Mother Courage and her children
| Data | |
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| Title: | Mother Courage and her children |
| Genus: | Epic theater |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Bertolt Brecht |
| Publishing year: | 1941 |
| Premiere: | April 19, 1941 |
| Place of premiere: | Schauspielhaus Zurich |
| Place and time of the action: | Thirty Years War between 1624 and 1636 |
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Mother Courage and Her Children is a drama written by Bertolt Brecht in exile in Sweden in 1938/39 and premiered in Zurich in 1941 . It takes place in the Thirty Years' War between 1624 and 1636. It tells the story of the sutler Mother Courage, who tries to do her business with war and loses her three children in the process. The event can be understood as a warning to the common people who hope to deal with the Second World War through skillful action . At the same time it sends a warning to the Scandinavian countries, where companies hoped to make money on World War II. But Brecht's intentions go beyond that: he wants to convey disgust for the war and for the capitalist society which, in his opinion, produces it.
The mother Courage is still exemplary for Brecht's concept of epic theater . The audience should analyze the events on stage in a critical and distanced manner, not experience the fate of a positive hero with feeling. Brecht made the performance of the Berliner Ensemble with the "Courage model", a collection of photos, stage directions and commentaries, a temporarily mandatory template for numerous performances around the world. The drama was set to music several times and filmed by DEFA in the style of the Brecht staging. During the Cold War , theaters boycotted the play in some western countries.
Nevertheless, Mother Courage was a great stage success, almost every city theater tried its hand at Courage, as many directing stars, such as Peter Zadek , as Brecht at the Deutsches Theater, or Claus Peymann with the Berliner Ensemble. For many actresses, courage is a prime role. The drama is widely used as school reading.
content
Brecht has repeatedly developed and changed the piece. The table of contents follows the print version from 1950 with 12 scenes, the same text as the Berlin and Frankfurt complete editions.
First picture
In the spring of 1624, Mother Courage joined the 2nd Finnish regiment as a sutler with her three children , which recruited soldiers for the campaign in Poland in the Swedish countryside of Dalarna . A sergeant and a recruiter are supposed to recruit soldiers for their field captain Oxenstjerna . The sergeant claims that peace is sloppiness and only war can bring order.
When the sergeant stops the Courage car with her two half-grown sons, the recruiter is happy about two "tough men". Courage introduces itself as a cunning businesswoman with a song. Her real name is Anna Fierling. She got her nickname “Courage” when she drove fifty loaves of bread under the fire of the guns into the beleaguered Riga to sell them before they went moldy.
When she is asked to identify herself, Courage presents some “documents”: a missal to wrap cucumbers, a map of Moravia and a certificate of a disease-free horse. She says that her children were conceived by different men on the military roads of Europe. When she realizes that the recruiter is after her sons, she defends them with the knife. As a warning, she lets the sergeant and her children draw lots that prophesy death in war for everyone.
Ultimately, she lets herself be distracted by her business acumen when the sergeant shows interest in buying a buckle. She ignores the warning sounds of her mute daughter Kattrin, and when she returns, the recruiter has gone away with her eldest son Eilif.
Second picture
Mother Courage pulls in the years 1625 and 1626 in the entourage of the Swedish army through Poland. While she is negotiating a capon with the captain's cook , she overhears her son Eilif being honored by the captain for a heroic deed. Eilif and his people were looking for cattle to steal from the farmers. In doing so, she caught a majority of armed peasants. But by cunning and deceit, Eilif managed to knock down the peasants and steal the cattle. When Courage hears this, she slaps Eilif because he did not surrender. She fears for her son because of his boldness. In the double scene, the viewer can watch what is happening in the kitchen and at the field captain's at the same time.
Third picture
Three years have passed. Courage trades for bullets with the equipment master of a Finnish regiment. Her youngest son Schweizerkas has become paymaster and administers the regimental treasury. Courage warns her son not to act dishonestly.
Courage meets the warehouse whore Yvette Pottier, who tells her her life story (song about fraternization) . Yvette explains her decline with the fact that she was abandoned by her first great love, a cook named "Pfeifen-Pieter". She is avoided by the soldiers because of a venereal disease. Despite all the warnings about being a soldier, Kattrin plays with Yvette's hat and shoes.
Afterwards, the cook and field preacher talk about the political situation. The chaplain claims that falling in this war is a mercy because it is a war of faith . The cook replies that this war is in no way different from other wars. It meant death, poverty and calamity for the affected population and gain for the masters who waged the war for their benefit.
The conversation is interrupted by the thunder of cannons, shots and drums. The Catholics raid the Swedish camp. In a mess, Courage tries to save her children. She smeared Kattrin's face with ashes to make her unattractive, advised Schweizererkas to throw away the cash register, and gave the military preacher shelter. At the last minute she takes the regimental flag from the car. But Schweizererkas wants to save the regimental treasury and hides it in a molehole near the river. However, Polish spies notice that his belly protrudes strangely through the hidden cash register and arrange for his arrest. Under torture, he confesses that he has hidden the cash register; but he does not want to reveal the location. The Chaplain sings the Horen song .
Yvette has met an old colonel who is willing to buy Mother Courage's car so she can buy her son out. Courage secretly hopes for the money from the regimental treasury and therefore only wants to pawn the car. But she has been negotiating too long about the release price for her son, and Schweizererkas is shot by the Polish Catholics. When the corpse is brought in, the mother Courage denies her son in order to save herself.
Fourth picture
Mother Courage wants to complain to a Rittmeister because soldiers have destroyed goods in their car while searching for the regimental treasury. A young soldier would also like to complain because he did not receive the money he had promised. Then Courage sings the song of the great surrender , which expresses deep resignation and surrender to the mighty. The two waive the complaint. The quote in the chorus of the song, alienated by a colon: “Man thinks: God directs” demonstrates the turning away from religion and the ideology of war.
