Legend of the dead soldier

The legend of the dead soldier , first published under the title Ballade vom Toten Militär , is one of Bertolt Brecht's most famous poems . It describes how a fallen soldier is dug up again, declared fit and led into war again in a grotesque masked procession. The poem was probably composed in 1917 or 1918 and was first published in 1922 in the appendix to the first edition of Brecht's drama Drums in the Night . In 1927 Brecht included the legend in his collection of poems by Bertolt Brecht's house postil .

Origin and text history

Brecht himself gave two different details about the time the legend was created: In his journals 1935 he speaks of the "war year 1917", in a typescript from the estate he mentions the year 1918. There is no autograph , so this question is difficult to decide is.

The poem was intended for vocal performance from the start, and Brecht sang it to the guitar several times in front of an audience before it was first printed. In his drama Drumming in the Night , premiered in 1922 , the song was heard by the general public for the first time, there it is performed in a “schnapps still” by the innkeeper Glubb as a morality from the dead soldier “zur Klampfe”. The song was first printed under the title The Ballade of the Dead Soldier in the appendix to the first printing of Drummeln in the night in December 1922. There it was dedicated : “In memory of the infantryman Christian Grumbeis, born April 11, 1897, died in the Holy Week 1918 in Karasin (South Russia). Peace to his ashes! He persevered. ”In this form, the Deutsches Theater Berlin included the ballad in its program booklet for the Berlin premiere on December 20, 1922. The dedicatee is obviously fictional, a Christian Grumbeis could not be identified. Jürgen Hillesheim suspects that this is an encrypted allusion to Brecht's friend Caspar Neher , whose date of birth is identical to that of Grumbeis.

When Brecht's collection of poems, Hauspostille, finally appeared after a long delay in 1926 (in a private print under the title Taschenpostille ) and in 1927 (at Propylaeen as Bertolt Brecht's Hauspostille ), the legend of the dead soldier , now under its final title, formed part of lesson 5: The small times of the day of the dead . There are only minimal variations of the text; the dedication has been shortened and integrated into the introduction to the volume of poetry, instructions for using the individual lessons . The volume of poetry contained a sheet music appendix in which a melody for the vocal performance was published for the first time. It probably comes from Brecht himself.

In 1934 the legend of the dead soldier appeared again in the volume Lieder Gedichte Chöre , which Brecht published together with the composer Hanns Eisler in the Parisian exile publisher Editions du Carrefour . The text again differed slightly from the earlier prints; the only significant change concerned the timing of the events. The first two verses in the first print and in the house postil read : "And when the war in the fifth spring / offered no prospect of peace", which initially suggests the year 1919, although 1918 was probably meant; in songs poems choirs this is changed to the “fourth spring”. The sheet music appendix to this publication only contained settings by Eisler, so that sheet music for the legend was missing.

Action and formal construction

The poem belongs to the genre Ballad , so it is a narrative poem. This is based on the following action: A soldier dies towards the end of the war - in the “fourth” or “fifth spring” - the “heroic death”. But because it is still needed, a “military / ische medical commission” digs it up again in the summer. She declares him fit for war, gives him a “fiery schnapps” and goes to war with him again, accompanied by “two sisters”, a (half) “naked woman”, a “priest”, two paramedics and a “gentleman Tailcoat ". Everyone cheers him, but the soldier himself can no longer be seen:

And when they move through the villages

It comes that no one saw him

So many were around him

With Tschindra and Hurray ...

And although the soldier has already "decayed", he has not forgotten how to march. He “pulls into hero's death” as he has learned to do.

No specific war is mentioned in the text, nor is an exact time and place. However, the dedication and numerous realities in the text make it clear that it is a German soldier in the penultimate or last year of the First World War. These realities include the (German) "Kaiser", the abbreviation " kv " for "war usable", the "colors black-white-red " that are painted on the soldier's "corpse shirt", and the mention of France as an enemy:

The cats and dogs scream

The rats in the field whistle wildly:

You don't want to be French

Because that's a shame.

