Eisler on the Beach

On 11 May 1947, Hanns Eisler, the 'Karl Marx of music', appeared for the first time before the Un-American Activities Committee – "perhaps the most important case ever to appear before the committee" (Richard Nixon). In the summer of the same year, Eisler’s brother Gerhart, a communist official and an expert on Spain, China and the Soviet Union, was sentenced to three years in prison. A witness to the prosecution was their sister Ruth Fischer, former international first lady of the Communist Party of Germany, who in the meantime had become a fervent anti-Stalinist. "With the Eislers, family relations are like those in Shakespearean dramas" (Charlie Chaplin). Together with the Bolschewistische Kurkapelle, Tom Kühnel and Jürgen Kuttner narrate the story of the Left in the 20th century as a family tale.