“DER SPITZEL,” ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL SCENES depicting the German bourgeoisie's intimidation by and gradual accommodation to the dictates of National Socialism, was the first part of Furcht und Elend to be prepublished in Das Wort. The story of Georg Lukács's uncharacteristically positive reaction to this one scene, Brecht's surprised response, and his subsequent theoretical amplifications has been told a number of times, albeit seldom with reference to Furcht und Elend, the antifascist work that was at one stage a vital piece of evidence in what has been called “one of the richest controversies in the history of Marxist aesthetics.” This episode was a significant early milestone in Furcht und Elend's mixed reception. Brecht had never before been accused of finally abandoning Epic Theater — and praised virtually in the same breath for doing so.

The controversy's starting point, a reassessment of German Expressionism in Das Wort and Internationale Literatur (Deutsche Blätter), predicated on the thesis that the movement was an irrational phenomenon that had paved the way for National Socialism, made the “Expressionismusdebatte” a convenient label for the clashes to come. Brecht himself occasionally referred to its latter stages as a “Formalismusdebatte,” but in the context of the Zhdanovist and Lukács camps' concerted campaign of attacks on modernism and Epic Theater, he had good reason to see it as above all a “Realismusdebatte.” The term “Debatte” was, it has to be said, something of a misnomer, for the schism was publicly enacted as a onesided polemic.