The poem consists of 19 stanzas of four verses each. Rhyme and meter are noticeably changeable: In all stanzas the second and fourth verse rhyme, in most of them the first and third also, but not in all. Often the rhymes are impure ("desolate" / "is", "beautiful" / "see"), which in one case is exacerbated by a hard enjambement :

Summer swept over the graves

And the soldier was already asleep

One night a military

ical medical commission.

In terms of the metrical basic structure, the first and third verses are each four-seated, the second and fourth verse three-seated, at the beginning there is usually a lowering, at the end mostly a raising, so that consistently monosyllabic rhymes (" male rhyme ") result. This basic pattern, which corresponds to the Chevy Chase verse , is filled very differently and occasionally even exceeded, so that the verses vary considerably in length.

In 1939 Brecht himself came back to the rhythmic structure of the legend of the dead soldier in a theoretical work, the essay On Rhymeless Poetry with Irregular Rhythms . The article was published in the Moscow-based exile magazine Das Wort , whose editors were Brecht. As an introduction, Brecht reports: "Every now and then, when I published rhyming poetry, I was asked why I got the chance to pass it off as poetry." He defended himself against the allegation implied therein with the argument that irregular rhythms could also be systematically rhythmic be accentuated. As an example from his early, consistently rhymed poetry, Brecht cites the second verses of each of the 19 stanzas of the legend : There are no less than nine different rhythms of this three-part line of verse in this poem.

Dubbing

Brecht's own setting of the ballad is based on very simple patterns, like most of his own compositions. In D minor , it ends with an A at the fifth level. This results in an open ending that should be understood functionally as dominant : Only the beginning of the next stanza leads back to the keynote, there is always a need for a new one Verse awakened. The melody moves consistently in the fifth space. There are two variants: In the pocket postille it begins on the second level, immediately jumps to the fifth level after the prelude and then falls back to the second level by the end of the second verse; the second half of each stanza is built in parallel, but at the end it jumps back to the fifth level. In the house postilla, on the other hand, it begins with the root note itself, so that a fifth jump follows immediately. The upbeat six-eighth time leaves plenty of room for the strong rhythmic variations of the text. The high closing note of the open end, which is sustained for a whole bar, allows the singer to put particular emphasis on the last rhyming word. Sun recalled Bernhard Reich to a vocal performance Brecht: "The word hero's death he held a few seconds the o high for the cheeky o will also be seen from all sides."

Ernst Busch , the most famous interpreter of the piece, used a slightly expanded and varied version of this melody on recordings. He varies the first line in every other stanza: It already begins at the 5th level and goes up to the C to end on the A again. In addition, the harmonium accompaniment is varied depending on the changing rhythms. This arrangement presumably came from Ernst Busch himself.

In 1929 Kurt Weill presented a composition of the legend for four-part a cappella choir , "in a simple syllabic - homophonic sentence", apparently intended primarily for amateur choirs. The Ernst Busch Archive also has a title page from around 1958 that refers to an arrangement by Hanns Eisler in 17 variations for piano and percussion. However, this arrangement has not been handed down.

Performances and reception

Brecht sang the legend in front of an audience on various occasions. Arnolt Bronnen describes how he heard the song at a company in Otto Zarek's Berlin house in 1921; in January 1922, Brecht sang it at a performance arranged by Zarek on Trude Hesterberg's Wilder stage , causing a scandal in the audience. Ernst Busch later performed it in the Berlin cabaret Larifari , which was directed by Rosa Valetti .

The legend was immediately perceived by the political right as an insulting attack on the German soldiers at the front, while numerous art critics and intellectuals as well as the political left in general rated it as one of Brecht's most impressive poems. The Berliner Lokalanzeiger rated the print in the program booklet of the Deutsches Theater as "gross tactlessness". During the Hitler putsch in November 1923, the legend is said to have been in fifth place on a “black list” of putschists. The National Socialist regime justified the expatriation of Brecht on June 8, 1935, among other things: "His machinations, in which he insulted the German soldiers at the front, among other things, testify to the lowest sentiments."

