله ئو گالیله ئی) عبدالرحیم احمدی / "ترس و نکبت رایش سوم" شریف لنکرانی / "ننه دلاور و فرزندان او" مصطفی رحیمی / "آدم، آدم است" دو ترجمه از شریف لنکرانی و امین موید / "بچه فیل" و استنطاق لوکولوس" شریف لنکرانی / "زن نیک سچوان" دو ترجمه از فریده ی لاشایی و مهدی زمانیان / "دایره گچی قفقازی" دو ترجمه از حمید سمندریان و امین موید / "چهره های سیمون ماشار" دو ترجمه از عبدالرحمن صدریه و شریف لنکرانی / "داستان های آقای کوینر" سعید ایمانی / "داستان یک پولی"(اپرای یک پولی) هوشنگ پیرنظر / "تفنگ های ننه کارار" دو ترجمه از فریدون ایل بیگی و شریف لنکرانی / "ارباب پونتیلا و نوکرش مه آتی" سه ترجمه از عبدالرحمن صدریه، فریده ی لاشایی و رضا کرم رضایی / "درباره ی تیاتر" منیزه کامیاب و حسن بایرامی / "هیولا" همایون نوراحمر / "مادر" منیژه کامیاب و حسن بایرامی / "کله گردها و کله تیزها" بهروز مشیری / "بعل" خشایار قائم مقامی / "پیرزنی که پیر نمی نمود" کامران فانی / "گفتگوی فراریان" خشایار قائم مقامی / "اقداماتی علیه زور" ناصر صفایی / "حیوان محبوب آقای کوینر" / ناصر صفایی / "اگر کوسه ماهی ها آدم بودند" بهروز تاجور / "شوایک در جنگ جهانی دوم" دو ترجمه؛ حمید علوی، فرامرز بهزاد / "عظمت و انحطاط شهر ماهاگونی" مهدی اسفندیارفرد / "قطعه آموزشی" مینو ملک خانی / "اندیشه های متی" عبدالله کوثری / "محاکمه ی ژاندارک در روان" عبدالله کوثری / "صلیب گچی" سیاوش بیدارفکر / "قیمت آهن چنده" رضا کرم رضایی / "کریولانوس" مهدی تقوی / "اپرای سه پولی" علی اکبر خداپرست / "ژان مقدس کشتارگاه" دو ترجمه از جواد شمس و ابوالحسن ونده ور / "صعود مقاومت پذیر ارتورو اویی" افرویدون / "زندگی تیاتری من" فریدون ناظری / "روزهای کمون" کاووسی (فریده لاشایی) /"درباره تیاتر" فرامرز بهزاد / و بسیاری دیگر از آثار نوشتاری و مجموعه ی اشعار برشت

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised at how short and simply written these plays were. They detail everyday life in early Nazi Germany. Nothing brutal by today's standard is depicted, but some of the plays really creep inside of you and linger. Murder and atrocity has a way of becoming depersonalized when it's removed and in such staggering numbers. To read the Informer, one of the short plays in this collection, is to get ten minutes of fly on the wall time inside one family's kitchen. A husband and wife send their kid down the street after the husband criticizes the state paper. The parents wonder back and forth if the son heard the remark, and if he'll report the "transgression" as the Nazi Youth leaders command: "Report anything suspicious, even your own parents!"
They argue back and forth until they finally agree the kid must be bringing the SS back to arrest them. "Don't lose your nerve," the husband says to the wife. "Pack up my underwear."
I won't tell you the rest, just read it.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bertolt Brecht worked on this in mid-1930s Germany, when things began to get ugly. In the title play, a bourgeois housewife, married to a surgeon, wonders, while she packs to go, why half-savages now do the bossing. Three and a half stars.

"The Jewish Wife," along with one-acts by Dorothy Parker and George Bernard Shaw, will take the stage in the fall for a four-week run. http://www.chamber-theatre.com/perfor...

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a Third Reich Lit class in college (yes, it actually was called Third Reich, and no, it wasn't propaganda). Anyway, I've actually reread "The Jewish Wife" several times since. Perhaps it was because my professor was so passionate about it, but really, I find that its a very short play, but says so much about what the people of Germany were going through during such a crazy time.

[Rudyard, Lord Falkland · Rating 3 out of 5]

(This review deals primarily with The Measures Taken [Die Maßnahme])
I like to think of myself as someone who likes to read provocative literature that espouses worldviews I personally find abhorrent. I consider myself a Tory and an Anglophile in the basest sense yet feel myself captured spiritually by Orwell and his fiercely independent stance on socialism, and as a student of German, I had heard the name of Bertolt Brecht floated by professors and instructors, never knowing his political pedigree. Therefore, when I happened upon this collection of Brecht's short plays I bought it without much of a thought. The Jewish Wife, In Search of Justice, and The Informer were brilliantly thought-provoking in their portrayal of the individual psyche under Nazi rule and the corruption, subversion, and eventual destruction of individual relationships, but The Measures Taken stands in complete contradiction to that theme.

What is intially taken by one to be a tongue-in-cheek criticism of dogmatic Marxist deference to "the Party" and orthodox doctrine in the song in Praise of the Party (The individual can be wiped out / But the Party cannot be wiped out, etc etc ad nauseam) is revealed in Alfred Kurella's criticism of the play (found in the appendix) to be a bona fide defence and laudation of orthodox Marxist thought. Indeed, Herr Kurella's objection to The Measures Taken comes from his perception that the "Four Agitators" were not resolutely orthodox Marxist enough in their actions, not that they represented a monstrous, reductive, and dehumanizing phillsophy, but one can hardly expect more from a man who has been defending the orthodoxies of "The Party" against Brecht of all people. The Measures Taken, in other words, is a defence of Orwell's Oceania, a cry to abandon humanity, empathy, and passion for absolute dogmatic authority and is therefore utterly irredeemable in my eyes, at least in terms of its ideology. I do not think that this is a conclusive condemnation of Herr Brecht, however, as this play was written in the 1930s, and his later writings may yet reveal a realization of the utterly absurd brutality of communist rule. The depravity of the ideology notwithstanding, Herr Brecht's prose is pertinent and captivating even in translation, and I should like very much to read the original German so that I may give Die Maßnahme a proper assize.