Fifth picture
Two years have passed. Courage has crossed Poland, Bavaria and Italy with her car. 1631 Tilly wins near Magdeburg . Mother Courage stands in a blasted village and pours schnapps. Then the field preacher comes and demands linen to bandage wounded peasants. But Courage refuses and must be forced by Kattrin and the field preacher to help. Kattrin rescues an infant from the collapsing farm at risk of death.
Sixth picture
In 1632, Courage attended the funeral of the fallen imperial field captain Tilly in front of the city of Ingolstadt . She entertains some soldiers and fears that the war will soon end. But the field preacher calms them down and says that the war is going on. Courage sends Kattrin into town to buy new goods. While her daughter is away, she rejects the field preacher, who wants more than just a flat share.
Kattrin returns from town with a disfiguring wound on her forehead. She was ambushed and mistreated, but did not allow the goods to be taken away. As a consolation, Courage gives her the shoes of the warehouse whore Yvette, who the daughter does not accept because she knows that no man will be interested in her anymore.
Kattrin overhears her mother's conversation with the field preacher from the car. According to Mother Courage, Kattrin no longer needs to wait for peace, because all her future prospects and plans have been destroyed with the attack and the remaining scar. No man would marry a mute and disfigured person. Her mother's promise that Kattrin would have a husband and children as soon as peace came seems to have become obsolete. At the very end of the scene, Mother Courage lets herself be carried away to the sentence: "The war should be cursed."
Seventh picture
The antithesis at the end of the sixth picture follows immediately at the beginning of the seventh: "I will not let you ruin the war", says Mother Courage. She moves "at the height of her business career" (Brecht) with Kattrin and the field preacher on a country road. In the short scene she justifies her unsettled way of life as a sutler in war with a song.
Eighth picture
The Swedish king Gustav Adolf is killed in the battle of Lützen . The bells are ringing everywhere and the rumor spreads with lightning speed that it was now peace. The cook reappears in the camp and the field preacher puts on his robe again. Mother Courage complains to the cook that she is now ruined because, on the advice of the field preacher, shortly before the end of the war she bought goods that are no longer worth anything.
There is a dispute between the cook and the field preacher: the field preacher does not want to be pushed out of the business by the cook because otherwise he cannot survive. Courage curses peace and is then referred to by the field preacher as the “ hyena of the battlefield”. Yvette, who has been the widow of a noble colonel for five years and who has become older and fatter, comes to visit. She identifies the cook as "Pfeifen-Pieter" and characterizes him as a dangerous seducer. He believes (wrongly, as it later turns out) that his reputation with Mother Courage has fallen sharply as a result. Courage drives into town with Yvette to quickly sell her wares before prices drop. While Courage is gone, the soldiers demonstrate Eilif, who is to be given the opportunity to speak to his mother. He continued to rob and murder; however, he did not notice that this is now, in "peace", considered robbery and murder. Consequently, he is to be executed. Because of the mother's absence, Eilif's planned last conversation with her does not take place. Shortly after his departure, Mother Courage returns. She did not sell her goods because she saw that fighting had started again and that the war would continue. The cook does not tell her that Eilif is to be executed. Courage moves on with her car and instead of the field preacher takes the cook with her as an assistant.
Ninth picture
The war has been going on for sixteen years, and half of Germany's inhabitants perished. The country is devastated, the people are starving. In the autumn of 1634, Courage and the cook tried to beg for something to eat in the Fichtel Mountains . The cook tells the courage of his mother, who died of cholera in Utrecht . He has inherited a small economy and wants to move there with courage, as he longs for a quiet and peaceful life. At first, Mother Courage seems to be taken with this plan, until the cook tells her that he doesn't want to take Kattrin with him. After he made it clear that the economy could not feed three people and that Kattrin would drive away the guests with her “disfigured face”, Mother Courage changed her mind. She can just stop Kattrin, who has overheard this conversation and secretly wants to run away. Mother and daughter move on alone, and the cook is puzzled to see that he has been left behind.
On the one hand, the courage is incapable of expressing her feelings, and probably assumes that her daughter only knows her as a businesswoman - hence the concealment of her motherly feelings - on the other hand, her decision is thoroughly calculating: she is aware that the car and his Function in war is simply their world. So basically she can only choose Kattrin and the war.
Tenth picture
For the whole of 1635, Mother Courage and her daughter wandered the highways of Central Germany and followed the ragged armies. You will pass a farmhouse. You hear a voice that sings of the safety of the people with a perfect roof over their heads (A rose has struck us) . Mother Courage and Kattrin, who do not have this security, stop and listen to the voice, but then move on without comment.
Eleventh picture
In January 1636 the imperial troops threatened the city of Halle . Courage went into town to shop. An ensign and two mercenaries enter the farm, where Courage has her covered wagon with her daughter. The soldiers force the farmers to show them the way into the city, as the residents, who are not yet aware of the danger, should be surprised. When Kattrin heard of the danger, she took a drum, climbed onto the roof and pulled the ladder up to her. She beats the drum and doesn't let any threats stop her. The soldiers force the peasants to drown out the drums with ax blows. When this fails, Kattrin is shot by the soldiers. But the brave effort that cost her life is successful. The townspeople have woken up and are sounding the alarm.
Twelfth picture
The next morning the Swedes leave the farm. Mother Courage returns from town and finds her dead daughter. At first she thinks she is asleep and finds it difficult to grasp the truth. She gives the peasants money for the funeral and follows the army alone with the wagon. She believes that at least Eilif is alive and sings the third verse of the opening song.
Origin of the piece
Literary influences
According to Margarete Steffin's notes , Brecht was inspired in Swedish exile by the story of the Nordic sutler Lotta Svärd from Johan Ludvig Runeberg's " Fähnrich Stahl " to write Mother Courage, which only lasted 5 weeks. Various references by Brecht to preliminary work show that in the autumn of 1939 Brecht only "wrote the first complete version". Brecht himself later states that he “wrote the piece in 1938”. In the context of the Copenhagen performance in 1953, he recalls that the play was performed in Svendborg , i. H. before April 23, 1939 when he left Denmark.
