My brother was an aviator

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Bertolt Brecht

My brother was an aviator is the title of a poem by Bertolt Brecht . It was probably written in the spring of 1937 and was set to music by Hanns Eisler under the title Spanisches Liedchen 1937 . His theme is the participation of the Condor Legion on the side of the Franquists in the Spanish Civil War .

Origin and publication history

Brecht lived in Svendborg in Danish exile from 1933 . There he received several long working visits from the composer Hanns Eisler, with whom he worked closely. In January 1937 Eisler visited the International Brigades in Murcia that were fighting in the Spanish Civil War and from there went to Denmark to Brecht. During his stay in Svendborg from the end of January to September 1937 My Brother Was an Aviator probably came into being. Eisler's setting of the work is believed to be May 1937. At the time, Brecht was working on a drama about the Spanish Civil War , The Guns of Mrs. Carrar .

The front page of the Paris daily newspaper

The poem appeared for the first time in print in the Sunday supplement of the Paris daily newspaper of October 17, 1937, a German-language exile newspaper, the follow-up publication of the Pariser Tageblatt . At that time, Brecht and his wife held Helene Weigel on in Paris, because they at the local premiere of the guns of the woman Carrar (October 16) were involved. The first print differs in several respects from the later prints: The poem here bears the heading “My brother, the aviator”, the first verse is preceded by a note on the occasion of the publication: “On the Paris performance of Brechts' Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar '". Above all, however, text variants can be recognized in the second stanza . The past tense is used here : "My brother was a conqueror" and "To get land was an old dream for us". Brecht replaced both “was” with “is” in all subsequent publications that he corrected and approved himself. Furthermore, the first two verses of verses 1 and 2 are each followed by a colon, which was also not adopted in any later version. The poem is drawn in the first print with “BRECHT” (in capital letters ). The number also contains on p. 5 a review by R. Br. (= Robert Breuer ) of the premiere of Ms. Carrar's rifles and on p. 4 an advertisement of the “provisionally last performance” on the day the newspaper was published. There it is pointed out that the accompanying program for the piece also contains “songs and ballads”, with Joseph Kosma on the piano. This was typical of the printing of poems in the Paris daily newspaper: they were mostly published on current occasions, in this case on the occasion of the performance of Mrs Carrar's rifles and the accompanying program.

In 1939 Brecht included the poem in a collection published by Malik Verlag , which was then active in exile in London, the Svendborger Gedichte . Six poems were collected in a section for children's songs , one of which was My Brother Was A Flyer .

Eisler's setting was titled Spanish Song 1937 . His score contains roughly the text from the Svendborg poems , but deviates from it in a few less important points.

In 1949 Bertolt Brecht published a collection of prose texts and poems under the title Calendar Stories . After a long time in exile, this was Brecht's first publication in Germany after the Second World War . The poem was also included in this collection.

In 1949 Paul Dessau set the poem to music again for voice and guitar; it appeared together with four other texts from the Svendborg poems in 1950 in the collection of five children's songs . An arrangement of this version for female choir a cappella was created in 1954.

action

It is a narrative poem. A pilot known as "my brother" receives a message that prompts him to pack his things and travel "south". There he appears as a “conqueror” because “our people” lack space. But he only conquered a space the size of a grave in the Spanish Sierra de Guadarrama .

While the first stanza reports and thus tells a progressive plot in the simple past (the pilot got "a kart", packed his things and went on the "ride"), the speech changes in the following parts of the poem. The second stanza is more of an exploratory character: the agent is given a quality in the present tense ("is a conqueror") and the reasons for his behavior reported in the first stanza are understood. In the third stanza the speech changes again: Now, again in the present tense, a lasting end result is pronounced, to which the action has led. The brother now lies in his grave in a foreign country. The decisive events that lie between the reported actions and the end result are left out and the reader has to understand them from the result: the protagonist apparently flew war missions, was shot down, died and was buried. So it is a poem with a very concise narrative.

At the same time, the description of the result has a disillusioning relationship, especially with the second stanza: what the “conqueror” has actually gained in “space” and from the dreamed-up “land” is just a place for his dead body. Heinz Graefe therefore assigns the poem to the type of “narrative punch line poem”, which owes its effect to an effective punch line at the end of the text. Filippomaria Pontani has shown that this punchline in Aeschylus ' drama Seven Against Thebes has an ancient predecessor. There the brothers Eteocles and Polynices fight for possession of the city of Thebes and both die in battle. "How much a grave covers, the country still has," it says in Droysen's classic translation of the drama. Pontani suggests that Brecht was probably inspired by Aeschylus in setting his points. In addition to Brecht's well-known reception of antiquity, the brother's motif, which connects both texts, speaks for this.

