Brecht defended himself before HUAC by claiming the identity of poet, not party member.

Evidence

During his interrogation on 30 October 1947 Brecht, like Eisler, replied instead to the notorious question `Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?’ that he had never belonged to the Communist Party and that he saw himself as a poet. (In exactly the same way, Horkheimer and Adorno, whom Brecht was always sneering about, saw themselves as philosophers.) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 414

Categorization

• SHARE: A sharp, specific anecdote for someone interested in the pressure on German émigré intellectuals under McCarthyism.
• DEFINE: The passage defines self-conception as a shield: poet versus party member, paralleling philosopher versus party member.
• XREF: connects to: Guilt by association let denunciations by relatives and ex-communists drive HUAC investigations of artists. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 413
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Guilt by association let denunciations by relatives and ex-communists drive HUAC investigations of artists. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 413