The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent

The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent (German: Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis) is a Lehrstück by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and Elisabeth Hauptmann. Under the title Lehrstück it was first performed with music by Paul Hindemith as part of the Baden-Baden festival on 28 July 1929, at the Stadthalle, Baden-Baden, directed by Brecht, designed by Heinz Porep.

Brecht's programme note described the work as unfinished and as the "product of various theories of a musical, dramatic and political nature aiming at the collective practice of the arts". The 50-minute piece was conceived as a multi-media performance, including scenes of physical knockabout clowning, choral sections and a short film by Carl Koch, Dance of Death, featuring Valeska Gert (

Along with its companion, the radio cantata Lindbergh's Flight, the piece was offered as an example of a new genre, "the teaching-play or Lehrstück", in which the traditional division between actor and audience is abolished; the piece is intended for its participants only (Brecht specifically including the film makers and clowns along with the chorus). The final chorus of Lindbergh's Flight appears at the beginning of The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent. "Cruelty, violence and death" are explored by the play, which "broaches the subject of complicity between the helper and the forces of power and violence." The action concerns a wrecked flight crew being brought to terms with their non-existence. While the pilot complains that he must not die, the others accept that their significance lies in being anonymous parts of a larger whole.

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