Memory of Marie A.

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Memory of Marie A. is a poem that Bertolt Brecht wrote in the original version in his notebook on February 21, 1920 while on a train ride to Berlin. Among other things, the author published it in 1927 in the Bertolt Brecht collection . It addresses the memory of a past love that Brecht captured in the famous image of the passing white cloud.

And above us in the beautiful summer sky
Was a cloud that I saw for a long time
It was very white and extremely up
And when I looked up, she was never there.

The image of the cloud for the fading memory of the beloved's face is a literary motif that the early Brecht used regularly. The initials "Marie A." in the title refers to Brecht Augsburg childhood sweetheart Marie Rose Amann. The poem is written on a popular turn-of-the-century tune known as Lost Fortune . Brecht sang it with the guitar several times before his text was first published. He probably knew the melody from his collaboration with Karl Valentin , who had already parodically processed the sentimental song .

Brecht biographer John Fuegi counts the "deceptively simple poem, easy to learn by heart ..., to the basic stock of German literature."

content

The first stanza describes a love experience in nature, the encounter with a "silent pale love", the "Marie A." from the title. A cloud in the summer sky, "very white and tremendously above", which finally disappears, makes the experience unforgettable.

In the second stanza, the speaker deals with his memories of the love experience from a temporal distance. "Many moons" have now passed uneventfully. He could no longer remember the face of his lover, only his feelings of love: "I only know more: I kissed it one day."

In the third stanza the speaker couples his memory to the unforgettable image of the white cloud.

And also the kiss, I would have forgotten it long ago
If it wasn't for the cloud
I still remember them and I always will
It was very white and came from above.

The once beloved has "now perhaps the seventh child", what remains is only the memory of the great moment of love.

But that cloud only bloomed for minutes
And when I looked up, it was already disappearing in the wind.

Emergence

Biographical context

The manuscript of the poem can be found in Bertolt Brecht's notebook from 1920, entitled Sentimental Song No. 1004 . Underneath the remark: “21. II.20, 7 o'clock in the evening on the train to Berlin [...] In the state of the filled seminal vesicle, the man sees Aphrodite in every woman. Go R. Kraus ”. According to the manuscript findings, Brecht entered both the title of the poem and the attached comment later than the text of the poem itself, “at a certain time interval”.

The handwritten title refers to Don Juan or Don Giovanni who - as Leporello sings in the register aria of Mozart's opera - had 1003 lovers in Spain alone, a number that the young Brecht wanted to exceed by one. The text, so romantic at first glance ("On that day in the blue moon of September - Still under a young plum tree - I held her there, the silent pale love - In my arms like a lovely dream [...]") is therefore not free of aggression . The high number of lovers alone puts the described love experience into perspective. Brecht's added comment possibly alludes to verses from Goethe's Faust , Hexenküche scene : “With this drink in your body, you will soon see Helene in every woman.” The “Geheime Rat Kraus”, to whom the quote is put in his mouth, is probably an invention Brechts.

In the published version, the old title has been deleted and the poem was given the heading Memory of Marie A. , under which it became known. The student Maria Rosa Amann (1901–1988), often written in literature as “Marie Rose Aman”, who Brecht met in an ice cream parlor in the early summer of 1916, is said to have been the real figure behind the mysterious Marie A. Jürgen Hillesheim doubts the uniqueness of this reference, u. a. because Brecht also courted Rosa's older sister and was therefore banned from her parents. Their nickname, however, was "Maria", while Brecht called the younger sister "Rosa, Rosa Maria, Rosa Marie, Rosmarie and Rosl" according to their mood. Already in 1956 Albrecht Schöne pointed out the frequent use of the name “Marie” by early Brecht and the puns with this name. In his opinion, the abbreviation "die Marie A." can also be read as "die Maria". Jürgen Hillesheim's conclusion is the criticism of the brief biographical concretization of the woman named in the title:

“So one was called Rosa, the other Maria. It follows from this that Brecht not only had both sisters in mind, stalking both of them, but also messing around with their names. He allowed them to merge into one person, repeatedly and playfully forming a unit of Rosa, with whom he had a relationship, and Maria, whom he could not have. (...) The poem is in fact not based on a concrete you. "

Brecht's love for Rosa finally failed. “Someone else is interested in this girl from the ice cream parlor… 'The lovely dream of my cold nights no longer loves me'” Marie Rose Amann gave in a late film interview “weighty reasons for not being able to afford the romantic clouds. She would have been thrown out of school, she claimed, if Brecht had continued to pick her up from there, as he often did. After the first kiss, she cried because she believed she was going to have a child. ”Out of fear, she left Brecht to her gymnastics friend Paula Banholzer and was glad that she had the illegitimate child and not herself.

Brecht followed Marie until he was a student. So the poem is about the wish to forget and the problem of not being able to forget. As early as December 18, 1917, Brecht wrote to his friend Caspar Neher :

“So I can no longer kiss Rosemary (she has soft, moist, full lips on her pale, thirsty face). But I can kiss others, of course. I see 100 mouths in front of me, they perish without my kiss. I give myself and 5 continents 30 years. But I can do Rosmarie ... devil! What are 100 possibilities versus an impossibility? Forgotten is strength = escape from - weakness. The highest thing you can do is take what you can. And the other? But the other one that you don't ...? There can be no God, because otherwise I couldn't stand not being a God ... Who isn't laughing? (Laughter is also such a power of the weak!) "

The degradation of Marie A., the unforgettable 15-year-old hairdresser's daughter from the Kesselmarkt in Augsburg , is quite drastic in the letter quoted above:

“Because Rosa Maria is not pretty. That was a legend that I made up. It is only from a distance and when I ask: 'Isn't she pretty?' - Her eyes are terribly empty, small, nasty, sucking vortices, her nose is turned up and too wide, her mouth is too big, red, thick. Her neck is not straight, her posture is cretaceous, her gait is shabby and her fracture (belly) protrudes. But I like her. (Although she is not clever and not kind.) I still love her. It's horrible nonsense. Am I pretty? "

Sabine Kebir refers to an entry in Brecht's diary dated August 26, 1920 to show that “the poem initially only represents an intellectual attempt to gain distance from Marie Rose Aman”. Half a year after the poem, which so hauntingly evokes forgetting and fading memories, Brecht noted:

“A lovely twilight story in the evening.
I had ordered the Rosl. (...) We run to the Birkenau. We slide around on a bench; it is pale, childlike, sappy. The sky is cloudy, it swims overhead, and the wind rumbles in the bushes: unfortunately it gets under the leaves. I kiss her soft little visa and crush her a little. In addition, she looks for good manners in all situations and has to be home by 9. "

Then Brecht describes how he "trotted through the teeming bushes like cold animals - the clouds almost fall on your neck - stepped up to the 'Galgei' again". After five years of unsuccessful advertising for Rose, Sabine Kebir sees this last approach as something like an attempt to relive her own poetry. “Finally he talks about a certain 'pig work of defloration', which, however, he relates to the difficult birth of poetic ideas.” Because of this concrete biographical background, Kebir rejects interpretations that in “Memory of Marie A.” the “ Faustian Tradition ”and the“ Baal character of the young Brecht ”were looking for an abstract experience of a failed love for the encounter of ruthless masculinity with the eternal feminine.

“The contextual analysis based on the biographical does not show us any persons who have the dimensions of a Faust and a Gretchen . Rather, an insecure young man emerges, who marks the strong man, especially in his poetry - and a woman who in the end knows what she wants or doesn't want: no adventure with the likable but somehow eerie Eugen Berthold. "

Literary and musical sources

The poem was inspired by a French chanson which , in an arrangement by the Viennese composer Leopold Sprowacker, enjoyed great popularity in German-speaking countries around the turn of the century and was widely used in numerous different arrangements . Carl Zuckmayer spoke of a "vulgar hit melody that was well-known towards the end of the war." Many sentimental postcards from the turn of the century contain excerpts from the work. Karl Valentin , the Brecht since 1919 knew the song from 1915, in his Sketch Tingeltangel , as a theater in the suburbs known parodies : A singer who tried to recite it in a romantic tone was disturbed by Valentin in ever new ways. As Fritz Hennenberg comments, Brecht had the "melody in the ear" while composing, and the setting composed by Brecht himself in collaboration with Franz Servatius Bruinier adheres closely to this melody.

