Hanns Eisler: Letter to the director Erwin Piscator (11 August 1941)
Hanns Eisler: Letter to the director Erwin Piscator (11 August 1941)
Hoffentlich bekommt er einen Job und ist dann in der Lage, sich einige Zeit bei uns in New York aufzuhalten und mit uns zu arbeiten. Aber bei allen Vorschlägen, die wir ihm jetzt machen, müssen wir unbedingt zuerst an seine Finanzen denken.
[Hopefully he will get a job and will then be able to spend some time with us in New York and work with us. But in every suggestion that we now make to him, we must think of his finances first. (ed. trans.)]
Hanns Eisler to Erwin Piscator in a letter from 11 August 1941
In a letter to the director Erwin Piscator, the composer Hanns Eisler expresses his concern regarding writer Bertolt Brecht. He had arrived in the US via Finland in July 1941. Brecht had initially harboured the hope that he could work as a screenwriter for Hollywood, but his antipathy towards the American societal system and commercialism of Hollywood stood in the way. Hanns Eisler tried to help Brecht and hoped that they could resume their successful collaboration from the pre-1933 period. The Hollywooder Liederbuch [Hollywood Songbook] and the Hollywood-Elegien [Hollywood Elegies] are productions by the two artists after they recommenced working together in California.
In the letter, Hanns Eisler also refers to Kurt Weill, who had composed the music for Brecht's Threepenny Opera. Brecht had also had a fruitful working relationship with Weill, which, however, they did not resume in exile – their attitudes towards the US were too divergent.
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