In Runeberg's ballads we find the type of maternal sutler who takes care of the soldiers in the Finnish-Russian war of 1808/09 . In terms of content, Brecht's drama bears no resemblance to Runeberg's work, which idealistically glorifies Finland's struggle for national autonomy.
Brecht took the name "Courage" from the novel Trutz Simplex : Or detailed and wonderfully strange biography of the Ertz Betrügerin and Landstörtzerin Courasche (1670) by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , who uses the example of a gypsy woman to describe how the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War became moral and human Lead to neglect.
Grimmelshausen's novels relentlessly portray the horrors of war. His main work The adventurous Simplicissimus , a picaresque novel , is the first volume in a trilogy that also includes the Courasche novel and The strange Springinsfeld . Brecht, who valued Grimmelshausen because of its unheroical portrayal of the war, took over neither the plot of the Courasche novel nor the character of the title character. At Grimmelshausen, Courasche is a soldier whore with a strong erotic charisma, she is sterile (but has seven different husbands; see the three different fathers of Eilif, Schweizererkas and Kattrin) and is of high birth. The term "Courasche" does not mean courage, but the vagina :
- "But when the sermon was at its best and he asked me why I had done my opposite in such a horrible way, I replied:" Because he has seized my courage where no other man's hands have yet come ""
Nevertheless, there are indirect parallels between the two literary figures. Like Brecht's Courage, Grimmelshausen's “Courasche” also goes to war on purpose. In men's clothing, she looks for opportunities to live out her lust for rubbish and greed for money. Neither of them believe in religion. On the other hand, Courasche tries to earn her money as a soldier whore, mainly through a chain of short-lived marriages, an aspect of her personality that Brecht finds in the figure of Yvette Pottier.
Against the backdrop of the Thirty Years' War , Brecht wants to warn against war in general and to uncover its causes. The historical background of the drama, the design of the war as a civil war, comes from Grimmelshausen. Jan Knopf sees aspects of the figure of Simplicissimus in the figure of Eilif and continues to refer to formal influences from Grimmelshausen: like this in Simplicissimus, Brecht precedes the events in his drama with brief summaries of the content of the events in order to reduce the "tension of the reader about the" what " Whether-at-all-tension) on the "how" (how-tension), that is, from the mere material to its assessment ”. What served the moral evaluation of events in the Baroque era is, in Brecht's work, a means of bringing about a distanced gaze from the audience. The audience should understand and judge the events, not experience them with empathy and anticipation. Jan Knopf also sees the influence of the cinema in the short synopsis, which worked excessively with overlaid texts in silent films and “in the 'epic film' of the 1930s”.
Research sees a further influence of Grimmelshausen in the concept of the “reversal of the ordinary: in the Baroque it is the topos of the inverted world versus the divine world order […], with Brecht it is the“ revaluation ”of the“ normal ”bourgeois values through the war : as the new normal. "The Simplicissimus also shows the commercial interest in war:
- “Now, dear Mercuri, why should I give you peace then? Yes, there are quite a few who want him, but only, as I said, for the sake of their belly and lust; on the other hand there are also others who want to keep the war, not because it is my will, but because it wins them over; And just as the bricklayers and carpenters want peace so that they can earn money building the cremated houses, so others who do not dare to support themselves in [405] peace with their manual labor demand to steal the continuation of the war in it. "
References to the political situation of the time
Brecht wrote his piece in exile "for Scandinavia". The involvement of Scandinavia in the war is already indicated by the historical link to the Thirty Years' War. "The first two pictures in particular reveal the intended Swedish audience, since the Swedish-Polish war (which precedes the intervention of the Swedish king in the Thirty Years' War ) forms the historical backdrop." Brecht's main intention was to warn his hosts that to get involved in business with Hitler. Brecht writes:
“It may be difficult today to remember that there were people in Scandinavia back then who were not averse to getting a little involved in the ventures across the border. You will hardly talk about it. Not so much because it was a raid, but because the raid failed. "
As early as 1939, with two one-act plays, Brecht had criticized Denmark's neutrality (“Dansen”) and Sweden's ore deals with Germany (“What does iron cost?” Under the pseudonym John Kent). With Mother Courage, he hoped to influence the Scandinavians' attitude towards theater.
"As I wrote, I imagined that from the stages of some large cities the playwright's warning would be heard that he must have a long spoon who wants to have breakfast with the devil."
The topics of nationalism and racism are also related to the time . Mother Courage confidently introduces her children as a multinational society. More than the biological heritage of the fathers from different nations, she rates the influence of her changing husbands from different countries with whom the children grew up. Against all racial doctrine , Courage sees her family as a pan-European mixture:
“Eilif stands for bold, autonomous, self-reliant Finland, which in 1939 distanced itself from both Germany and the Soviet Union in the hope of being able to 'stay out of it'; Schweizererkas stands for the 'Swiss cheese', the nation of the merchant farmers and their famous neutrality ... and Kattrin for the halved German who is condemned to silence ... "
Probably the clearest reference to the time of the drama can be seen in an allusion to Hitler's attack on Poland in the third scene.
- Mother Courage : “The Poles here in Poland shouldn't have interfered. It is true that our king has entered with them with "horse and man and chariot", but instead of the Poles having maintained the peace, they interfered in their own affairs and attacked the king as he walked along calmly . So they are guilty of a breach of the peace, and all the blood comes on their heads. "
The quote links and updates various aspects beyond the reference to Hitler's attack on Poland that opened World War II. The biblical threat of vengeance "The Lord let his blood come on his head because, without my father's knowledge, he knocked down two men who were more just and better than him and killed them with the sword" prophesies a punishment in the satirical representation of courage Sacrifice. Such satirical elements "expose the illogic of the National Socialist logic by over-understanding it satirically." The quote "with horse and man and car" comes from an old war song that was composed in Riga in 1813 .