Would it not be simpler for the Government to dissolve the People and elect another?

[Rain Sailing · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of Brecht’s plays. The first three plays, centered on the rising tide of Nazism in Germany, are actually pretty funny and have their strong suit in dramatizing the absurdity of life under the Nazi regime.

The Elephant Calf was interesting but not super enjoyable due to it’s intentionally confusing and absurd plot. This seems like one that would be better to watch a performance of.

The Measures Taken is a play that I will continue to think about—especially in our current political moment. It centers on the question of the proper conduct of communists considering the immense tasks of the revolution. The play portrays a sympathetic young communist who continuously fails to meet the goals of the party due to succumbing to his own personal feelings—righteous as they may be. The lesson the play conveys is that the goal is everything and that communists who have committed themselves to the revolution have little room to complain or reject the necessary measures whatever they may be.


The Exception and the Rule is another Lehrstücke, but this time centered on what we take for granted as interpersonal behavior between the exploiting and exploited classes. Just as CLR James pointed out that the surprising aspect of the Haitian revolution was its relative moderation towards the whites in proportion to the amount of violence faced by the Haitian slaves, Brecht points out that it is actually odd that the coolie hired by the merchant does not have more animosity towards the man who beats and exploits him. For the reader, one immediately recognizes this as “the rule” though by all rational thinking it should be “the exception”! The exploited and the oppressed have, as a tendency, to treat their exploiters and oppressors much more humanely than vice-versa.

[Cooper Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ranked in order from most interesting/entertaining
-The Measures Taken
-The Jewish Wife
-In Search of Justice
-The Informer
-The Elephant Calf
-The Exception and the rule


The 1st 3 are worthy of a reread some day. The 2nd 3 were interesting enough but didn’t touch me the same way.

[Sarah Main · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of them made me think, some of them I’d have to think about a little more. That’s Brecht.

[Ellis Oswalt · Rating 5 out of 5]

[This review is for Jewish Wife]

This play is only 10 pages long. You might have to re-read it a few times to understand the point, but when it sinks in - you will never forget the message. (Keep in mind that plays are never meant by their authors to be read, they are meant to be performed and watched by a live audience.)

SIDE NOTE: Brecht himself fled from multiple world governments to protect his own life.

This story shows us the final moments before a Jewish wife decides to discreetly flee Nazi Germany in the time just before things went completely sideways there.
Her husband doesn't understand what is about to happen, and politics has warped so many people's brains that everyone lives in a social environment where it is impossible to speak plainly about what is going on around them.

This 10 page play is more startling and more practically useful to the reader than Orwell's 1984.
(I say this with the utmost respect to Orwell, who was a genius.)

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them

Bertolt Brecht’s Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays reads like a concentrated laboratory of theatrical invention, a space where narrative, politics, and moral inquiry collide in tight, unflinching bursts. Revisiting this collection, I was struck by how Brecht’s signature Verfremdungseffekt—the alienation effect—remains both provocative and unsettling, forcing the audience to think rather than merely feel.

The plays are brief, precise, and intentionally disorienting: from In Search of Justice to Measures Taken and Elephant Calf, each piece interrogates human behaviour, authority, and social complicity in ways that are as intellectually rigorous as they are emotionally disquieting. Brecht refuses conventional catharsis; characters are not designed for empathy alone but for scrutiny, their decisions and failures spotlighted to expose systemic pressures and moral compromise.

Reading Jewish Wife today, I was reminded of the enduring clarity with which Brecht situates personal action within political structures. Exception and the Rule, for example, is devastating in its illustration of how social hierarchies manipulate justice, while Salzburg Dance of Death wrenches the audience into reflection on historical cruelty and the human capacity for rationalised atrocity. What resonates most is the collection’s relentless interrogation of conscience: we are asked to judge, to reason, and to recognise our potential complicity, rather than passively admire or pity.

Brecht’s style—spare, precise, sometimes starkly humorous—intensifies the ethical challenge. Scenes unfold economically, leaving silences pregnant with implication, demanding active engagement. The social critique is never abstract; it is lived in dialogue, in miscommunication, and in the crushing weight of expectation and obedience.

Finishing this collection, I felt simultaneously unsettled and invigorated: unsettled because the moral questions are often uncomfortable and unresolved, invigorated because Brecht demonstrates how theatre can function as both aesthetic and ethical education.

Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays is not merely literature to consume—it is a persistent, demanding interrogation of human behaviour, historical circumstance, and societal responsibility, a reminder that art’s true power often lies in its capacity to disturb, provoke, and enlighten simultaneously.

Most recommended.

[Eliza A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first three plays (The Jewish Wife, In Search of Justice, The Informer) - 4 stars
The last three plays (Measures Taken, Exception and the Rule, Salzburg Dance of Death) - 3 stars
Undecided about Elephant Calf.

[Emma]

I only read the Jewish Wife but I thought it was quite good.

[J Y · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Brecht's plays need to be seen rather than read. I could have used some help with interpretation.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Brecht. I don't know. A few excerpts from longer pieces, which seems kind of useless to me.

[Ehsan Ghiasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The exception and the rule