• The Jewish Wife (Die jüdische Frau)

2/20/26 (Fri)

I learned of Brecht’s 1935 short piece in researching Crooked Cross and found a performance online. The setting is again contemporary Germany. The first 20-25 minutes of the 30-minute work constitute a monologue by a woman who is calling friends to let them know that she’ll be leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks – she tells her bridge partner to find someone to fill in, and ensures another friend that the planned dinner next week will go on despite her absence as her husband will still be there. She calls a servant to ask if she’ll take care of the husband, an eminent scientist, while she’s away, saying this time, though, that she’ll be back in a few months. We come to realize that this is no ordinary journey. We learn that she is Jewish, and her husband is not.

She practices telling her husband that she’s going. She notes that her presence will harm his career. She has never been involved in politics, she insists, and decries a society where “liars force everyone to lie,” reminding him that when someone would previously tell her she didn’t look Jewish, he would instantly and honestly say that she did. Now, she remarks, this imaginary him sits watching her packing without trying to stop her, without admitting what is truly happening. No one wants to acknowledge the clear truth.

At this point, the husband returns. He says all the right things – you shouldn’t go, don’t be too long, stay close to the border, I’ll send more money – but does nothing to stop her. The scenario she envisioned proves sadly true. He tells her unconvincingly that she shouldn’t leave on his behalf, while at the same time mentioning offhandedly the colleague who has been avoiding them recently due to potential consequences for associating with a Jew. He figures that she must have other reasons that are driving her to go, as if she is traveling to a spa, and says that the break will do her good. He states that the situation will pass “like an inflammation”. She understands his cowardice and resolves to leave. Even as he hands over her fur coat, which they know that she won’t need for many months, he reasons, “In the end, it’s just a few weeks…”

The show paints a devastating picture of the willful blindness of normal citizens under the new Nazi administration in the face of an extremely unpleasant reality, the excuses they fell back on to justify their ignorance. It demonstrates at the same time the bleak resignation of those who couldn’t afford such luxury. The wife methodically packs and makes her arrangements in the grim knowledge that she has no other choice, as the husband spouts words that both know are meaningless. As with Crooked Cross, while no one was yet envisioning the existential horrors that this would lead to, it was already blazingly evident what was happening to innocent people as the masses simply looked away. Brecht, not himself Jewish (though he did have a Jewish wife), had fled Germany at this point because of his political views. He is very clear-eyed here about the dangers of not seeing, not crying out, pretending that all will be well. And, of course, he was sadly proven correct.

This version dates from 1971, adapted by George Tabori, directed by Jeff Young, and starring Viveca Lindfors and Harris Yulin. Lindfors was a Swedish-born actress with an impressive career, including Emmy and Silver Bear awards (she also played Vera against Bob Fosse in a Pal Joey revival), but she’s a bit too glum here. While that interpretation is perfectly valid under the circumstances, I would have appreciated more grit given the courage it took to see plainly. That could be a function of the direction, which was unrelentingly bleak. I also watched bits of another US production by the Armenian Theater Company from 2023, where the wife seems to come off as more determined, though the American accents were off-putting. It’s probably tough getting the right balance of determination, disappointment and despair.

Nevertheless, the work is an invaluable portrait of Nazi Germany at a time when something might have been done. The husband represents the entire world whose refusal to face the horrid reality led to devastation for all involved. A short but piercing work.