Elsewhere, too, the Nazi ideology is targeted with bitter humor. The link occurs, for example, through the connection between the “religious war” and the ideologically based Nazi war. Brecht lets the field preacher rave about his power of persuasion and about the final victory : “You haven't heard me preach yet. I can only put a regiment in such a mood with one speech that it looks at the enemy like a sheep-hearth. Their life is to them like an old, stifled rag that they throw away in thought of the final victory. God has given me the gift of speech. "
The cook makes the reference to the brutality of the conditions in Germany, for which the Swedish king is held responsible in the historical context:
- The cook : “... the king allowed himself to taste enough freedom, where he wanted to import it into Germany ... and then he had to lock up the Germans and have them cut into four because they held on to their bondage to the emperor. Of course, if someone did not want to become free, the king had no fun. At first he only wanted to protect Poland from bad people ... but then the appetite came along with food and he protected all of Germany. "
Here, not only is the Polish campaign addressed again, but also the Nazi concept of protective custody , which brought opposition members to the concentration camp under the pretext of having to protect them from “popular anger”.
Brecht's doubts about freedom in democratic capitalist societies are also expressed in various polemics. “Brecht was skeptical about the freedom that the bourgeoisie pretended to represent,” writes Fowler, referring to Brecht's drama and the “ anachronistic streak ” and derision there of “freedom and democracy”. In the play, according to Fowler, freedom appears as slavery, for example in the form of oppression and exploitation by conquerors like the Swedish king.
Despite these and other references to Europe under National Socialism, Courage is not a key drama. With ambiguities and a few terms from the language of 1939, Brecht set “signals” for possible updates, but these “did not play a major role in the play”.
Performances and text variants
The world premiere in Zurich
The premiere of Mother Courage took place on April 19, 1941 at the Zurich Schauspielhaus , directed by Oskar Wälterlin . The Piscator student Leopold Lindtberg directed , the music composed Paul Burkhard , who also conducted himself. Therese Giehse played the main role. The simple stage set designed by Teo Otto was formative for all subsequent performances of the play and for the model later developed by Brecht, although Brecht was never able to see the Zurich performance in person.
At the center of the staging was the Courage car, which gradually descended during the course of the performance. The simple set design was limited to flickering backgrounds on stretched canvases, simple wooden stalls, in front of which landscapes were suggested. For the performance, Brecht wrote the content summaries before the individual scenes, the “titularium”. The Zurich program booklet interpreted Mother Courage as Brecht's return from the didactic pieces to human theater: “The human-compassionate, the spiritual-empathic is the focus in this poem - when the formal elements of the 'epic' theater are taken up… The characters no longer represent ‹Views›, no more opinions ... “Despite the great impact of the play, there were only ten performances, which, in the opinion of the theater scholar Günther Rühle, had such a long lasting effect as no other play or production that was performed in exile.
In 1941, the contemporary critic Bernhard Diebold recognized the concept of the Threepenny Opera in the Zürcher Courage . Brecht build "his tragicomic Carnival Booth, into the higher as a ballad singer mocks his satire [...] and sings in favor of the little ones in the crowd and against the great ones who make their war on spiritual and temporal thrones. '" Less likely Brecht liked have that Diebold saw in Courage above all "a warm-blooded mother animal" who had "no choice": "One is unfree like a poor animal." Diebold sees in Brecht's owl mirroring, in his "fool morality", no positive perspective, Brecht's play serves "only the nihilistic devaluation of all belief in culture" The critic misses - like later the criticism from the point of view of socialist realism - the positive hero figure "who is supposed to slay the evil dragons of humanity for humanity's sake." Diebold's praise for Therese Giehse's portrayal of Mother Courage may have been one of the reasons why Brecht later removed the negative sides of the figure through text changes and Re gie emphasized:
“But Therese Giehse, with her great mother's heart, stood beyond all historical claims in eternity. No matter how disrespectful she might moan against the 'higher' and let her business acumen play, she never became the 'hyena of the battlefield'; and the roughness of the sutler, required by the harsh circumstances, receded almost too much behind the radiation of her feelings and her moving pain when she had to lose the children one by one. "
Other critics of the time also interpreted the Giehse's courage primarily as a mother figure. The critic of the Basler National-Zeitung speaks of the “nursing mother” courage that she was for her children as well as for cook and field preacher. "Like the prototype of the primal mother, the mother courage embraces everything that comes near her with maternal care [...]." From this point of view, courage appears as a representation of "millions of mothers of the present" who, despite all adversity, "unbroken [ …] Out into the hard life ”.
Fowler shows that from the moment of the premiere in Zurich, two competing interpretations pervade the history of reception: the condemnation of courage - in the sense of Brecht - due to her participation in the war and, in contrast, the defense of courage as an innocent victim or a suffering mother. In retrospect it can be said about the premiere that at its time, spring 1941, the end of Nazism - naively seen - was by no means clear.
The performance of the Berliner Ensemble
Preparations and first contacts to Berlin
On October 24, 1945, the chief dramaturge of the Deutsches Theater, Herbert Ihering , asked Brecht for permission to perform for Mother Courage:
“I'm with Wangenheim at the Deutsches Theater. […] There are very nice options here. Erich Engel wants to go to Berlin, but is still provisional director of the Münchner Kammerspiele. […] Dear Brecht, come soon, so that you can see how many good and Brecht-enthusiastic actors we still have at the Deutsches Theater, and with what enthusiasm we all want to plunge into the wonderful Mother Courage. "
Helene Weigel sent a package of groceries, but there was no reply from Brecht. In December 1945 Brecht wrote to Peter Suhrkamp and expressed his skepticism towards theater in Germany: “The reconstruction of German theater cannot be improvised. You also know that, even before the Hitler era, I found it necessary to get very involved in the premiere, given the experimental nature of my pieces. ”In the same letter, he decreed that Galileo was banned from performing because of the revision of the text. The mother Courage may only be performed with Helene Weigel in the lead role.
