The "Gestural Rhythm" goes back to Bertolt Brecht's poetry and poetics and is explained in his essay "On Unrhymed Lyrics in Irregular Rhythms". Brecht cites the two final verses of his poem "Die Jugend und das Dritte Reich" (Youth and the Third Reich) from his volume "Deutschen Satire" (German Satires) as an example of rhymeless poetry with irregular rhythms:

Ja wenn die Kinder Kinder blieben
Könnte man ihnen immer Märchen erzählen.
Da sie aber älter werden
kann man es nicht.

Brecht remarks: „The missing feet must be taken care of either by a lengthening of the preceding foot or by pauses.“ Brecht called this "gestural rhythmization", which he further developed as part of his theatrical work and from there retransferred to his poetry. Brecht understood "the perception of social dissonances as a prerequisite for the new gestural rhythmization", and thus developed a "rhythm" in his poetry as well as in his theatrical work that differed from the "customary clatter" like in the iamb or trochee:

"Instead of writing:

'Seit sie da Trommeln rührten überm Sumpf

Und um mich Roß und Katapult versank,

Ist mir verrückt mein Kopf. Ob alle schon

Ertrunken sind und aus, und nur mehr Lärm hängt

Leer und verspätet zwischen Erd und Himmel? Ich

Sollt nicht so laufen.'

I wrote:

'Seit diese Trommeln waren, der Sumpf, ersäufend

Katapult und Pferde, ist wohl verrückt

Meiner Mutter Sohn Kopf. Keuch nicht! Ob alle

Schon ertrunken sind und aus und nur mehr Lärm ist

Hängend noch zwischen Erd und Himmel? Ich will

auch nicht

Mehr rennen.'

This conveyed the panting of the runner, and the contradictory emotions of the speaker were better revealed in the syncopations.“

This stagnant counter-rhythm is realized above all by the use of enjambement, which is emphasized by pauses in the lecture, especially by lyricists of the former GDR: A peculiarity that goes back to Brecht's influence, which can be found, for example, in Heiner Müller's poems: The poems  MÜLLER IM HESSISCHEN HOF and BESUCH BEIM ÄLTEREN STAATSMANN use long lines in a continuous enjambement technique that is phrased to Brecht's gestural rhythm. Two other GDR poets probably got to know this Brecht intonation theory through their theatre work and then adapted it intensively: Karl Mickel, like Volker Braun, Heinz Czechowski, Bernd Jentzsch, Rainer Kirsch, Sarah Kirsch and Richard Leising member of the so-called Sächsischen Dichterschule (Saxon Poetry School), and Kerstin Hensel, who today teaches as Mickel's successor at the Berlin Academy of Dramatic Arts Ernst Busch.

Literature:

Ritter, Hans Martin: Das Gestische Prinzip bei Bertolt Brecht, Köln 1986.

MacLean, Hector: Gestus in performance: Brecht and Heiner Müller, in: New essays on Brecht, Toronto 2001, S: 80-99.