The first stanza of the German version of the hit reads:

So often spring through the open window
On Sunday morning we laughed at us
We went through the groves and green fields.
Say, darling, did your heart think about it?
When in the evening we turned the steps home
Your hand rests in my arms
As often as the rustling of the willows frightened you,
I held you so tightly, so deeply warm.
At that time how do I love you my life
I would have kissed the trace of your step
I would have loved to give everything for you
And yet you - you never loved me!

First of all, the similarity to the Brecht poem in rhythm and rhyme scheme is striking; However, instead of the eight plus four verses of the original ( stanza plus refrain ) , Brecht chose an eight-line stanza form without a refrain. “Meter is the five-lever iambus, only verses 2 and 4 as well as 6 and 8 of each stanza are rhymed.” Furthermore, individual formulations have been adopted, the basic theme of a love experience in nature is partly adopted, partly varied. What remains is the classic song-like tone, the catchiness of rhythm and images, which give the poem a certain lightness and overlay or cover up the aspects of loss and devaluation of the beloved woman.

With the poem Brecht also takes up motifs from his own work. The cloud is “a basic motif of Brecht's early poetry”. The motif already appeared in the 1918 drama Baal :

Baal: It's spring too. There must be something white in this cursed cave!
A cloud!
(...)
Baal: But first I'll get a woman. Moving out alone, that's sad. Any one! With a face like a woman!
Baal: If you slept her, she might be a pile of flesh that no longer has a face.

The translator Jean-Claude Capèle sees the poem in this context as an expression of the “anti-social worldview of a Baal”, shaped by the experience of the First World War and the struggle for survival in the post-war period.

Albrecht Schöne goes far back in search of literary sources. He sees as the oldest predecessor "an old Breton harbor song whose words have been lost", the traces of which have been preserved in the "folk ballad of 'Schön Anna'". “A Lai of Marie de France dating back to about 1160 , which shows a close relationship with the ballads mentioned : 'Le Fraisne'." " Ezra Pounds 'La Fraisne', 1909 in the volume 'Personae' also goes back to this song 'appeared, which emanates from the Lai der Marie de France ”, should now be regarded as a starting point for Brecht's poem. Schöne quotes the end of the poem:

“Once there was a woman… /… but I forget… she was… /… I hope she will not come again. /…. I do not remember… / I think she hurt me once, but… / That was very long ago. / I do not like to remember things any more. / I like one little band of winds that blow / In the ash trees here: / For we are quite alone / Here 'mid the ash trees. "

Edition and text history

Publications

As early as 1922, the poem was intended for the Hauspostille collection , under the later title, as can be seen from a preserved table of contents. But the completion of this collection of poems was delayed considerably. The memory of Marie A. first appeared on August 2, 1924 in the Berlin 8 o'clock evening newspaper under the heading "New Lyrik". In December 1924 it was published in the magazine Junge Dichter vor die Front! , a periodical edited by the reciter Franz Konrad Hoefert , which wanted to offer not yet established poets a platform. A “Brecht evening” was announced there for December 15, 1924, at which Hoefert and the reciter Erna Feld were to recite Brecht texts and Jo Lherman , a busy theater maker and director, was to speak the introductory words; however, this evening event probably did not take place in the intended form. Lherman, in turn, included the memory of Marie A. at the beginning of January 1925 in the " Anthology of unpublished poems sixty German authors" published by him under the title Die Lyrik der Generation . It was a special issue of the Berlin “monthly magazine for philosophy, poetry and criticism” Das Dreieck , which had devoted itself to avant-garde literature and politics (the young Herbert Marcuse was one of its staff ). In November 1926, another reprint appeared in a well-read and renowned magazine from Ullstein-Verlag , the Uhu magazine, with a circulation of over 100,000 copies at times.

As planned since 1922, the poem was then part of 1927 finally published by Ullstein Hauspostille as " a parody of the house and church sermons Luther is to be read". Brecht's collection of poems is divided into “lessons” with titles that ironically refer to religious contexts. The memory of Marie A. appears in the Chronicles lesson . In contrast to the " Chronicles " of the Old Testament , the chapter of the house postil does not represent exemplary, meaningful résumés, but the lives of the "little people".

Text variants

The printed text does not differ significantly from the handwritten version from 1920. The most striking difference concerns the headline: Sentimentales Lied No. 1004 is replaced by a memory of Marie A. The biographical reference only came into play in the print version, while the ironic allusion to Don Giovanni was erased. Furthermore, Brecht slightly weakened direct references to a sexual act. Instead of “and when I got up” it was now: “And when I looked up, she was never there”; the line “on my chest like a morning dream” (possibly also “cradle dream”, the handwriting cannot be clearly deciphered) has been replaced by “in my arm like a lovely dream”.

Lecture instructions

Jan Knopf points out that Brecht's “lecture style prevented any 'mood' or 'attunement'”. Brecht used the loud naming of the verse numbers as an alienation effect . In the “Instructions for Using the Individual Lessons”, Brecht also recommends smoking during the presentation and “chording” with a “stringed instrument”. The ideal lecture context are “downpours, snowfalls, bankruptcies, etc.”, in short what Brecht understands by “raw forces of nature”. In addition, Brecht recommends “closing every reading in the pocket postille with the final chapter.” What is meant is the poem Against Seduction , which, in view of the finiteness of human life, calls for greedy enjoyment of life and a renunciation of any religious hope in the hereafter.

Do not be deceived!
Life is little. Sip it to the full!
It will not be enough for you
If you have to let it go!

Every sentimental-romantic reception of the memory of Marie A. is consistently counteracted here.

Interpretations

The reception of the poem is extensive, the “memory of Marie A. is one of Brecht's most widely interpreted poems”. Right from the start, the debate revolved around the question of whether the poem was a love poem. It is perceived as irritating that the speaker of the poem can remember the “white cloud” very intensely, but not the face of the loved one. The interpreters interpret this fact differently:

- as a repression of the depressing memory of the loss of the loved one,
- as a self- enamored love experience that only reminds your own feelings,
- as an autobiographical text by Brecht, who processed his love for student Marie Rose Amann in the poem,
- as a condensation of great love into an impressive literary symbol .

When comparing the interpretations, it must be taken into account that the interpreters were largely unaware of the context in which the poem came about until Jan Knopf's investigations around 1995.

Form and symbolism

The central image of the poem is the “white cloud”, emphasized by the phrase “monstrously above”, which Marcel Reich-Ranicki chose as the title of his Brecht book. Jörn Albrecht describes the elliptical use of the adverb “above” as a “ predicative adjective” as “a refined form of catachresis ” “Usually something is very high up , but not extremely up ”. The power of this image lies in the deliberate violation of grammatical rules, "the naive, defiant Brechtian tone" develops.

In the long, romantic description of the love encounter, Brecht hides an event that makes the cloud disappear: “and when I looked up, it was never there.” In the original notebook version (“and when I got up”) this reference was to an act of love formulated even more clearly. As in other early poems by Brecht, the cloud represents great love, its disappearance and the struggle with memories and feelings of loss.

Reich-Ranicki sees the cloud as a symbol of love, its "purity and above all its (r) transience". The first stanza, according to Reich-Ranicki the “ thesis ” of the poem, represents the memory of love. The poet can only remember the cloud through his love for Marie, so the title added later expresses “gratitude”.

The second stanza puts a great distance between love and memory (“many, many moons”), the face is forgotten: “I can't remember.” All that remains is the memory of one's own feelings, of the kiss. The magnitude of the loss and the grief become clear in the picture of the dissolving time, the emptiness of the after. John Fuegi speaks of a “leap in time”, “almost with a cinematic cut”. The image of the young plum tree, which has meanwhile grown old, implies a distance in years that far exceeds the time interval in the situation of the young Brecht on which the text is based: the desire to suppress loss is expressed. Marcel Reich-Ranicki sees this stanza as the “ antithesis ” of the poem.

From Reich-Ranicki's point of view, the third stanza appears as a “ synthesis ” of the dialectical construct, which at the same time refutes the view of the second stanza. The memory of the cloud is only motivated by the memory of the beloved, the assertion that he cannot remember is refuted in the synthesis. This stanza mixes elements from the first two. The great romantic memory is integrated into a sobering view of the beloved, who may now already have seven children. Topics are the preservation of the memory of one's own feelings, but also coping with the loss of the great love of youth. The break between the short “bloom” and the numerous pregnancies again refers to the aspect of innocence, the view of love as a great adventure of the first encounter.

