The harvest
The harvest was the title of an Augsburg school magazine in which the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht published his first literary attempts. Brecht himself published parts of his works under the pseudonym Berthold Eugen.
Even in his youth, Brecht was firmly convinced that one day he would become an important poet. However, his first attempts were not very encouraging. Texts that he submitted to magazines were rejected. Together with his friend Fritz Gehweyer, Brecht made the decision to publish their own magazine. In his diary in 1913 he noted in August: “Gehweyer and I are publishing a magazine - The harvest, an edition already finished. Hohenester's workforce secured. ”Brecht also won over all other employees for the magazine from among his classmates in class 6A and the parallel class. He was now able to publish his literary attempts without being compelled to do so and at the same time practice editorial work.
The first of six issues appeared in September 1913, the last in February 1914. Around 40 copies were hectographed each time , and the price was 15 pfennigs. The seventh issue was no longer completed. The editors were Brecht and Julius Bingen , Gehweyer was responsible for the graphic design. Almost the entire volume 6 is filled with Brecht's first surviving dramatic attempt The Bible , which he signed with Bertold Eugen .
The main problem of the harvest soon turned out to be that it was hardly possible to acquire contributions from other authors. In order to counter the impression that Brecht's works were almost exclusively published in the magazine, he passed on various of his little poems to classmates, who were then published under their names. In the long run, however, this way of working could not be maintained, and since Brecht was still unable to attract noteworthy third-party contributions, the publication of the magazine was discontinued in early 1914.
In 1997, a complete set of the harvest was found, so that the original works, some of which had only been reconstructed from copies, are available again.
Individual evidence
- ^ Klaus Völker : Bertolt Brecht, A Biography. Rowohlt 1988
- ^ GBA Bertolt Brecht: Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Suhrkamp 1988-1999, vol. 26, p. 71
- ↑ GBA vol. 1 p. 503
- ^ Ana Kugli, Michael Opitz (ed.): Brecht Lexikon. Stuttgart and Weimar 2006, p. 223
- ↑ Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht Handbook. J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, vol. 1 p. 67