Children's crusade 1939

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Children's Crusade 1939 is the title of a poem by Bertolt Brecht . It describes how a group of children who became orphans of war in the attack on Poland wander through ruined Poland in search of a peaceful country, experience the horrors of war and finally perish of hunger and cold.

Emergence

Brecht wrote Children's Crusade 1939 in exile in the USA in November 1941, which he was able to enter in July of the same year. It first appeared in The German American in December 1942 . Brecht's literature at the time was influenced by experiences from his time in exile in various countries; so he had to leave his close colleague and lover Margarete Steffin behind in Moscow, where she died of tuberculosis in June 1941 . In 1949, “Kinderkreuzzug 1939” appeared in the calendar stories , Brecht's first publication in Germany after his return there. In 1951, Brecht published a version of the work shortened from 47 to 35 stanzas in the Hundred Poems Collection . He dedicated this shortened version to Steffin.

content

The poem describes how a group of children who, after the horrors of the attack on Poland in 1939, found their home in ruins and lost their parents, decided to head south to a peaceful country on their own.

However, on the way, the children encounter some difficulties. They cannot find their way around because the signposts are blocked, they have to hide from soldiers all the time and it is cold because of the late season.

A wounded, very feverish soldier, who is being cared for by the children, tells them to head towards Bilgoray . The children cannot find this Bilgoray and only continue to get lost.

In the poem there are some parallels to the Children's Crusades 1212. At the beginning, a “little guide” is introduced who will lead the group of children, but who does not know the way to the saving south himself. The end of both crusades is also similar: the children in the Children's Crusade in 1939 all die due to the winter cold, the exertions and their disorientation. The only witness to their death is a starved dog with a sign around its neck on which the children ask for help.

The poem introduces individual members of the crusade: a maternal eleven-year-old, a pair of lovers, a Jew, a German, a Pole, a Protestant, a Catholic, a Nazi and a little socialist. These differences do not play a role for the children, however; a small Jew who dies on the way is carried to the grave by two Germans and two Poles.

interpretation

In this poem the subject of war is taken up again, which determines the beginning of Brecht's calendar collection. It is only with this poem that the outbreak of war is described.

The poem has a connection with the Children's Crusade of 1212 , but the motif of the crusade has changed. At that time the children wanted to go to the Holy Land to free the Holy Sepulcher from the Gentiles and to go to heaven for this godly act. Instead, the goal of the 1939 crusade was to reach the “land where there was peace” and thus to escape the war. The children's crusade in 1939 also had the south as its destination, but not the Holy Land, but warmer areas, because the winter of 1939 was cold and deadly. In both crusades, the children did not reach their destination and died on the way there.

The poem probably goes back to a newspaper report that Red Army soldiers found three children in eastern Poland. Although the children learned to behave like trained soldiers, they never made it to Bilgoray , where their ultimate destination was. The war kept stopping the children again and again.

At the beginning of the poem, the situation in Poland after the war is presented in 1939. It describes how cities and villages were destroyed and that there were many civilian casualties. Several families were separated by death, which resulted in a number of orphans. The Children's Crusade is mentioned for the first time in the 4th stanza of the poem. It is described how the children march past destroyed villages on country roads and meet other orphans who join the children's crusade. Another time it is described how bad the war is and what horror it must have been for the children: "They wanted to escape the battles / The whole nightmare". In the next stanza it is written that a boy took the lead even though he did not know where to go. Deprived of their parents, the children learn to look after each other and instead take on the role of their parents. The longing for a “land where there was peace” is portrayed very often. A young Jew is described who came from a privileged background and yet held up well until he succumbed to hunger and the cold.

From several passages in the text it can be inferred that the children had to hide from the German soldiers or were shadowed by the Germans.

A wounded soldier who was being nursed and cared for by the children sent them to Bilgoray. As the wind was very raging and the signposts had been twisted for military reasons, the children never made it to Bilgoray. Despite all the disappointment, the children followed their guide, who unsuspectingly pointed in one direction. The path led them past dangerous places, whereby the children had to avoid any signs of humans. When the children were hopelessly lost, a dog was sent to get help. He wore a message from the children around his neck that said the dog was the children's last chance. When the dog was found dead after a year and a half, it was clear that the Children's Crusade had met a similar fate.

reception

  • The text of Benjamin Britten's Children’s Crusade , Op. 82, for 9 boys' voices, choir, percussion, organ and two pianos is Hans Keller's translation of Children's Crusade 1939 . The play was performed in 1969 in St Paul's Cathedral in London. A German version of this libretto was performed in 1980 by around 50 girls and boys from the “Braunschweiger Jugendchor” under the direction of its choirmaster Manfred Ehrhorn in Braunschweig; In 1981 the piece was recorded for a long-playing record. A digital reconstruction of this long-playing record was published on March 7, 2012.
  • In 1979 the graphic artist Herbert Sandberg drew a picture for Brecht's Children 's Crusade in 1939 , which is still sold as a poster today.
  • In November 2012, the Konstanz Theater carried out an aid project called “Children's Crusade” - which is based on Brecht's poem - in Togo .
  • The poem was also recited and published, for example by the German reciter Lutz Görner , who rewrote the poem and called it the Children's Crusade in 1941 , he also recited this poem.
  • Another recitation is by Klaus Kinski , who recites the poem Kinderkreuzzug 1939 on his CD "Kinski speaks German poetry" from 2003.
  • The content of the poem is taken up by the band Janus on the album Nachtmahr with the song Children's Crusade .

Varia

In Brecht's calendar stories, a poem and a story are connected to one another, they explain each other in a complementary manner. The poem Children's Crusade 1939 is complementary to the story Caesar and his legionnaire that follows in the collection . Both texts deal with a group or person who is in a dangerous bind due to a war in the east. When they try to escape the dilemma, they both die. This is a further indication of Brecht's hostility to war, it shows the senseless sacrifices on the side of the powerful as well as on the side of the people.

literature

  • Ingrid and Karlheinz Hasselbach: Bertolt Brecht calendar stories. Oldenbourg interpretations
  • Jan Knopf : Brecht manual, poems.
  • Josef P. Mautner: Nothing definitive, literature and religion in the late modern age. Königshausen & Neumann, books.google.at
  • Franz-Josef Payrhuber : Literary Knowledge for School and Study - Bertolt Brecht. Philipp Reclam jun. Stuttgart

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mautner, pp. 71-72
  2. ↑ The interpretation comes mainly from "Ingrid and Karlheinz Hasselbach: Bertolt Brecht Calendar Stories. See literature.
  3. ^ Benjamin Britten, Bertolt Brecht: Kinderkreuzzug (Children's Crusade). CD on the SicusKlassik label .
  4. ^ Graphic by Herbert Sandberg zu Brecht's “Children's Crusade” from 1979 in the Deutsche Fotothek .
  5. ^ Project »Children's Crusade« in Togo at www.theaterkonstanz.de
  6. ↑ Lutz Görner recites Children's Crusade 1941 on YouTube
  7. ↑ Pre-Rendered poem by Klaus Kinski as fee-CD
  8. ↑ Children's Crusade 1939 on YouTube , Klaus Kinski (speaker), Ingo Insterburg (guitar)
  9. ↑ Janus - Nachtmahr. Retrieved August 20, 2017 .
  10. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Calendar Stories . Rowohlt Verlag , Hamburg 1953, ISBN 3-499-10077-0 , p. 53-59 ( online [PDF]).