“People's great feelings of happiness pass quickly, they suddenly fade and cannot be remembered. You need the random to be remembered. Brecht denounces the idea of ​​'eternal love' out of the attitude to which he adhered at the time: to bind himself to nothing, to trust nothing, to regard nothing as permanent. Everything that people believe they are building on is as fleeting and random as a cloud. The cloud that Brecht sings about here belongs in the 'heaven of the disappointed'. The human, the human face ('But your face, I really don't know that'), it is nothing permanent. "

Reception history

Hanns Schukart's early interpretation from 1933 already rejected romantic readings. The specialty of the poem is the “pessimistic disbelief for whom it is impossible to relive a past life situation.” Only at the moment of the act of love is the image of the woman present to the lyrical ego, the image immediately fades afterwards. Only the cloud “remained in the memory of the I from the sensual complex of sensations of this moment”, which explains the lyrical density of the symbol.

In 1956, Albrecht Schöne classified the memory of Marie A. as a “love poem” without knowing how it was created. Although the memory actually applies to the cloud and love is only described by “worn, clichéd images”, the love experience is canceled out in the memory of the cloud.

Schöne first placed the poem in the context of Brecht's house postil . Between the texts of wild adventures, the love poem seems out of place at first glance, "the verses of love for a forgotten woman sound so strange, so unexpected, as if they had just lost their way into this raw, noisy society." Schöne interprets this Contrast as a counterpoint “to a cruel present and merciless future”, which gives “the past that takes shape in the words of memory”, lending depth in time. The dimension of memory is already addressed in the “ Ballad of the Adventurers”, which introduces the chapter Chronicles :

... whole youth, just don't forget their dreams
Long the roof, never the sky that was above.

In the following, Schöne emphasizes the break in the first stanza of the poem between “pseudo-romanticism” bordering on kitsch in the description of the beloved and the sober clarity of the three closing verses: “For now the 'cloud' suddenly stands before the speaker's eyes, liberated from the mood cliché of the decorative adjectives, and their adverbial definitions, clearly, sharply and precisely in his reminiscent idea: 'very white and tremendously above'. According to what has been said above, it seems so cool, sober and shockingly 'unpoetic', like a redeeming breakthrough to truth and reality. ”The real memory - so Schöne concludes - is for the cloud, not the beloved.

For Schöne, the second stanza marks a break through the jump in time and the dialogic address of a fictional listener. In the clarity of the statement that the speaker could not remember, Schöne recognizes an "undertone of not wanting to remember". He compares the forgetting of the speaker with the forgetting of God in the closing verses of Brecht's poem The Drowned Girl :

It happened (very slowly) that God gradually forgot her
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
Then she became carrion in rivers with much carrion.

The third stanza, according to Schöne, contrasts the image of the cloud with an almost cynical view of the forgotten beloved:

The plum trees may still be in bloom
And that woman may have her seventh child now.
But that cloud only bloomed for minutes
And when I looked up, it was already disappearing in the wind.

“The person of the beloved - obliterated, her face - forgotten, the day of their meeting - past, the plum tree - perhaps cut down, perhaps still in blossom; Everything that was tangible, shaped, solid, even a little permanent fell victim to the offense. But the 'cloud', which only stood in the sky for a moment, which vanished in the wind when he looked up, this most transient consists in the memory of the speaker and in the duration of the poem. "

In terms of form, Schöne emphasizes the peculiar use of grammatical tenses. The simple past stands for the present, the cloud “was”, “blossomed”, “vanished”; the speaker 'kissed' her face and 'held' her in his arms. ”On the other hand, the present tense stands for forgetting and uncertainty. “The speech of the present serves the forgotten - that of the past serves the truly present. The reversed time reference, however, draws the heightened tension of a quiet alienation and paradox from the opposing continued effect of the original use of tense. "

In 1964, Klaus Schuhmann , like Reich-Ranicki, analyzed the three steps of the poem, but noted a break in the first stanza. Formally, the “prosaic” auxiliary verb “war” repeated three times in the description of the cloud in the last verses contrasts with the “sentiment-laden attributes of the first verse (blue, young, quiet, pale, gentle)”. The sober portrayal of the cloud in the last verses fades the sentimental portrayal of the first verse. “The mood of the first half of the stanza turns out to be a cliché. Even the beloved falls victim to oblivion. "

According to Schuhmann, the theme of the second stanza is the “stream of time that erases all memory”. It documents the failure of all attempts to remember the beloved. Schuhmann explains the speaker's ability to remember the white cloud from his sober contemplation of the sky phenomenon. Schuhmann sees the third stanza as “a visualization of that September day through the clouds.” The image of the wind in the two last lines of the poem:

But that cloud only bloomed for minutes
And when I looked up, it was already disappearing in the wind.

for Schuhmann is "no longer just one of the life elements of the anti-social (...) but becomes an integral part of transience".

The starting point of Albrecht Weber's analysis in 1971 is the historical and literary context of its creation. The experience of the World War and the turmoil that followed shook an entire generation:

“The hopeless situation of the time sparked a post-us-the-flood mood, a carpe-diem attitude - and the hectic roaring twenties are underscored by desperation and it was not by chance that the existential philosophy was formulated back then - it was unleashed, as in the young Brecht , an increased desire for lust, a ruthless greed for life, an anti-social, amoral vitalism. Everything became a means for the ego to live out, to enjoy. The sex should satisfy the lust for life. "

Weber quotes Hanns Otto Muenster's catchphrase about the “ Baalic world feeling ” of Brecht and his surroundings in Augsburg. Weber names "love as living out sensuality ... out of desperation, ... out of inner need" as the central motifs of this ruthless, pleasure-oriented love life

"Under an indifferent, bright azure sky, the images of wind, cloud and water show the signs of transience."

Following Walter Muschg , Weber sees transience and the “Baalic world feeling” realized in the memory of Marie A. The cloud seems to him to transform love into a “natural phenomenon”, thereby making love “nothing but a natural process repeatable like a cloud”. Following Schöne, Weber reconstructs a kind of “shell structure” of the poem with the rhetorical dialogue in the center (“And ask you me”) and a “symmetry” of the outer elements “plum tree” and “cloud”. Weber comes to the conclusion that "that love poem is more of a poem of transience, a poem of transient love, also a 'reflex of sadness'".

In his analysis from 1986, Andreas Hapkemeyer concretized the shift of the memory of the beloved to the cloud. The concentration on the "cloud and the associated self-awareness of the lyrical ego" allows the work to be categorized as a love poem "only to a limited extent".

Jan Knopf's works since 1995 mark a turning point in the history of reception through the systematic exploration of the context in which it was created. Knopf first analyzes the “intensity” of the poem, which he attributes to its “unheard of sound”. Through the concise, triple repetition of the diphthong "au" ("blue moon" (1), "plum tree" (2, 11, 21)) two love symbols, "the moon, the love symbol (and kitsch symbol for love) par excellence" and "The plum tree with its sexual connotations", highlighted. The many “o” (moon (1), summer sky (5), cloud (6, 18, 23), above (7)) and subsequently the “i” sound (still (2), die silent .. love (3), summer sky (5), me (6), me (8), never (8)). This harmony of the sounds extends over all three stanzas, partly reinforced by repetitions of words (e.g. plum tree, silent). Another striking stylistic device are anaphors , particularly clear as a connection between the key words "face" and "cloud":

schematic representation of the cloud symbol
But I really never know her face
and
But that cloud only bloomed for minutes

John Fuegi has pointed out that the close connection between the keywords “cloud” and “face” is also established through the ambiguity of the word “white” in the poem, which describes the color of the cloud on the one hand and the form of the verb 'to know' on the other Memory of the face.

Another sound element is, according to Knopf, “syntactic small units” made of bipedal iambi (“There I held her” (3); “She was very white” (7); “And you ask me” (12); You ”(13);“ I still remember them ”(19)). Numerous alliterations also strengthened the phonetic harmony (for example: "cloud" (6, 18, 23), "white" (7, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20), "certainly" (14), "well" (11 ), "Wind" (24) etc.). Added to this are assonances and parallelisms (“I already know what you mean” (14); “I really never know” (15); “I only know more” (16)). Due to the tonal harmony, it is easy to overlook the fact that only every second line rhymes.

Despite this harmonious, lyrical form - according to Jan Knopf - "everything amounts to disillusionment". Jan Knopf initially refers to the large time gap between memory and event, a construct that he does not interpret as a psychological attempt to distance himself from the experience of being abandoned , but rather as an indication of the distance between the lyrical self and the young Bertolt Brecht. The lyrical self is "barely identifiable with the 23-year-old author."