In contrast, Kurt Tucholsky celebrated the work in his review of the Hauspostille as a “lyrical achievement of great style”. Alexander Abusch , who otherwise assessed the house postil rather critically, saw the legend as a "brilliant approach to a poem of the class struggle".

Updating production from 1989

Analogous to the staging of the Anachronistic Train , a staging of the legend of the dead soldier was also planned in 1985 as a cultural program for "30 Years of the Bundeswehr" in 1985. Due to concerns of various state institutions, the implementation of the production was delayed by four years. During this time, public test performances were carried out in many cities , and the production was not completed until September 1, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War .

• The German soldier who fell in World War I is excavated in Verdun . A medical commission finds him fit for use in the war. He was given the uniform of the Wehrmacht and went to the Second World War.
• The German soldier, who fell again in World War II, is dug up in the SS cemetery in Bitburg .
• The soldier is wearing a shroud with a swastika and is presented to the public.
• In Andernach , not far away , in front of the first barracks of the Bundeswehr, the newly excavated soldier is given a new uniform - the uniform of the Bundeswehr . An actor in Helmut Kohl's mask hands him a rifle.
• On the Rhine, to the sound of Richard Wagner's Siegfrieds funeral music , the soldier is transferred to the federal capital Bonn.
• In Bonn the soldier takes part in a rally of the peace movement: I leave the rifle that they have slung around my head , he says, with you. In the end he goes into his own grave.

expenditure

• Drumming in the night . Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1922, appendix.
• Pocket postille . Private print by Kiepenheuer Verlag, Berlin 1926.
• House postille . Propylaea, Berlin 1927.
• Songs Poems Choirs (with Hanns Eisler). Editions du Carrefour, Paris 1934.
• Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition , Volume 1: Pieces 1, pp. 230–232 (Appendix on Drums in the Night )
• Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition , Volume 11: Poems 1, pp. 112–115 ( house postil ), pp. 199–201 ( songs, poems, choirs )
• Brecht Liederbuch , p. 8–9 (version of Taschenpostille, with setting by Kurt Schwaen ), p. 10–11 (arrangement Ernst Busch, with setting by Kurt Schwaen)

literature

• Large Commented Berlin and Frankfurt Edition , Volume 1: Pieces 1, pp. 549–567 (Commentary on Drums in the Night )
• Large commented Berlin and Frankfurt edition , Volume 11: Gedichte 1, pp. 299–324 (Commentary on Hauspostille ), especially pp. 322–323; P. 364–385 (commentary on songs, poems, choirs )
• Brecht Liederbuch, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, pp. 360–365 (commentary)

Web links

• Pictures of the production from 1989
• Text and also sung

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Poems 1, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt, p. 322.
2. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Pieces 1, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt, p. 211.
3. ^ Jürgen Hillesheim: Bertolt Brecht's Augsburg stories. Verlagsgemeinschaft Augsbuch, Augsburg 2005, pp. 73ff.
4. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 363.
5. ↑ Quoted here after the second publication in: Bertolt Brecht: attempts . Issue 12, structure, Berlin 1953, pp. 143-147; the literal quotation is on p. 143. Brecht assigns the essay to the “theoretical part of the 23rd attempt”, “which deals with the problems of poetry” (ibid., p. 141).
6. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 363.
7. ^ Bernhard Reich: In the race against time. Memories from five decades of German theater history, Henschelverlag, Berlin 1970, p. 297f .; quoted here from Hennenberg: Brecht Liederbuch, p. 363.
8. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 363.
9. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 365.
10. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 364.
11. ↑ GBA. Poems 1, p. 323.
12. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht Liederbuch, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1984, p. 364.
13. ↑ Werner Hecht: Brecht Chronik, p. 447.
14. ^ GBA, Gedichte 1, p. 312.
15. ↑ GBA. Poems 1, p. 323.