Silvia Schlenstedt emphasizes the “laconic way” in which the poem addresses the war. Neither the deeds nor the sufferings or horrors of war are depicted, unlike most poems that have appeared in the exile press on the subject of war. The poem does not aim “in general to sympathize with the suffering of the victims”, but rather, according to Schlenstedt, to “reflect on the conflicting interests between fascist rule and those who carry out their orders”. The theme is the aviator's disappointed hopes, not the sufferings of his victims.

Historical context

Location of the Sierra de Guadarrama

In the poem, apart from the Spanish “Quadarama massif”, Brecht does not offer any clear temporal or local provisions for the plot. The time of publication (emphasized again in Eisler's setting by the year "1937" in the title) and various formulations make the historical reference clear, which was immediately apparent to contemporaries in the years of creation and the first prints. The acting character ("My Brother") is obviously to be assigned to the Condor Legion , a German air force unit that intervened in the Spanish Civil War on behalf of the Falange since 1936 . This was done in strict secrecy. The soldiers were brought to their locations in civilian clothes, disguised as vacationers as part of the Strength through Joy program . They received a war allowance, which enabled them to live a lush life, especially in Spain. The description in the first stanza of the poem alludes to the “adventure and chance character of the legionnaires”. Despite the secrecy precautions, the intervention of the German Reich became known early on because workers from the communist resistance in Hamburg observed the loading work and discovered bombs and ammunition in a packing box.

The Condor Legion intervened in numerous battles during the Spanish Civil War, including in the Sierra de Guadarrama , the crest of which has long been a front line between the Republican and Fascist forces. The most spectacular war action of the Condor Legion, the air raid on Guernica on April 26, 1937, in which several hundred to over 1000 civilians were killed in the small town, occurred during the period in which the poem was written. The bombing of Guernica sparked international outrage, the most famous artistic charge of this crime being Picasso's painting Guernica .

The verse “Our people lack space” alludes to the catchphrase “ People without space ”, which was coined in the folk literature of the Weimar Republic and used by the National Socialists to justify their intentions to conquer.

Formal construction

The poem consists of three stanzas of four verses each . All stanzas have an interrupted cross rhyme , so they have the rhyme scheme abcb. The meter is handled very freely. A folk song stanza with a three-part iambus can be identified as the basis , but the scheme is often varied: the number of lifts varies between three and four, the lowerings are filled variably, some verses, especially the middle verses of the stanzas, can also be understood trochaic , thus starting with a stressed syllable. Edgar Bazing speaks of “metric irregularities” in an analysis of the poem. The two composers, Eisler and Dessau, however, did not interpret any of the verses of the poem trochaic, but instead started each verse with one or two unstressed syllables.

Brecht used this procedure of varying a metrical basic form rhythmically freely and more often and described it in more detail in his book On Rhymeless Poetry with Irregular Rhythms . There he states that his rhymed poems often have irregular rhythms, and cites his legend of the dead soldier as an example , in which the second verses of the stanzas are rhythmized in a total of nine different ways.

The shape and their variations, simply acting reminiscent of the ballads of Frank Wedekind , an early example of Brecht, about Tante killer . It corresponds to the heading “Children's songs”, under which the work was classified in the Svendborg poems .

Settings

Hanns Eisler set the poem to music on the basis of a twelve-tone row . While the first and third stanzas have the original form of the series, their reverse is used in the second stanza . This advanced treatment, which contrasts with the "song" in your chosen Eisler headline takes the musicologist Thomas Phleps According to inconspicuous, "unpretentious" manner, as the piano accompaniment creates a "pseudo-tonality" without the traditional principles of tonality to put. In the piano interlude between the first and second stanza as well as in the piano aftermath after the third stanza, Eisler quotes the beginning of the Dies irae , i.e. the time-honored hymn to the Last Judgment , in sharply accented half notes. So death announces itself between the lines. Albrecht Dümling thinks that Eisler explored the "possibilities of a singable twelve-tone melody" with this and other compositions of children's songs.