In the Brecht handbook, Jan Knopf points out that the house postil is an “anti-edification book”, “role poetry” to be read at a distance. Various interpretations, but above all Albrecht Schöne , had wrongly elevated the poem “Memory of Marie A.” to the “prototype of bourgeois poetry.” According to Schöne, the “miracle of this poem” lies in the symbol of the cloud because “that just this symbol of fleetingness through the boldness of the language, the power of the rhythm, the magic of the sound and the increase in the repetition of images is transformed into what is actually permanent and present. ”Although he sees beautiful prosaic elements, for him the“ cloud images ”are guarantors of“ the formed Persistence of the work of art. ”Jan Knopf sharply rejects beautiful interpretations.

“This interpretation deprives the poem of any functional character and any role function; the old edifying character is restored, the fleeting has an eternal value again. With this poem in particular, the "prosaic" connections must first be restored. "

As a result, Jan Knopf examines distancing aspects in the poem and in the context of its creation. The second stanza identifies the poem as a dialogue (“And do you ask me what about love”), the memory of Marie A. is negated (“I can't remember”; “But her face, I know that really never ”). The lyrical self is designed to be significantly older than the young Brecht, who wrote the poem in his notebook. Button takes further information from the cynical remarks on the poem in Brecht's notebook. Above all in Brecht's reference to Giacomo Casanova and his more than 1,000 lovers and in Brecht's note that he wrote the poem in the state of the “filled seminal vesicle”, Knopf discovers the dominant sexual motive, to the satisfaction of which “every woman is welcome: she has Even in topicality no face. "Knopf sees the origin of a hit as a template as a further indication that the poem is to be understood as a" parodistic alternative to bourgeois love poetry ":

“The great lover - this is how Max Frisch's interpretation in Don Juan or Die Liebe zur Geometry (1952) will turn out later - is in truth Narcissus , someone who only loves himself and only needs women for his confirmation. [...] The fleeting self-indulgence, in defense of all bourgeois sentimental evocations of love, is the theme and "expression" of the poem. "

It is not possible to reduce the various interpretations to one common denominator. Most interpreters reject sentimental-romantic reading. The white cloud does not first stand for the purity of love, but for the transience of purity, the unique moment of the first conquest for the speaker. Even at the moment of romantic memory, the beloved appears strangely speechless and faceless. ("Still", "still", "pale"). John Fuegi speaks of "nameless, silent, faceless women" in Brecht's work, there is "a shift from a human being made of flesh and blood to a disembodied cloud". In the long embrace, during which the cloud disappears from the high summer sky, the purity and the great, unforgettable moment of first love also pass.

The concept of remembrance

For some authors, Brecht's poem basically poses the question of human memory. In ZEIT, Elisabeth von Thadden relates the Brecht poem to the subject of brain research and to doubts about human memory.

“Brecht's early poem Memory of Marie A., which speaks more of the uncertainty of remembering, of the fascination of a memory-stimulating cloud than of an experience of love, illustrates what has now prompted the renowned Frankfurt historian Johannes Fried to describe his main features of a historical To work out memory: namely the irritation about the insecurity of human memory. "

According to von Thadden, the memory of Marie A. shows the dominance of the “respective present of remembering”, which forces the past to adapt to the needs of the now.

For Jean-Claude Capèle, too, early Brecht's love is almost defined by transience.

“The human feeling is intended to be revived only briefly, only to dissolve very quickly into the nothingness of oblivion. Nature is closely related to this process of forgetting, since the forgetting of the loved one is repeatedly articulated on objects of nature. "

Capèle sees an emphasis on the transience of love in the image of the cloud, which has impressed itself on the memory of the lyrical self. Love is seen as a “repeatable natural process” on the one hand, and on the other hand the cloud is “by nature the most ephemeral par excellence”, which, however, is more likely to be remembered than the beloved woman who “is drowned in the meaningless uncertainty”.

Jochen Vogt sees forgetting in early Brecht as a " cipher " for the loss of God, for "the empty transcendence ", but also for "the alienation in human interaction, not least in the relationship to the" silent, pale love "Marie A." . Vogt names “the dramatic loss of experience of the generation of 1918” as one of the causes, the feeling of alienation among those involved in the war in the face of the changed world. As evidence of this experience, he quotes Walter Benjamin:

A generation that had taken the horse-drawn tram to school stood in the open air in a landscape in which nothing had remained unchanged but the clouds and below them, in a force field of destructive currents and explosions, the tiny, frail human body.

For Jochen Vogt, Brecht is one of the authors of modernity who define memory as fleeting and accidental. “The cloud figures in Brecht's poem as a simulacrum of the human face.” Brecht stages remembering as forgetting and is thus very close to other literary memory projects of the modern age. The characterization of Marcel Proust's writing as “poetics of memory from the depths of oblivion” thus also applies to the poetry of early Brecht.

Further use of the motifs by Brecht

The "plum tree" symbol

Klaus Schuhmann points out that the erotic symbol of the plum tree also appears in Baal before the memory of Marie A. and later with clear erotic allusions in the plum song from Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti .

When we were about to pick plums
he lay down on the grass
Blond his beard, and on his back
He watched, saw this and that.

Sabine Kebir also examines the later use of the plum motif by Brecht as a “synonym for the female labia”. In addition to the Puntila, she quotes “The Song of the Little Wind”, which Brecht wrote in 1943 in the course of the creation of the Schweyk .

Take it from the plums in autumn
Where are ripe for picking
And are afraid of the mighty storm
And fancy a little wind.
Such a little wind, you hardly feel it
It's a gentle sway.
The plums want from the tree
Want to lie on the floor.

Sabine Kebir sees in both songs the expression of "feminine-erotic self-confidence" and draws a bow from the memory of Marie A. to the song from the Schweyk . Both texts combine the “impatience of the adolescent lover” and the desire of women for “delay in the love affair”, with Schwejk the “mature poet” sees this with “understanding and sympathy”.

The cloud symbol

The clearest resumption of the cloud symbol is Brecht's “Ballad of the Death of Anna Cloud Face” from around 1921. Here, first of all, the wish to forget the beloved is very clearly expressed:

Seven years passed. With cherry and juniper
He washes her face out of his brain

In the eight-stanza ballad, too, the cloud represents the lost memory of the beloved's face.

How was her face It blurred in the clouds?

and

Once he sees her face: in the cloud!
It was already fading a lot. Since he stayed too long ...

As in the memory of Marie A. Brecht plays with the different meanings and connotations of the word “white”. After the memory disappears, the speaker sees "this white paper" in a clear allusion to the writer's situation. The “silent pale love” becomes “a voice that fades its lip” in the ballad. Her face in the cloud "was already fading a lot". In the end, the wishes fade with the memory:

In the white winds of wild April
The paler desires fly like clouds:
A face passes. And a mouth becomes silent.

Albrecht Schöne also finds "the ancient symbol of transience" of the cloud in Brecht's narrative poem Schuh des Empedocles from the Svendborg poems from 1939:

… Slowly, like clouds
Moving away in the sky, unchanged, only getting smaller
Farther away, if you don't look, more distant,
If you look for it again, maybe confused with others,
So he got out of her habit, usually.

However, only one side of the leitmotif of the memory of Marie A. is taken up here: the "transience".

Sabine Kebir points out that the cloud symbol in early Brecht was initially "a serious, tragic image". As evidence, she quotes The Song of the Cloud of the Night :

My heart is dull like the cloud of the night
And homeless, oh you!
...
The cloud of the night is alone with the wind.

Kebir also sees “a serious, melancholy atmosphere of love- mourning ” in the aforementioned uses in the shoe of Empedocles and in the ballad about the death of Anna Cloud Face . However, there is a difference in the use of the cloud symbol in early Brecht: In the memory of Paula Banholzer, Brecht sees the face of the beloved in the cloud, not only in the poem, but also in notes:

“After a day without a day's work, full of smoking, chatting, strolling and useless postures, I sleep badly in the hot Budike and get caught up in jealousy cramps. Bi's face swims over the pale ceiling: it's restless. "

Otherwise the face disappears in the memory of Marie A. and in the text Von He. 9th Psalm :

That is why she died secretly in the fifth month of the year 20, a quick death when no one was looking, and went like a cloud of which it is said: she had never been.

In real life, Brecht said it was not easy to say goodbye to his Munich lover Hedda Kuhn (whom he called "He") or Marie Amann, he was in contact with He long after the separation and Marie A. mourned for a long time. Sabine Kebir sees two aspects here, firstly the clear gap between Brecht's biography and literary processing, and furthermore in the consequent suppression of the beloved's face in the memory of Marie A. “the furious attempt to deal with the unsuccessful five-year advertising to accept ”, a“ self-therapeutic measure ”.

