THE YEAR 1938 BROUGHT both a high point and an unpredictable setback in the fortunes of Brecht's Furcht und Elend project. The Paris premiere of “99%” (21–22 May) was an undoubted success, especially among the German exile community, and it was an event that would prove particularly important for Walter Benjamin's ongoing crusade on the playwright's behalf, the collective fruits of which would eventually be published by Suhrkamp in 1966 under the title Versuche über Brecht. One of the peculiarities of Furcht und Elend's reception is the fact that a work that was in many respects so untypical of Brecht's mainstream anti-illusionist Epic Theater should have played such a major role in Benjamin's understanding of the playwright's achievements. Because he was still primarily associated with Die Dreigroschenoper and his austerely didactic plays of the early 1930s, the exiled Brecht desperately needed Slatan Dudow's production to succeed, not least because this play was both politically and aesthetically far more important than Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar, a more parochial depiction of (Spanish) fascism that Dudow had directed in Paris to much acclaim the year before. In the event, Furcht und Elend was to set new standards for innovative forms of Epic Theater, within a framework where many of the defamiliarizing effects operated in ways that were cunningly camouflaged for covert resistance reasons.

Benjamin's wholeheartedly positive review of “99%,” published in Die Neue Weltbühne on 30 June 1938, was only matched in enthusiasm by Brecht's own glowing accolade in Der Messingkauf.