Marlebäck

Marleback is a well in the Finnish municipality of Iitti , City Kausala, today landscape Kymenlaakso .

Hella Wuolijoki

Marlebäck is located on the banks of the Kymijoki River , about two hours' drive from Helsinki . It is located in the municipality of Iitti north of the hamlet of Iittinkirkko. The place became famous through the estate of the Finnish- Estonian author Hella Wuolijoki . She had the manor house rebuilt for her parents by the architect Carolus Lindberg in the late 1920s . Wuolijoki ran a literary-political salon there in the 1920s and 1930s , which was frequented by communist and left-wing intellectual circles.

Bertolt Brecht

The German writer Bertolt Brecht lived here in exile in Finland from July to October 1940 , together with his wife Helene Weigel , the children and his lover Ruth Berlau . Together with Brecht's secretary Margarete Steffin , Brecht and Wuolijoki wrote the sketches for the play Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti in Marlebäck . In early October 1940, Wuolijoki sold the property and Brecht moved to Helsinki.

Brecht's diary

Entries about his time in Marlebäck have been preserved from Brecht's diary:

Driven to Gut Marlebäk (Kausala) with Hella Wuolijoki. She gives us a villa among beautiful birch trees. We're talking about the silence out here. But it's not quiet; only the sounds are much more natural, the wind in the trees, the rustling of the grass, the chirping and whatever comes from the water. The manor house, white, with two rows of eight large windows each, is over 100 years old and built in the Empire style. The rooms are ready for a museum. (July 5, 1940)

The property's sauna is a small, square wooden house on the river. The little dressing room leads to the small, dark bathroom, which is dominated by a huge stone oven. You take off the wooden lid and pour hot water from a large iron pot next to it over fist-sized round stones that are piled directly over the fire. Then you climb a few steps onto a wooden beach, where you lie down. When the sweat breaks out, you whip your open pores with birch fronds, and then you go out onto the jetty and step into the river. If you climb back up - the cool water doesn't seem cold to you - you leave birch leaves behind. You can also find some at night, in bed. “You sleep with the birch,” says Hella Wuolijoki. (August 19, 1940).

museum

Today a small museum for Brecht has been set up in the study of the house. A plaque on the house reminds of Brecht's stay.

literature

• Hans Peter Neureuter: Brecht in Finland. Studies on life and work 1940–1941. Edition Suhrkamp 2056, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-12056-9
• Erkki Tuomioja : But since I am a very resilient woman ... Hella Wuolijoki - keywords for Brecht . Militzke Verlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-86189-809-2

Coordinates: 60 ° 56 ′ 53 ″  N , 26 ° 23 ′ 13 ″  E