Settings

Early lectures and first fixing of a musical text

Tu ne m'aimais pas for voice and piano, Bathlot, Paris 1875. Illustration: Edward Ancourt

Brecht sang the memory of Marie A. several times in front of an audience before it was first published. In his diaries he reports on an appearance on May 27, 1921 at the May Festival “for the benefit of needy academics” on a “grotesque stage” in the Munich exhibition park : “I can't quite memorize it ... I lose it and drift away, torn by remorse, by the way under Applause. ” Arnolt Bronnen heard Brecht sing the song in mid-December 1921 in Berlin at a company in the house of the writer and dramaturge Otto Zarek with a“ croaking, consonant voice ”; Carl Zuckmayer heard Carl Zuckmayer at a private party in his apartment in early or mid-October 1923 the actress Maria Koppenhöfer in Munich, "with its kitschy, totally gripping French chanson tune" (according to John Fuegi). In both cases Brecht accompanied himself on the guitar. Even in 1924 and 1925 in Berlin, the song was part of the repertoire of the ballad singer Brecht; he regularly recited it to parties in his room.

Brecht was musical, sang and played the guitar, and he also mastered notation. As became evident at the latest in 1925 when the notes attached to the house postil were being prepared , his technical skills were not sufficient to create a print template for a musical text. He therefore began to work with the composer Franz Servatius Bruinier , whom he had met at the Berlin radio. As Fritz Hennenberg suspects, Brecht sang his interpretation of the song Bruinier, Bruinier recorded this version, possibly also suggested changes and also created a piano accompaniment . An undated manuscript of this version, probably made in 1927, is preserved in the Bertolt Brecht Archives . Here Brecht and Bruinier appear together as composers, with the note: "According to an old melody".

This "old melody" originally comes from the "Romance" first published in 1875 with the title Tu ne m'aimais pas! (“You didn't love me”) by Léon Laroche (text) and Charles Malo (music). The piece was, as the title page identifies, even before the publication of the notes in the Paris café-concert Eldorado by a certain "Mr. Max ”was sung. In 1896 a very popular arrangement of this song by the Viennese composer Leopold Sprowacker appeared (op. 101, Verlor'nes Glück ). Sprowacker had not only translated the text into German, but also incorporated “smoother melody curves”, which, according to Fritz Hennenberg's judgment, “thickened” the sentimentality that Malo had already “heavily applied”.

The setting of Brecht and Bruinier

The manuscript largely adheres to the melody of Sprowacker's version of Lost Happiness . The biggest difference is that because there is no chorus, eight bars of the melody are missing. However, Brecht and Bruinier did not delete the refrain bars, but rather the last two melody lines of the verse and the first two of the chorus, while the last two were retained. As a result of this montage , two corresponding eight-bar periods were created , the separation of verse and refrain was removed. In addition, some intervals differ slightly from the template.

The accompaniment of the song, notated in C major, is limited to supporting chords ( tonic , dominant and subdominant ), rhythmized in almost continuous eighth notes. It is thus far simpler than in the original; In particular, the harmonic deviations and dramatic exaggerations in the last two verses of stanzas are completely omitted due to the deletion of these lines. The song moves even closer to the intended “folk tone”, as Fritz Hennenberg notes. A constant rhythm model , already established at Malo and Sprowacker gives its structure to the song: Each line of verse begins with three upbeat eighths, followed by a dotted quarter follows that a turning point marked. The second part of the phrase contains five eighth notes and then, depending on the closure , one or two longer note values. Unlike Sprowacker, Brecht actually mostly uses this division of the verse as an incision. Smaller rhythmic units are created for the lecture: “On that day | in the blue moon of September ”. However, precisely in the last line of the stanzas, the distancing “(as I) looked up” falls twice exactly in this caesura, which is thus bridged.

7th line of the Brecht / Bruinier setting

Contains the melody of the piece, the pop character of the original following, impressive scale increases , rising Dreiklangsmelodik and bottom cases and therefore has a very sanglich. The interpreters have often used the contrast between the cantable melody lines and the disillusioning language, especially in the last two stanzas, in a parody manner. The most striking thing is the design of the seventh line of music: After several interrupted climbs in the first part of the verse, the top note D is finally reached here, in each case on a key word: "(she was very) white", "(and her face"), "(But that) cloud- (ke)". The end of this phrase is marked by the deepest downward leap, a seventh fall (for example on the text "o-ben" in the first stanza), additionally emphasized by the sudden dropping of the continuous eighth notes and the most striking harmony of the simple piece (subdominant with sixte ajoutée ). Brecht and Bruinier dispensed with the substitution by the minor parallel , as was given by Sprowacker; it stays with the sober major . With a seemingly factual phrase, the song returns to the keynote in the final line.

Musical interpretations and other versions

It is this version that generally formed the basis for the interpretation of the song. In 1928 Kate Kühl , the "Lucy" of the Threepenny Opera premiere, recorded the song on record. Hans Reimann described the recording in March 1933 in the popular culture magazine Cross Section as “the most delicious love song in recent years” and at that time already referred to Malo and Sprowacker as the authors of the original. In 1952 he recalled in his literary raid : “Who describes my horror when I heard Kate Kühl recite the long-believed lost 'Lost Happiness' in 1928? ... The company Grammophon threw it (luck) on the market as a record. A composer wasn't on it. Instead: old folk tune. ... And the author? - Bert Brecht! He had rewritten the Charles Malo. I suppose out of high spirits. Or for the joy of kitsch. But the Kühl recited it so animatedly that the joke became serious. ”Reimann's statement that Malo's melody itself is a plagiarism of the way Guard God, it would have been so beautiful from Victor Ernst Nessler's opera Der Trompeter von Säckingen was true not to, as Fritz Hennenberg has shown. This is impossible because of the chronological order, since the opera premiered in 1884, but Malos Chanson was published in 1875; Even the musical text offers no evidence of plagiarism in any direction.

Mainly changes in the accompaniment bring a variant with piano setting, which comes from the possession of Ernst Busch and can be dated to 1933. Hanns Eisler is probably the author. In relation to the original version, it adheres more closely to Sprowacker's original. Busch sang the song in London in April 1936, accompanied by Eisler on the piano. He later recorded it at least twice on records, once with guitar accompaniment in the late 1940s and once with piano in 1965. In addition, a new arrangement by Hanns Eisler from 1962 has been preserved, but Ernst Busch never used it, according to his note on the manuscript.

From the same period as the Brecht-Bruinier setting comes a manuscript of music drawn by Bruinier alone. It is dated January 10, 1927. Bruinier not only adds preludes, interludes and aftermaths of the piano, but also sets the song in a minor key . Harmonies and melodic phrases are far more sophisticated, chromatic ascents and suspensions are installed; but the constant rhythm model of the original is also binding for this version. Albrecht Dümling characterizes this “A minor Andantino ” as a “sentimental song in the salon style”. The manuscript was only found in Brecht's estate. A performance of this version took place at a soirée of the Brecht Center of the GDR on January 7, 1982 (vocals: Roswitha Trexler , piano: Fritz Hennenberg).

None of the versions was included in the notes attached to the house postil , the printing copy of which had to be completed in 1925. The memory of Marie A. is accordingly not one of the 14 songs whose scores were published in the printed versions of the house postil .