Paul Dessau based his setting on a bolero (“according to the scene”) with time changes between three-quarters and two-quarters as a rhythmic model. He composed a stanza song in which all stanzas are sung to the same melody; He made sure that it was easy to sing and learn so that children could also do it. A guitar or a guitar piano (a piano prepared with thumbtacks on the felt hammers that produces a guitar-like sound) is provided as accompaniment. The last verse of each stanza is repeated and surprisingly deviates from E minor to the Phrygian mode , an archaic church key . According to Fritz Hennenberg , Dessau wanted these repetitions to be slower and quieter; the entire last stanza should also be sung piano . According to Hennenberg, this should question the “provocative musical carelessness” of the Bolero.

reception

Brecht's poem was included in various anthologies in both German states at an early stage , including Hans-Heinrich Reuter's Political Poems of the Germans from Eight Centuries (Leipzig 1960) and Heinz Piontek's New German Narrative Poems (Stuttgart 1964). It has been part of school reading since the 1970s at the latest and has been used in this sense to the present day.

"Located in the Quadarama massif": the Valle de los Caídos , mausoleum for the war dead of the Falange

My brother was an aviator has stimulated public reflections on several occasions, even beyond literary and pedagogical studies. In a volume about the present of the civil war past in Spain, Georg Pichler was struck by the contrast between the small, precisely measured space that the Legion Condor pilot conquered in Brecht's poem and the enormous dimensions of the fascist culture of remembrance, in this case the basilica of the Valle de los Caídos in the Sierra de Guadarrama, which Franco had built as a mausoleum for the war dead on the fascist side.

expenditure

text

  • Paris daily newspaper, 2nd year, No. 491 (October 17, 1937), p. 3.
  • Svendborg poems . Malik Publishing House, London 1939.
  • Calendar stories. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1949.

grades

  • Paul Dessau / Bertolt Brecht: 5 children's songs. Thuringian Volksverlag, Erfurt 1950.
  • Hanns Eisler: Spanisches Liedchen 1937. In: Lieder und Kantaten , Volume 2. VEB Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1957, pp. 117–118.

Sound recordings

  • Paul Dessau / Bertolt Brecht: 5 children's songs. Eterna, Berlin 1958. Soprano: Irmgard Arnold , guitar piano: Paul Dessau.
  • Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht: Songs in Exile. German records, Berlin 1981. Soprano: Roswitha Trexler, piano: Jutta Czapski. Recorded in 1977 in the Paul Gerhardt Church, Leipzig

literature

Brief analyzes of the poem can be found in:

  • Heinz Graefe: The German narrative poem in the 20th century. Thesen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 57–58 and 67.
  • Silvia Schlenstedt: The poem in the Paris daily newspaper at the time of the Spanish Civil War. In: Hélène Roussel, Lutz Winckler (eds.): Pariser Tageblatt / Pariser daily newspaper (Décembre 1933 – Février 1940). Conceptions et pratiques du quotidien des émigrés allememands en France / Concepts and practice of the daily newspaper of German emigrants in France. Contributions au Colloque du projet de recherche de l'Université de Paris 8 sur la presse de l'émigration allemande en France (1933–1940) 16 and 17 December 1988 à Paris / Contributions to the conference of the research project of the University of Paris 8 on the German exile press in France (1933–1940) from December 16 to 17, 1988 in Paris . Universitätsdruckerei Bremen, p. 156–165, here: p. 158 and p. 160f.
  • Edgar Bazing: International Poetry on the Spanish Civil War. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2001, pp. 28-33.
  • Filippomaria Pontani : Eteocles in Spain? On Brecht's My brother was an aviator . In: Neophilologus , Vol. 101 (2017), Issue 4 (June), pp. 575-583. ( doi: 10.1007 / s11061-017-9528-6 ).

Eisler's setting is analyzed in

  • Thomas Phleps: The "tired soldier". Hanns Eisler and the First World War. In: Stefan Hanheide, Dietrich Helms, Claudia Glunz, Thomas F. Schneider (eds.): Music takes a stand. Functionalizations of music in the First World War. V & R unipress, Universitätsverlag Osnabrück, 2013, pp. 403–427, here: pp. 412–413.