Due to the dissatisfaction with the reception of the world premiere in Zurich, Brecht made some text changes for the planned Berlin performance. He made the figure of the mother Courage more negative. Eilif's departure to join the soldiers in the first scene is now less due to his own motives, but is caused by her mother's business interests. In the 5th scene she no longer gives out bandages voluntarily, but only under duress. In the 7th scene she still curses the war, but then defends it as a business like others. Brecht wanted to distance himself from Niobe interpretations, which saw in the mother courage only the suffering of the mother who survived her children:
“We have to change the first scene of the» Courage «, since it is already laid out here what allowed the viewers to let themselves be shaken mainly by the durability and carrying capacity of the tortured creature (the eternal mother animal) - where it was but that is not so far away. Courage now loses her first son because she gets caught up in a small business, and only then comes her pity for the superstitious sergeant, who is a softness that comes from business and that she cannot afford. That is a definite improvement. It is suggested by the young Kuckhahn. "
Brecht's return to Berlin - rehearsals
On October 22, 1948, Brecht had been back in Berlin with Helene Weigel and lived in the remains of the Hotel Adlon . Through the artistic director Wolfgang Langhoff , who had played Eilif in Zurich, he made contact with the Deutsches Theater , where Paul Dessau also had a study. Langhoff offered him to stage in his house, also with his own ensemble. In November 1948, Erich Engel came to Berlin, whom Brecht valued as one of the founders of epic theater alongside Piscator. Engel immediately began, in collaboration with Brecht, with the production of Mother Courage at the Deutsches Theater.
With the exception of Helene Weigel and Werner Hinz in the role of field preacher and Paul Bildt as cook, the ensemble with which Brecht and Engel worked consisted of young actors such as Angelika Hurwicz or Ernst Kahler , who had started their careers during the Nazi era . Brecht registered a “strange aura of harmlessness” in them, but worked with them without reservation. Brecht conveyed his theater concept to the ensemble not through theoretical lectures, but through practical work.
“Only in the eleventh scene do I turn on epic tasting for ten minutes. Gerda Müller and Dunskus, as farmers, decide that they cannot do anything against the Catholics. I have them add "said the man", "said the woman". Suddenly the scene became clear and Müller discovered a realistic attitude. "
Premiere at the Deutsches Theater in 1949
Brecht's drama affected the sense of time of the little people who had learned in the ruined city of Berlin that the war would bring them nothing.
“When the Courage car rolled onto the German stage in 1949, the play explained the immense devastation caused by the Hitler War. The ragged clothes on the stage were like the ragged clothes in the auditorium. [...] Whoever came came out of ruins and went back into ruins. "
The audience could identify with the social position and the war experience of the mother Courage, her actions and failure did not allow any identification.
“In this respect, the piece made completely new demands on the audience. The stage design also polemicized against viewing habits that the theater had cultivated during fascism [...]. The car of courage rolled over the almost empty stage in front of the whitewashed circular horizon. Instead of the large curtain, the fluttering half-curtain. An emblem lowered from the Schnürboden announced the interruption of the action with songs. But the audience did not feel shocked by the new type of representation, but rather moved, as the stage was about very elementary questions, about the human efforts that have to be made in order to survive. "
Before the public premiere, Brecht presented the piece in a closed performance for trade unions. Manfred Wekwerth, at that time still a newcomer to Brecht's environment, comments on Brecht's efforts to attract the proletarian audience: Even before the premiere, “he insisted on doing a pre-performance in front of factory workers. It actually took place, which very few people know. Brecht was interested in the opinion of these people. He spoke to them after the performance. During the unfamiliar performance, the workers had many questions, criticisms, and there was also sharp rejection and incomprehension. Brecht answered everything with great patience. There are notes from him about this (“Conversation with a young viewer 1948”). That was the audience for which Brecht wrote or wanted to write with preference. "
The premiere took place on January 11, 1949. Until then, interest in Brecht's entry into the Berlin theater scene was restrained and limited to a few theater experts. The great success of the piece changed this abruptly. Helene Weigel played a key role in this, and her portrayal of Mother Courage was applauded by the press and the public. The legendary covered wagon from this production and Helene Weigel's costumes are on display in the Brecht-Weigel-Haus in Buckow .
Reception and effect
Brecht's play was highly controversial from the start, both in the West and in the East. His conception did not correspond to the demand of socialist realism for proletarian hero figures and positive messages. But even in the West, Brecht's socially critical message was not well received.
The discussions about a play, abstract from today's perspective, were extremely explosive in the Soviet occupation zone in the Stalin era. It wasn't just about performance opportunities and travel permits. An official rejection of the form could have had far-reaching personal consequences for everyone involved.
The daily press of the SBZ initially responded positively, in some cases enthusiastically, to the Berlin premiere. Paul Rülla wrote in the Berliner Zeitung on January 13, 1949 that Brecht's drama aimed at the “myth of the German war”, which idealized the Thirty Years War as a religious war. Brecht's play shows "the 'peoples' in the maelstrom of a war of domination and power interests in which, whether victory or defeat, the 'common' man has no part, no part but general misery."
Brecht's drama - according to Rülla - was also successful in form, showing "a new simplicity, a new compactness and size". He expressly praises the epic form, "which expresses the truth in a nutshell". He praises the performers and the unity of the ensemble. “A triumph of the performance in its essential intentions. [...] Brecht's work in Berlin [...] must not remain an episode. "
Nevertheless, there was also criticism: Sabine Kebir points out that some GDR critics were of the opinion “that the piece does not meet the requirements of the socialist realism prevailing in the Soviet Union. They complained that the courage did not come to a conclusion. It was no coincidence that Fritz Erpenbeck , Friedrich Wolf and Alfred Kurella disapproved of the central point of Brecht's aesthetic - the message should not come off the stage in an authoritarian manner. They had returned from exile in the Soviet Union and resumed the formalism dispute of the 1930s on German soil. "
Fritz Erpenbeck massively attacked Brecht's concept of epic theater in the “ Weltbühne ” in 1949. The success of the Courage premiere is based not only on the acting performance, but above all on classic dramatic elements that break through the narrative, especially in the form of the drama between "player and opponent", as the "victory of the 'dramatic' theater over the 'epic'" , in contrast to Kattrin and Courage.