The piece has been set to music several times, but the new compositions have remained relatively unknown and have hardly been used for interpretation. There is a composition of the work by Rolf Liebermann around 1933. Hans Reimann heard the song in 1948 by an actress working in Munich; At that time it had “a new musical background” and a “new way of singing”. Reimann does not provide any details on this. In 1961 Gottfried von Eine created a completely independent setting that was not at all related to the original. In his “Lyrical Fantasies for Singing and Orchestra”, entitled Von der Liebe (op. 30), the memory of Marie A. is number VI. According to a certain RL in a contemporary review, this setting is “firmly in the tradition of Mahler 's orchestral song cycles”. The song and hit elements are completely abandoned, as is the rhythm model of the original setting; Von One uses whole-tone scales , chromatics and imitation techniques . The result is an elegiac sound with cantilever melody lines that "would make the eyes of every chamber singer shine". Von der Liebe overall "has more of the character of a solo cantata than that of a group of songs, " says Friedrich Saathen in his Eine Chronik . An early work by 17-year-old Karola Obermüller is Three Songs About Love , premiered in 1994 at the Darmstadt Academy for Music , in which Brecht's poem is framed by two works by Ingeborg Bachmann .

text

  • Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Berlin, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main 1988, Volume 11, Poems 1, p. 92 f.
  • Facsimile of the original version in: Werner Hecht (ed.): Brecht, His life in pictures and texts . Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 39

Movie

  • The plum trees must have been cut down , interview with Marie Rose Aman, documentary film, GDR 1978, b / w, 9 min., Director and screenplay: Kurt Tetzlaff

Sheet music, recordings and performances

Musical sources

  • Léon Laroche, Charles Malo: Tu ne m'aimais pas! Romance , Paris: Bathlot, 1875
  • Leopold Sprowacker: Loss of luck: "So often spring through the open window". A Romanian song for a voice with piano (op.101), Vienna: Adolf Robitschek , 1896

Notes of the settings

  • Fritz Hennenberg (Ed.): Brecht-Liederbuch , Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ​​1985, ISBN 3-518-37716-7 . There the Brecht / Bruinier version (p. 42f) with commentary (p. 376–379) and the Bruinier version (p. 46f) with commentary (p. 379).
  • Gottfried von Eine: From love. Lyrical Fantasies for Voice and Orchestra (op. 30). Vocal score. London et al .: Boosey & Hawkes , 1961. First performance on June 18, 1961 in Vienna, Konzerthaus with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinrich Hollreiser , Irmgard Seefried

Recordings (selection)

Transfers in other languages

With the possible exception of the English, these transfers are more likely translations that do not take into account Brecht's linguistic peculiarities and also do not fit into the setting in terms of rhythm (for this problem, see Jörn Albrecht: Translation and Linguistics, Fundamentals of Translation Research Vol. 2. ).

literature

  • Jörn Albrecht : Translation and Linguistics , Basics of Translation Research, Vol. 2, Tübingen (Narr) 2005. books.google.com
  • John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. , Biographie, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-50067-7 .
  • Andreas Hapkemeyer : Bertolt Brecht: Formal Aspects of the 'Hauspostille' - Using the example of 'Remembrance of Marie A.' . In: Sprachkunst 17, 1986, pp. 38–45
  • Werner Hecht (Ed.): Brecht, His life in pictures and texts, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-458-32822-X .
  • Fritz Hennenberg: "On that day in the blue moon September ...", A Brecht poem and its musical source . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 7/8 1988, pp. 24–29
  • Fritz Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht: News about the first Brecht composer . In: The International Brecht Society (ed.): Experiments on Brecht . Brecht Jahrbuch 15, 1990. University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 1-43, ISBN 0-9623206-1-7 .
  • Jürgen Hillesheim : Augsburg Brecht Lexicon: People - Institutions - Scenes . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000
  • Jürgen Hillesheim: “I always have to write poetry”: on the aesthetics of the young Brecht . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005
  • Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women . Structure, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-7466-8028-X .
  • Jan Knopf: "Very white and unbelievably above", memory of Marie A. In: ders. (Ed.): Interpretations, poems by Bertolt Brecht . Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 31ff., ISBN 3-15-008814-3 .
  • Jan Knopf: Brecht handbook , poetry, prose, writings. Metzler, Stuttgart 1986, unabridged special edition, pp. 35ff., ISBN 3-476-00587-9 .
  • Jan Knopf: Memory of Marie A. In: Brecht-Handbuch , Volume 2: Gedichte. Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01830-X , pp. 78-84.
  • Helmut Koopmann (Ed.): Brechts Lyrik - neue Deutungen , Würzburg (Königshausen & Neumann) 1999, 216 pages, ISBN 3-8260-1689-0 .
  • Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht? On the relationship between the sexes in Bertolt Brecht's work . M-Press, Munich 2004, Forum German Literature 6, also Karlsruhe, University, dissertation 2004
  • Dieter P. Meier-Lenz : Brecht's "Sentimental Song No 1004". On the biography of a poem . In: Clams . Annual journal for literature and graphics. No. 46. Viersen 2006. ISSN  0085-3593
  • Edgar Marsch: Brecht, Commentary on the lyric work , 1974, ISBN 3-538-07016-4 .
  • Werner Mittenzwei: The life of Bertolt Brecht or dealing with the world riddles , Volume 1, Berlin (construction) 1986, ISBN 3-7466-1340-X , p. 158 ff.
  • Hans-Harald Müller, Tom Kindt: Brecht's early poetry - Brecht, God, nature and love . Munich (Fink) 2002, 158 pp., ISBN 3-7705-3671-1 ( IASL review : “Probably the most famous love poem Brecht's 'Memory of Marie A.' (1920) is not about permanence, for example, but - on the contrary - of the transience of love. " )
  • Daniel Müller-Niebala: forgetting and remembering in the text. Once again Bert Brecht's “Memory of Marie A.” In: Poetica 29, 1997, issue 1/2, pp. 234-254.
  • Gerhard Neumann: "L'inspiration qui se retire" - calling the muses, remembering and forgetting in the poetology of modernity . In: Anselm Haverkamp, ​​Renate Lachmann (Ed.): Memoria. Remembering and forgetting . Munich 1993, pp. 433-455.
  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki : Monster above. About Bertolt Brecht . Structure, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-351-02360-X .
  • Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, pp. 42-49.
  • Albrecht Schöne : Memory of Marie A. In: Benno von Wiese (Ed.): The German lyric, FORM AND HISTORY, interpretations; From late romantic to the present. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1956, (Vol. II), pp. 485-494.
  • Klaus Schuhmann: The poet Bertolt Brecht, 1913–1933 . Berlin (GDR) 1964, ISBN 3-423-04075-0 .
  • Peter Paul Schwarz: Brecht's early poetry 1914–1922, nihilism as a work context of Brecht's early poetry . Bouvier, Bonn 1980 (1971), ISBN 3-416-00772-7 .
  • Jochen Vogt: Damnatio memoriae and “works of long duration”, two aesthetic limits in Brecht's exillyric . In: Helga Schreckenberger (Hrsg.): Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies, aesthetics of exile . Pp. 301-317.
  • Albrecht Weber: On love poems by Bert Brecht . In: Rupert Hirschenauer, Albrecht Weber (ed.): Interpretations of Brecht's poetry, contributions from a working group . Oldenbourg, Munich 1971, pp. 57-87

Web links

Individual evidence

The numbers in brackets after the poem quotations indicate the line numbers.

