Der Jasager | Der Neinsager

»He who says A doesn't have to say B. He can also recognise that A was false«, says the boy. A simple, basic truth with which the second didactic play by Bertolt Brecht "Der Neinsager" ends.
Previously, in 1930, he had written the didactic play »Der Jasager«. Due to intensive debates, particularly with the pupils from Karl Marx school in Berlin Neukölln for which Brecht had written this »school opera« together with Kurt Weill, he remodelled the piece into »Der Neinsager«. In both plays a boy, either a yes-person or a naysayer, travels over the mountains with a group of scientists. The boy wants to fetch medicine for his ailing mother. However, when he himself falls ill and thus becomes a burden to the group, he complies with and agrees to - as has been the custom for a long time - being thrown from a cliff in »Der Jasager«, or alternatively, he refuses to accept being thrown from a cliff in »Der Neinsager«.