Dessau's setting is analyzed in

  • Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, pp. 488-489.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Hecht: Small Brecht Chronicle, Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2012, p. 78 ff .; Bertolt Brecht: Prose 3rd Berlin and Frankfurt Edition, Vol. 18, p. 662 (commentary); Thomas Phleps: The "tired soldier". Hanns Eisler and the First World War . In: Stefan Hanheide, Dietrich Helms, Claudia Glunz, Thomas F. Schneider (eds.): Music takes a stand. Functionalizations of music in the First World War . V & R unipress, Universitätsverlag Osnabrück, 2013, pp. 403–427.
  2. ^ Claude Villard: Theater criticism . In: Hélène Roussel, Lutz Winckler (eds.): Right and left of the Seine. Pariser Tageblatt and Pariser Tageszeitung 1933–1940. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, pp. 235–250, here: p. 242 f.
  3. ↑ See Pariser Tageszeitung, Volume 2, No. 491 (October 17, 1937), pp. 3–5, see also the Exilpresse digital catalog at the German National Library, http://d-nb.info/104054102X . The indication “19. October ”of the Berlin and Frankfurt editions (vol. 18, p. 662; also, but with the indication of the Pariser Tageblatt , which was no longer published at the time , in the register volume , p. 778) is incorrect.
  4. ^ Silvia Schlenstedt: The poem in the Paris daily newspaper , p. 160f.
  5. ^ Zlata Fuss Phillips: German children's and youth literature in exile 1933–1950. Saur, Munich 2001, p. 34.
  6. ↑ Thomas Phleps: The "tired soldier". Hanns Eisler and the First World War . In: Stefan Hanheide, Dietrich Helms, Claudia Glunz, Thomas F. Schneider (eds.): Music takes a stand. Functionalizations of music in the First World War . V & R unipress, Universitätsverlag Osnabrück, 2013, pp. 403–427, here: p. 412.
  7. ↑ See Fritz Hennenberg (Ed.): Brecht Liederbuch . Henschel and Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin and Frankfurt 1984, pp. 298 f., 486-489, 517.
  8. ^ Heinz Graefe: The German narrative poem in the 20th century . Thesen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 57 f. and 67.
  9. ↑ Filippomaria Pontani: Eteocles in Spain? , especially p. 578ff. Quotation from: Aeschylus , translated by JG Droysen, Hertz, Berlin 1868 (3rd edition), pp. 353–354.
  10. ^ Silvia Schlenstedt: The poem in the Paris daily newspaper at the time of the Spanish Civil War , p. 158.
  11. ↑ This is Brecht's idiosyncratic writing in the Svendborg poems and the calendar stories , which was also adopted from the Berlin and Frankfurt editions of the Brecht-Werke. Brecht didn't speak Spanish. The first print in the Paris daily newspaper has “Guadarama massif”; Eisler wrote “Quadramamassiv”, which also has metrical consequences (failure of an unstressed syllable). In later reprints the spelling is occasionally normalized, so: "Guadarrama massif", for example in the Brecht songbook.
  12. ↑ Cf. Edgar Bazing: International Poetry on the Spanish Civil War . Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2001, p. 28: "If the author and the time of origin of the text were not known, the reader would have considerable difficulties understanding the meaning of the text."
  13. ↑ Information in this paragraph based on Martin Franzbach: The Condor Legion - a German military tradition . In: Das Argument 283 (= 51st year, issue 5/2009), pp. 799–809. The quote, explicitly linked to Brecht's “short agitation poem”, is there on p. 804.
  14. ↑ See for example Edgar Bazing: International Poetry for the Spanish Civil War . Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2001, p. 29.
  15. ^ Edgar Bazing: International Poetry on the Spanish Civil War . Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2001, p. 32.Bazing sees the Chevy Chase stanza as the basis of the poem, from which it differs more clearly than from the folk song stanza (no regular alternation between three- and four-part verses, no continuous monosyllabic closure ).
  16. ^ Bertolt Brecht: About rhyming poetry with irregular rhythms. Originated in March 1938, first published in: Das Wort , issue 3/1939.
  17. ↑ Thomas Phleps: The "tired soldier". Hanns Eisler and the First World War. In: Stefan Hanheide, Dietrich Helms, Claudia Glunz, Thomas F. Schneider (eds.): Music takes a stand. Functionalizations of music in the First World War . V & R unipress, Universitätsverlag Osnabrück, 2013, pp. 403–427, here: pp. 412–413.
  18. ↑ Albrecht Dümling: Don't let yourself be seduced! Brecht and the music . Kindler, Munich 1985, p. 436.
  19. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1985, pp. 488-489 (comment). The song itself is printed there as No. 97, pp. 298–299; Paul Dessau: Notes on sheet music . Edited by Fritz Hennenberg. Reclam, Leipzig 1974, p. 71.
  20. ↑ See for example: westermann texte deutsch , 5th grade (orientation level), Westermann, Braunschweig 1975; Marianne Horstkemper: Gender role identity and teaching behavior. In: Martin KW Schweer: Teacher-student interaction. Pedagogical and psychological aspects of teaching and learning in school . Springer, Wiesbaden 2000, pp. 139–158, here: p. 151.
  21. ↑ Georg Pichler: Presence of the past. The controversy over civil war and dictatorship in Spain . Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2013.
  22. ↑ Booklet for CD Hanns Eisler: Songs and Cantatas in Exile , p. 3.