«Sia lodato il dubbio!». Figure di scienziati in Bertolt Brecht

With its increasingly topical three versions between the 1930es and 1950es, Brecht’s drama "Life of Galileo" stands out in twentieth-century theatre as the utmost example of questioning the relationship between science, dominating discourse and political power, the moral and social responsibility of the scientist, and the role of the intellectual as a whole in times of dictatorship, war and cold war. The Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer of the 17th century is in Brecht’s "Historie" a deliberately ambiguous mixture of grounders of modern scientific method (Descartes, Bacon, Galileo himself and others) and contemporary scientists in the crunch of their time, from Bohr and Einstein up to Oppenheimer. As such, Brecht’s full-blooded figure, varying between research and didactic enthusiasm, astute opportunism and blameworthy cowardice, triumphed on world’s stage in memorable productions and gave rise to a wave of heterogeneous scientist’s plays in post-war theatre – in the German speaking context, for example, such apart responses to Brecht as Dürrenmatt’s and Kipphardt’s dramas. The giant-like figure of Galileo led to disregarding the many other scientists appearing as central characters in Brecht’s oeuvre, not only in minor works – at best, some figures have been paid attention as preliminary or accessory sketches of the famously multifaceted, repeatedly polished character (Bruno, Bacon, Einstein); others still await scholarly salvaging (Reed). The present analysis tries to reconsider these Brechtian scientists so as to reassess their relationship to the renowned Galileo, especially with regard to some corny critical commonplace, and to highlight the diverse range of Brecht’s depiction of those men of science against the background of his pronouncedly interdiscursive aesthetics.