In the Neue Zeit of January 13, 1949, Hans Wilfert criticized Brecht's stylistic lag, lack of realism, “lack of colorful abundance” of the stage design and lack of progressive impulses. “We tried out many variations of this Brechtian 'style' before 1933; we do not need to repeat the experiment. Brecht stopped by him, we didn't. "
The criticism of the performance and of Brecht's theater concept culminated in a controversy between Fritz Erpenbeck , cultural functionary and editor-in-chief of the magazines Theater der Zeit and Theaterdienst 1946 to 1958 and critic of the Brechtian theater concept, and on the other hand Wolfgang Harich , who defended Brecht. In various magazines, Erpenbeck and his colleagues criticized Brecht's theater concept in barely clauses as falling behind the development of socialist realism. Courage stands for “surrender to capitalism”.
In March 1949, the Soviet military administration in Germany, SMAD, took a stand on the controversy surrounding Brecht in the official Daily Review . Despite reservations about Erpenbeck's emotional criticism, SMAD confirmed the critics. Karl-Heinz Ludwig summarizes the position as follows:
“The cat was out of the bag. Brecht was accused of wrong worldview. His wrong concept of realism follows from it. Brecht's epic theater could therefore not be considered socialist realism. His efforts are nothing more than an attempt in the 20th century to stick to the long outdated principles of Goethe, Schiller and Hegel. "
Despite the position taken by SMAD, the controversy continued, for example in a discussion between Harich and Erpenbeck at the invitation of the Berlin University Group in the Kulturbund. There was no real turning away from Brecht. Edgar Hein analyzes: “The dispute with Brecht was, however, precarious for the SED . The renowned author was ultimately a gain in prestige for their system. In spite of all reservations, his theater experiments were not only tolerated, but encouraged by the state. Soon Brecht even got his own theater [...]. "
According to John Fuegi, Brecht is said to have sympathized with Wladimir Semjonowitsch Semjonow , the political advisor to the Soviet military administration and later ambassador of the USSR to the GDR, and thus enjoyed his support, who valued the Courage performance. “After Semyonov had seen the performance twice, he took Brecht aside and said: 'Comrade Brecht, you must ask for anything you want. Obviously you have very little money. '”Fuegi suspects that this impression was created by the deliberately economical equipment. Fuegi rates Erpenbeck's continued criticism of Brecht as an aggressive political attack. Erpenbeck's insinuation that Brecht was 'on the way to an alien decadence ' followed the style of the Moscow show trials . “Denunciatory language of exactly this kind was equivalent to a death sentence in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.” Fuegi emphasizes Wolfgang Harich's courage to stand fully behind Brecht in this situation.
Even Eric Bentley , Brecht translator into English and representatives Brecht in the US, portrays situations and processes that illustrate the pressure on the cultural sector in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. Helene Weigel asked the first actors of Koch and Feldprediger - without naming Paul Bildt and Werner Hinz - why they went to the West. One of the actors replied that it was not very pleasant to see how people in the East - sometimes colleagues - disappear one day and are never to be seen again. Die Weigel replied: “Where there is planing, there are shavings.” However, unlike later his heirs, Brecht himself continued to work with Bentley, although Bentley did not hide his distance from Soviet-style communism.
Courage was staged by the Deutsches Theater until July 1951, and with the premiere on September 11, 1951, the play changed to a new production in the repertoire of the Berliner Ensemble . The Berliner Ensemble performed it 405 times until April 1961. On March 19, 1954, after long efforts, the Berliner Ensemble moved into its own house, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm .
But Brecht also made a breakthrough in the West. Guest performances with the Courage production in Paris 1954 and London 1956 help the ensemble to gain international recognition. The French theoretician Roland Barthes speaks of a "révolution brechtienne" because of the guest performance in Paris, of an enormous effect on the French theater.
“The central concern of Mother Courage is the radical unproductivity of war, its mercantile causes. The problem is by no means how to regain the viewer's intellectual or sentimental approval of this truism; it does not consist of leading him with pleasure into a romantically colored suffering of fate, but, on the contrary, of carrying this fate out of the audience onto the stage, fixing it there and lending it the distance of a prepared object, to demystify it and finally deliver it to the public. In Mother Courage , doom is on the stage, freedom is in the hall, and the role of dramaturgy is to separate one from the other. Mother Courage is caught up in the fatality that she believes the war is inevitable, necessary for her business, for her life, she does not even question it. But that is put in front of and before and happens outside of us. And the moment we are given this distance, we see, we know that the war is not doom: we do not know it through a fortune-telling or a demonstration, but through a deep, physical evidence that comes from the confrontation of the The viewer arises with what is seen and in which the constitutive function of the theater lies. "
To this day, the mother Courage is played internationally. In 2008 Claus Peymann made a guest appearance with the piece in Tehran and was celebrated by the audience.
“Brecht is one of the most popular German writers in Iran. At the premiere of Peymann's production of his play "Mother Courage and Her Children" there was applause for the Berliner Ensemble for minutes in Tehran. "
The courage model from 1949
After the great success of the Berlin performance, Brecht had a “model book” drawn up in the spring of 1949, which was intended to make the Brecht Engel production a binding model for all further performances by Mother Courage. Photos by Ruth Berlau and Hainer Hill document each picture very extensively down to the representational details. Director's notes for the individual scenes, probably made by assistant director Heinz Kuckhahn , with Brecht's corrections, complete the picture. On behalf of Suhrkamp Verlag , Andreas Wolff informed the Städtische Bühnen in Freiburg im Breisgau on July 13, 1949:
“The author has very specific ideas about the staging of his works and does not want the directors to interpret them individually. A sample performance is the performance in the Deutsches Theater Berlin, which was created with the cooperation of the poet. A special director's score is in preparation. As long as this is not available, it is Mr. Brecht's wish that Helene Weigel , the actress of Courage in Berlin, should appear at the beginning of the performance on one evening if possible and convey an idea of the intentions. Ms. Weigel is also ready to take part in the last rehearsals and to work with them. "
As Werner Hecht notes, out of distrust of the directors in Hitler's Germany, Brecht did not issue a performance permit until October 1949; a performance in Dortmund that did not adhere to the model was banned in autumn 1949 shortly before the premiere. Brecht's skepticism becomes more understandable when one takes into account that the Dortmund theater director Peter Hoenselelaers was formerly a staunch National Socialist and “general manager” of the Dortmund theater from 1937–1944.