  1. ↑ Berlin and Frankfurt edition, vol. 11, note 92,1, p. 318; Facsimile in: Bertolt Brecht: Notebooks 1 to 3 1918–1920 , ed. by Martin Kölbel and Peter Villwock, Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, p. 233f. It concerns pages 32 recte and verso of notebook 3. Jürgen Hillesheim sees the claim that the poem was written on the train, as it were, as a self-stylization of the young Brecht: “Playfully and again parodying he gives himself the gesture of the idealistic poet, who simply throws his inspiration on the paper and immediately translates it into poetry. "; see. Hillesheim: “I always have to write poetry”: on the aesthetics of the young Brecht, p. 262
  2. ↑ 1st stanza, verses 5-8, quoted from: Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, Poems 1, p. 92; Facsimile of the original version in: Werner Hecht (Ed.), Brecht, p. 39; Marcel Reich-Ranicki has his Brecht booklet based on the impressive linguistic image Ungeheuer above. Titled about Bertolt Brecht , Berlin (construction) 1996
  3. ↑ a b c John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. , Biography, p. 109
  4. ↑ Verses 17-22
  5. ↑ Closing verses
  6. ↑ Berlin and Frankfurt edition, vol. 11, note 92,1, p. 318; Facsimile in: Bertolt Brecht: Notebooks 1 to 3 1918–1920 , ed. by Martin Kölbel and Peter Villwock, Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, p. 233f, pages 32 recte and verso of notebook 3.
  7. ↑ Brecht: Notebooks 1 to 3, p. 394f. (Comment).
  8. ↑ Berlin and Frankfurt edition, vol. 11, note 92,1, p. 319; In Mozart's opera Don Giovanni , Leporello gives the number of lovers Don Giovanni in Spain as 1003:
    Beautiful Donna! This exact register,
    It contains his love affairs;
    I am the author of the work;
    If you please, we'll go through it.
    In Italy six hundred and forty,
    here in Germany two
    hundred and thirty, a hundred in France and ninety in Persia,
    but in Spain already a thousand and three.
    quoted from the German libretto
  9. ↑ facsimile ; Bertolt Brecht: Notebooks 1 to 3 1918–1920 , ed. by Martin Kölbel and Peter Villwock, Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, p. 394f.
  10. ↑ Brecht: Notebooks 1 to 3, p. 395 (commentary).
  11. ↑ The spelling “Maria Rosa Amann” is given by Jürgen Hillesheim, head of the Bertolt Brecht Research Center of the State and City Library Augsburg , and describes the spelling “Marie Rose Aman”, which is often used in literature, with reference to the Augsburg city archive and address books as not correct; he attributes the omission of the double consonant at the end of the surname to a South German custom, which can also be found frequently in Brecht's manuscripts. ders .: Augsburger Brecht-Lexikon, p. 27, also in: Jürgen Hillesheim: “I always have to write poetry”: On the aesthetics of young Brecht, p. 260
  12. ↑ Berlin and Frankfurt edition, vol. 11, note 92.1, p. 319
  13. ↑ Jürgen Hillesheim: "I always have to write poetry": on the aesthetics of young Brecht, p. 259f .; see. also Jürgen Hillesheim, It was not Marie A. alone, comments on what is probably the most famous piece of Brecht's poetry, in: Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung of October 1, 1999; quoted from: Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht? Diss., P. 116
  14. ↑ "Memory of Marie A."; "The pronoun puts it in view of" the love of Mrs. Marie "in the" prototype (493) / of an evil one "and the name correspondence between the" child murderer Marie Farrar "and the" Marie "to whom she prays - these examples also stand yes in the “Hauspostille” - the conspicuous pronoun almost suggests adding the last letter to the first name and reading “Memory of Mary” ”; Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, p. 493 f.
  15. ↑ Jürgen Hillesheim: “I always have to write poetry”: on the aesthetics of young Brecht, p. 261
  16. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Monsters above. About Bertolt Brecht , p. 26
  17. ↑ Sabine Kebir: An Acceptable Man? Brecht and the women , p. 30; The plum trees must have been cut down, interview with Marie Rose Aman , documentary film, GDR 1978, b / w, 9 min., Director and screenplay: Kurt Tetzlaff
  18. ↑ Sabine Kebir: An Acceptable Man? Brecht and the women , p. 30
  19. ↑ quoted from: Werner Hecht (Ed.), Brecht, p. 39
  20. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Berlin, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main 1988, volume 28, letters 1, p. 39
  21. ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women , p. 36
  22. ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Berliner and Frankfurter Edition Vol. 26, Journale 1, P. 140
  23. ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Berliner and Frankfurter edition vol. 26, journals 1, p. 141, Galgei denotes an early drama fragment, creation period 1918–1921, Berlin and Frankfurter edition vol. 10
  24. ↑ Sabine Kebir: An Acceptable Man? Brecht and the women , p. 37
  25. ↑ * May 31, 1853 Wiener Neustadt † March 30, 1936 Vienna
  26. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 21; Carl Zuckmayer : As if it were a piece of me . Fischer, Frankfurt 2007 (first 1966), p. 440.
  27. ↑ All three stanzas of the song can be read on this picture postcard that was sent in 1900.
  28. ↑ Jan Knopf, “Very white and enormous above”, p. 33; see. also Fritz Hennenberg, “On that day in the blue moon September”, p. 33
  29. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 21.
  30. ↑ quoted from: Jan Knopf: "Very white and unbelievably above" , p. 33
  31. ↑ Jan Knopf, “Very white and unbelievably above”, p. 34
  32. ↑ Berlin and Frankfurt edition, vol. 13, note 235,9 p. 485
  33. ↑ quoted from: Klaus Schuhmann: Der Lyriker Bertolt Brecht , p. 106f.
  34. ↑ a b c Jean-Claude Capèle, Bertolt Brecht's love poems, 1997, online version
  35. ↑ a b c Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, p. 490.
  36. ↑ Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, p. 491.
  37. ↑ Excerpt from Ezra Pound: La Fraisne, quoted from: Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, p. 491 (rough translation: once there was a woman ... / ... but I forget ... she was ... / ... I hope she doesn't return. / ... I don't remember ... / I think she hurt me once, but ... / That was a long time ago. / I don't like to remember it. / I like a little band of winds that blow / in the ash trees here: / Because we're pretty lonely / here in the middle of the ash trees.)
  38. ↑ Printed in the large commented Berliner and Frankfurter Edition 11, p. 278.
  39. ↑ See Gudrun Schulz: On the way to Brecht's memory of Marie A. In: Dreigroschenheft , 24. Jg. (2017), Heft 1, p. 3–10, here: p. 3. The newspaper clipping available in the Brecht archive could be from Gregor Ackermann can be assigned to this newspaper. It is about vol. 77, no. 180, 1st supplement, p. (3).
  40. ↑ Berlin, Volume 3; see. Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. P. 318; see also: Werner Hecht: Brecht Chronicle . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 179.
  41. ↑ The Vossische Zeitung , which also reprinted the announcement, announced on the day of the event that the program with Brecht's poems would have to be “postponed” and that Feld and Hoefert would fill the evening with “works by other young poets”. See Vossische Zeitung , December 14, 1924, p. 3, online , and Vossische Zeitung , December 15, 1924, p. 2, online .
  42. ↑ Issue 4/5, p. 11; see. Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. P. 318; Werner Hecht: Brecht Chronicle , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt, p. 180; as well as bookrags.com .
  43. ↑ Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch 2001, p. 79.
  44. ↑ a b c Jan Knopf, “Very white and unbelievably above”, 39
  45. ↑ a b Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 39
  46. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 40
  47. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 116; The original title of the poem, composed on September 23, 1918, was "Lucifer's Evening Song, with Notes"; see. Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 323, note 116.1
  48. ↑ 2nd stanza of the poem; Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 116
  49. ↑ Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht ?, Diss., P. 115
  50. ↑ cf. Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht ?, Diss., P. 116
  51. ↑ also used as book title for: Ungeheuer Brecht. A biography of his work by Tom Kindt, Hans-Harald Müller, and Frank Thomsen from Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, July 1, 2006, ISBN 3-525-20846-4 .
  52. ↑ a b Jörn Albrecht: Translation and Linguistics, p. 104
  53. ^ Jörn Albrecht: Translation and Linguistics, p. 104; Albrecht's investigation deals with the difficulty of translating this deliberate violation of the language norm.
  54. ↑ Jan Knopf in the Brecht Handbook, p. 35
  55. ↑ a b c Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Ungeheuer above. About Bertolt Brecht , p. 28
  56. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Monsters above. About Bertolt Brecht , 29
  57. ↑ Brecht & Co. , biography, p. 108
  58. ↑ cf. Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Monster above. About Bertolt Brecht , p. 28f.
  59. ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht , Volume 1, p. 158f.
  60. ↑ Hanns Schukart: Gestaltungs des Frauen-Bild in deutscher Lyrik, Mnemosyne , work on the exploration of language and poetry, Bonn 1933, issue 11
  61. ↑ Hanns Schukart: Gestaltungs des Frauen-Bild in deutscher Lyrik , p. 48; quoted from: Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht? Diss., P. 115
