Questions from a reading worker
Questions of a reading worker is a poem by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht . It is part of the Svendborg Poems Collection .
Emergence
Brecht wrote the poem in 1935 while in exile in Denmark. It was first published in 1936 in the magazine Das Wort in Moscow . The author added it to two other compilations: once in 1944 in Poems in Exile in the USA, then in 1949 in the calendar stories . The different versions are almost identical.
content
The poem introduces Part III, Chronicles of the Svendborger Gedichte collection . It is divided into four sections (the headings chosen here are not from Brecht):
- Historical events (verse 2–14) At first glance, known historical facts are queried ("Who built the seven-gate Thebes?"), But line three already shows what is important to the author: the established historiography, namely history only from the perspective of the To look at rulers, to question them.
- Conquests (verses 15–22) The scheme of rapidly successive thesis and question is retained in order to reinforce the statement: ordinary people have not been given the place they deserve in previous historiography. With the tendency towards brevity and verbosity, it is noteworthy that despite “all the lightness of the tone, there is no lack of agitatory passion”.
- Summary (verses 23-26) This is condensed and the consequences are discussed: "Who paid the expenses?"
- Quintessence (verse 27–28) At the end, Brecht directly formulates the thesis that it is necessary to reevaluate the historical reports by questioning them.
Traditional discussions between Brecht and the painter Hans Tombrock show that the author dealt with the figure of the “reading worker” beyond the poem. In the post-war period , Brecht's focus was more on the “learning worker”: “Now the proletariat begins [...] their inheritance is what has been destroyed”. The authors of the Brecht Lexicon believe that Brecht research has so far failed to pursue another question: whether Brecht also wanted to suggest that the workers should be ascribed to the atrocities in history in addition to the great deeds.
Brecht found inspiration for his poem from B. Traven, among others . In his novel Das Totenschiff it says:
"What would Caesar do with his armies if he had no NCOs?"
... and in the "Questions of a Reading Worker":
“Caesar defeated the Gauls. Didn't he at least have a cook with him? "
reception
The DIE LINKE party put the poem in front of the basic program it had decided on at the Erfurt party congress on October 23, 2011. This use goes back to a suggestion by Oskar Lafontaine . The Rhineland-Palatinate regional association of left-wing youth Solid included the poem in its own basic program in August 2011.
Web links
- Questions from a reading worker in the explanatory article on ethics, science and the representation of historiography on www.sgipt.org (accessed March 15, 2014)
Individual evidence
- ^ FN Mennemeier: Bertolt Brecht's poetry . Düsseldorf 1982, p. 167.
- ↑ Jan Knopf (Ed.): Brecht Handbook . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, vol. 2, p. 281 f.
- ↑ BB: Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition . Suhrkamp 1988-1999, Vol. 30, p. 11.
- ^ Ana Kugli, Michael Opitz (ed.): Brecht Lexikon . Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, p. 121
- ↑ http://www.die-linke.de/partei/dokumente/programmderparteidielinke/bertoltbrechtfrageneineslesendenarbeiters/
- ↑ http://www.die-linke.de/programm/archiv/programmkonvent/reden/diegrundsatzfragestellen/
- ↑ http://www.linksjugend-solid-rlp.de/verband/wer-wir-sind/120-grundsatzprogramm-der-linksjugend-solid-rheinland-pfalz