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The Wuppertaler Bühnen are the first to stage Mother Courage based on the model book. The Wuppertal director Erich-Alexander Winds receives photos and hectographed stage directions and the recommendation to be instructed by Brecht's colleague Ruth Berlau . During the rehearsals in September 1949, the model process was already heavily criticized by the press. For example, the headline of the criticism in the Rheinische Post Düsseldorf on September 16, 1949: “Author commands - we follow! Living theater organs at the service of the template. ”The premiere will take place on October 1st.
In the fall of 1950, Brecht tried out the model book himself with a production at the Münchner Kammerspiele , whose director from 1945 to 1947 was Erich Engel . He further develops the model and includes changes and further developments in the documentation. Brecht “staged the 'Courage' in Munich based on his Berlin model. He checked the pictures in the model book if it was a question of groupings and, above all, of distances. He looked for the pictorial and the beautiful, but never slavishly following his own model. He let the new performance come into being: perhaps there was a new solution; but the new solution had to be at least as high as the old, already tried and tested model solution. ”Therese Giehse plays the main role, the premiere is on October 8, 1950.
Parts of the courage model were published in 1952 in an anthology on the work of the Berliner Ensemble in the GDR. The part on the courage model, supplemented by a photo collection, is sent to theaters that are planning a performance. Since around 1954, Brecht has been moving away from the model obligation, only obliging the performing theaters to purchase the material. With Ruth Berlau and Peter Palitzsch, Brecht developed a version of the model book for publication in Henschel Verlag in 1955/56 . He selects photos and notes for the performances and revises them. The book does not appear until posthumously in 1958.
Barbara Brecht-Schall had the rights to Brecht's estate from three children of Bertolt Brecht from 2010 until her death in 2015; her siblings had already died. Die Welt writes: "According to her own admission, she is interested in the faithfulness of the works and adherence to the tendency of the pieces, she does not have any influence on the artistic design of the productions." Protest against the influence of the Brecht heiress. “Helene Weigel was recognized and respected by the entire virtual Brecht family as a leader. Nobody objected to the staging instructions of the master and the great widow. Brecht's son Stefan, who looks after the Anglo-Saxon market from New York, was left out. But when Barbara took over the home front, the boiling point began. ”As early as 1971, the SED party leadership urged them to hand over the manuscripts they had kept and to transfer them to the state. She had courage and refused. But there was also some pressure on the Brecht daughter in the West: “As a 'threepenny heir', Barbara Schall was dragged in the dirt, especially by left-wing intellectuals. In 1981 ZEIT critic Benjamin Henrichs shouted 'Disinherited the heirs' and was able to quote the theater makers Peymann, Flimm and Steckel who wanted the same thing, and of course, like Kurt Hager, in the interests of the 'people'. ”Not until 2026, 70 Years after Brecht's death, the rights to the pieces expire.
Cold War - boycott and blockade breaker performance in the Vienna Volkstheater
During the Cold War , Brecht's plays were boycotted as communist propaganda in Vienna between 1953 and 1963 on the initiative of the theater critics Hans Weigel and Friedrich Torberg and the Burgtheater director Ernst Haeussermann . A performance of Brecht's Mother Courage in the Graz Opera House on May 30, 1958 was the occasion for a publication by thirteen Brecht critics under the title "Should one play Brecht in the West?"
At the end of the more than ten-year Brecht boycott in Vienna, the Vienna Volkstheater performed the play in a "Blockadebrecher" premiere on February 23, 1963 under the direction of Gustav Manker with Dorothea Neff (who was awarded the Kainz Medal for her performance ) in the title role, Fritz Muliar as cook, Ulrich Wildgruber as Schweizererkas, Ernst Meister as field preacher, Hilde Sochor as Yvette and Kurt Sowinetz as recruiter. The performance had previously been postponed several times, most recently because of the construction of the Berlin Wall .
In the Federal Republic of Germany, too, there were several boycotts of Brecht plays at theaters during the Cold War . Stephan Buchloh mentions three political reasons that led to theaters canceling or removing Brecht's plays without government coercion: “after the uprising in the GDR that was suppressed by the military on June 17, 1953, after the Hungarian uprising was put down by Soviet troops in autumn 1956 and after the Wall was built on August 13, 1961. “Mother Courage was affected in one case by the few government agencies taking measures against Brecht performances. “On January 10, 1962, the Lord Mayor of Baden-Baden , Ernst Schlapper (CDU), banned a performance of this work by Bertolt Brecht. The Baden-Baden Theater originally wanted to bring out the play under the direction of Eberhard Johows on January 28th of that year. "
The official instructions did not come formally from the mayor's office, but from the spa and spa administration, which ran the theater and which the mayor was in charge of. For the CDU, city councilor von Glasenapp justified the ban in the municipal council by addressing Brecht's solidarity with the SED and Walter Ulbricht after June 17, 1953. It was expressly denied that it was about the artistic quality of the drama. A federal constitutional judge and several writers living in Baden-Baden protested against the ban. The Strasbourg Municipal Theater and the Colmar and Mulhouse theaters then invited the people of Baden-Baden to stage Courage as a guest performance there, whereupon Schlapper extended his ban accordingly on February 1, 1962. On February 5, Schlapper lifted the ban on guest performances abroad, so that the premiere could take place in Strasbourg on March 20. The Courage was later allowed to be shown in Baden-Baden after the Suhrkampverlag threatened to claim recourse for breach of contract for the agreed performance.