  62. ↑ Hanns Schukart: Gestaltungs des Frauen-Bild in deutscher Lyrik , p. 48; quoted from: Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht? Diss., P. 115
  63. ↑ a b Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. In: Benno von Wiese (ed.): Die deutsche Lyrik , p. 486
  64. ↑ ibid., P. 487
  65. ↑ a b Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. , p. 485f.
  66. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, Hauspostille, p. 78
  67. ↑ Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. In: Benno von Wiese (Ed.): Die deutsche Lyrik , p. 487
  68. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, Hauspostille, p. 109
  69. ↑ Bertolt Brecht, Memory of Marie A., Large commented on Berlin and Frankfurt edition, Volume 11, Hauspostille, p. 93
  70. ↑ Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. , p. 490
  71. ↑ a b c d Klaus Schuhmann: Der Lyriker Bertolt Brecht , p. 104
  72. ↑ Klaus Schuhmann: Der Lyriker Bertolt Brecht , p. 106
  73. ^ Albrecht Weber: On love poems by Bert Brechts , p. 58
  74. ^ Hanns Otto Münsterer: Bert Brecht. Memories from the years 1917–1922 . Zurich 1963, p. 109
  75. ↑ Weber quotes Högel here: "Whenever this insatiable, little Baal fell upon him, he devoured his skin and hair with the urge for action, discovery and recognition." Max Högel: Bertolt Brecht. A portrait . Augsburg 1962
  76. ^ Albrecht Weber: On love poems by Bert Brechts , p. 60
  77. ↑ Albrecht Weber: On love poems Bert Brechts , p. 61
  78. ↑ "Baal's belief in the happiness of the moment, which outshines all transience, is most perfect in the 'memory of Marie A.' designed."; Walter Muschg: Von Trakl zu Brecht, poet of expressionism, Munich 1961, p. 342, quoted from Albrecht Weber, p. 64
  79. ↑ Albrecht Weber: On love poems Bert Brechts , p. 64
  80. ↑ Albrecht Weber: On love poems Bert Brechts , p. 65
  81. ^ Albrecht Weber: On love poems Bert Brechts , p. 67f.
  82. ^ Andreas Hapkemeyer: Bertolt Brecht: Formal Aspects of the 'Hauspostille' - Using the example of 'Remembrance of Marie A.', in: Sprachkunst 17, 1986, p. 44; quoted from: Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht? Diss., P. 115
  83. ↑ cf. Ana Kugli: Feminist Brecht ?, Diss., P. 116
  84. ↑ Jan Knopf: “Very white and unbelievably above”, Memory of Marie A. , p. 35
  85. ↑ a b Jan Knopf: "Very white and unbelievably above", memory of Marie A. , p. 35f.
  86. ↑ Jan Knopf: "Very white and unbelievably above", Memory of Marie A. , p. 36
  87. ↑ 7th verse of the 2nd and 3rd verse
  88. ↑ a b c d Jan Knopf: "Very white and unbelievably above", memory of Marie A. , p. 37
  89. ↑ both Brecht handbook. P. 34
  90. ↑ a b both Brecht handbook. P. 35
  91. ^ A b Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht , quoted from: Brecht-Handbuch , p. 35
  92. ↑ s. o. in the comments on the biographical context
  93. ↑ quoted from: Brecht-Handbuch. P. 36
  94. ↑ a b c Brecht Handbook, p. 36
  95. ^ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. , Biography, p. 110
  96. ↑ Elisabeth von Thadden, Hirnforschung, Once upon a time something. Just what ?, DIE ZEIT of January 27, 2005 No. 5
  97. ↑ a b Jochen Vogt: Damnatio memoriae and “Works of long duration” , online version p. 2
  98. ^ Walter Benjamin: The narrator , in: ders .: Illuminations, Selected Writings , Frankfurt am Main 1961, p. 410 .; quoted from Jochen Vogt, Damnatio memoriae
  99. ↑ a b Jochen Vogt: Damnatio memoriae and “Works of long duration” , online version p. 3
  100. ↑ Verse 2: "Still under a young plum tree"
  101. ^ Klaus Schuhmann: Der Lyriker Bertolt Brecht , p. 107; Brecht wrote the plum song, composed in the first half of 1948, for the premiere of Puntila in Zurich with the title “Lied der Branntweinemma” as an extension of Therese Giehse 's role of Brandy Emma, ​​with the stanzas being inserted separately in the 3rd scene. Later the song by Paul Dessau was set to music by Robert Sauer , based on musical motifs from the hit When it's Springtime in the Rockies ; Another setting was created in the course of the film adaptation in 1955 by Hanns Eisler under the title When the plums became ripe; see. Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 15, pp. 426f.
  102. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 15, p. 192
  103. ↑ cf. Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women , p. 38
  104. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 15, p. 365
  105. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 15, p. 87
  106. ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women , p. 39
  107. ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women , p. 40
  108. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 13, pp. 235f. and notes on p. 484f.
  109. ↑ 1st stanza, verses 1 and 2
  110. ↑ 2nd stanza, verse 3
  111. ↑ 4th stanza, verses 1-2
  112. ↑ Verse 2, verse 4
  113. ↑ 3rd stanza, verse 4
  114. ↑ 4th stanza verse 2
  115. ↑ Closing verses of the eighth and last stanza
  116. ^ A b Albrecht Schöne: Memory of Marie A. von Bertolt Brecht . In: Karl Hotz, Gerhard C. Krischker (Hrsg.): Poems of our time , interpretations. Bamberg 1990, p. 489.
  117. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 12, Svendborger Gedichte, p. 31
  118. ↑ a b Sabine Kebir: An acceptable man? Brecht and the women , p. 33
  119. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 13, p. 111; the song was written in early 1918
  120. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 13, p. 111, verses 1 and 2 and closing verse
  121. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 26, p. 214
  122. ↑ Bertolt Brecht. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Volume 11, p. 22
  123. ↑ Sabine Kebir: An Acceptable Man? Brecht and the women , p. 34
  124. ↑ Sabine Kebir: An Acceptable Man? Brecht and the women , p. 35
  125. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Diaries 1920–1922. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1975, p. 129. Here quoted from Fritz Hennenberg (Ed.): Brecht Liederbuch . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1985, p. 377. See also Werner Hecht: Brecht-Chronik . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 118.
  126. ^ Arnolt Bronnen: Days with Bertolt Brecht . Kurt Desch, Munich / Vienna / Basel 1960, p. 13; Carl Zuckmayer: As if it were a piece of me . Frankfurt: Fischer, 2007 (first 1966), p. 440; John Fuegi: Brecht & Co. Sex, Politics and the Making of the Modern Drama . Grove, New York 1994, p. 128. See also Werner Hecht: Brecht-Chronik . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 133 and p. 162.
  127. ↑ Albrecht Dümling: Don't let yourself be seduced. Brecht and the music . Kindler, Munich 1985, p. 128f., Who cites a contemporary witness, the director Bernhard Reich .
  128. ↑ a b c Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 23.
  129. ↑ Entry in the bibliography musicale française , 1st year, Décembre 1875, p. 156. See also the entry in the French National Library, online .
  130. ↑ Facsimile of the cover sheet at Hennenberg: “On that day in the blue moon September”, p. 25; on dating ibid., pp. 24–26. On the Eldorado see: Paulus "Trente ans de Café concert . Souvenirs recueillis par Octave Pradels" (memoirs). Paris: Société d'Édition et de Publications, 2008. PDF 7.5 MB . There are also portraits of Laroche and Malo there. When Mr. Max it might be to the later opera singer Max Bouvet act which first occurred simply by the name of Max, see. Paul, p. 155.
  131. ↑ Printed music documented in Friedrich Hofmeister's monthly reports, vol. 68 (1896), April, p. 205, strangely enough declared as a “Romanian song”.
  132. ↑ Hennenberg: “On that day in the blue moon September”, p. 26. Sprowacker's version can be viewed online on the website of the Austrian National Library .
  133. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 22f.
  134. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 22.
  135. ↑ Brecht-Liederbuch, p. 378f.
  136. ^ Brecht song book, p. 377f.
  137. ↑ Hans Reimann: Love and marriage on records . In: Der Cross Section, Volume 13 (1933), Issue 3 (March), pp. 218–219.
  138. ↑ Hans Reimann: Literazzia. A foray through the thicket of books. Munich: Pohl, 1952, p. 58f.
  139. ^ Fritz Hennenberg: On that day in the blue moon September , p. 24.
  140. ^ Werner Hecht: Brecht-Chronik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ​​1997, p. 477; Hecht cites a report by the photographer Gerda Goedhart (née Gerda Singer).
  141. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , p. 24.
  142. ↑ Albrecht Dümling: Don't let yourself be seduced. Brecht and the music. Munich: Kindler, 1985, p. 131.
  143. ^ Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht , pp. 1 and 31.
  144. ↑ Albrecht Dümling: Don't let yourself be seduced. Brecht and the music. Munich: Kindler, 1985, p. 16.
  145. ↑ Hans Reimann: Literazzia. A foray through the thicket of books. Munich: Pohl, 1952, p. 59.
  146. ↑ RL: Solo Songs. In: Music and Letters, 46 (2), 1965, p. 189.
  147. ↑ Quoted here from Thomas Eickhoff: Political Dimensions of a Composer's Biography in the 20th Century - Gottfried von Eine , Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, p. 242.
  148. ↑ Ernst Busch "Memory of Marie A." (B. Brecht). On: youtube.com
  149. ^ David Bowie - Remembering Marie A. On: youtube.com
  150. ^ Jörn Albrecht: Basics of translation research. In: Translation and Linguistics (= Translation and Linguistics. Volume 2). Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 2005, p. 104. ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  151. ↑ in: Bertolt Brecht; Reinhold Grimm: Poetry and prose, New York (Continuum) 2003, The German library, 75
  152. ↑ See maurice-regnaut.com
  153. ↑ see csorbagyozo.hu
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