Settings
Almost all of the songs in the piece were already set to music by various composers from various contexts. For the "Mother Courage" the lyrics had to be further developed and a new overall musical concept developed. In 1940 the Finnish composer Simon Parmet created a first version that is believed to have been lost. Paul Burkhard composed the music for the Zurich premiere and conducted it himself. In 1946 Paul Dessau worked on a third composition for the piece in collaboration with Brecht. The sound should give the impression "as if you were hearing well-known tunes in a new form ...". Dessau's music was controversial in the GDR from the start, but Brecht consistently stuck to Dessau's performance rights to Mother Courage, even with every production in the West.
Film adaptations
Early on, Brecht looked for ways to transfer his concept of epic theater to film. Various scripts and technical ideas emerge. The first drafts meet the GDR cultural policy's need for positive heroes. A young miller develops perspectives, at the end of the film a peasant uprising is to be shown.
In 1950 Emil Burri becomes the new scriptwriter, Wolfgang Staudte is to direct. Until May 1954 there were always new conflicts, then a contract was signed. In addition to Helene Weigel in the role of mother, the French stars Simone Signoret and Bernard Blier are engaged. Filming began in 1955. Conflicts quickly arise between the successful director Staudte and Brecht. Despite personal intervention by SED leader Walter Ulbricht , Brecht stuck to his point of view that the film should stylistically follow the Berlin production. The project failed after some parts of the film had already been shot.
On October 10, 1957, the German TV broadcaster DFF broadcast a direct broadcast of the model production by Brecht and Erich Engel from the Berliner Ensemble. The 175 minute long transmission is directed by Peter Hagen .
It was not until 1959, after Brecht's death, that Manfred Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch realized the DEFA film as a documentation of the theater production. They used various techniques to film Brechtian alienation effects : hard light, chemical changes in the film, blinds, calm cameras, superimposed images and comments, double scenes, economical equipment.
On February 10, 1961, the film opened in 15 cinemas in the GDR and then quickly disappeared in suburban cinemas. Whether this was due to a lack of success or politically is a matter of dispute. The official GDR press gave moderate praise.
analysis
Historical drama from the point of view of the 'little people'
The subtitle of the drama “A Chronicle from the Thirty Years' War” is reminiscent of classical subjects, such as Shakespeare's royal dramas or Schiller's “ Wallenstein ”. Brecht changes perspective and describes the events from the point of view of the common people. Jan Knopf begins his analysis of the drama with this change of point of view from the perpetrators to the victims:
“Brecht turns the classic history of tradition, which takes place among military leaders, princes, kings (and their ladies) around to portray the fate of 'little people': history and its time are no longer measured against the world historical individuals, they are the masses who set the historical data . "
The “plebeian gaze” of the drama does not, however, turn ordinary people into actors in history. They remained “victims of the great story”, “merely reacting”. The interpretation of the events changes, but the courage is not able to change the situation in a creative way. Nevertheless, the new perspective opens up opportunities for change. The interpretation of the Thirty Years' War as a great religious war is exposed - according to Jan Knopf - as a "propagandistic phrase":
“Brecht shows that the contradictions lie within the states and the parties, that those who are below bear all the burdens and consequences of the external disputes: so that for them victories and defeats always mean sacrifices. [...] For Brecht, the Thirty Years' War is not a war of faith: it is a civil war [...] "
Ingo Breuer points out that Friedrich Schiller criticized the men's perspective in his story of the Thirty Years' War:
“The regents fought for self-defense or for enlargement; the enthusiasm for religion attracted their armies and opened the treasures of their people to them. The great crowd, where the hope of prey did not lure him under their banners, believed that they were shedding their blood for the truth by splattering it for the benefit of their prince. "
Brecht's drama thematizes the criticism of historiography from a rulership perspective using the example of the death of Tilly , the military leader of the Catholic League in the Thirty Years' War.
- The field preacher : “Now you are burying the field captain. This is a historic moment. "
Mother Courage : “It is a historic moment for me that you hit my daughter in the eye. It's already half broken, she can't get a husband anymore […] I don't see the Swiss cheese anymore, and God knows where the Eilif is. The war is said to be cursed. "
The courage immediately revokes this brief moment of knowledge by doing it on stage. At the same time as her only curse on the war, she inspects the new goods, which Kattrin acquired in defense and whose value depends on the progress of the war. Immediately afterwards, at the beginning of the 7th scene, she sings about the war "as a good breadwinner".
What remains is the sobering view of the great story. Ingo Breuer comments on this as follows: “This statement does not change the behavior of Courage, but it points to the historiography of the Thirty Years 'War: The death of Field Captain Tilly went down in the history books as a turning point in the Thirty Years' War, but hardly the suffering of the simple ones People […]"
From the perspective of the common people, Brecht does not only criticize the concept of historiography that puts rulers, battles and other major events in the foreground. The drama also demonstrates the brutal ruthlessness of war, especially in the fate and deeds of the Children of Courage. Kattrin loses her voice when soldiers attacked her as a little girl, she is constantly threatened with rape, she is later attacked and disfigured and finally shot for a selfless act. Schweizererkas is tortured and executed. In this cruel environment, Eilif is both perpetrator and victim. He robbed and murders peasants, first as a war hero and in a moment of peace with the same deeds as a criminal. He will be held accountable, not his captain. Throughout the entire play, the family is threatened by fighting, assaults and hunger and despite the willingness to be ruthless, deceitful and the shrewdness of courage, they visibly deteriorate and do not survive.
But the drama also shows the growing devastation caused by the ongoing war outside the family. In the titular section of the 9th scene it says that half of Germany's inhabitants have already been wiped out. Destruction and hopelessness become more and more drastic. Hunger is everywhere.
- Mother Courage : "In the Pomeranian, the villagers are said to have eaten the younger children, and nuns caught robbery."
“This is the story of war as told by 'Mother Courage and Her Children'. It is a story of cruelty, barbarism and bondage, of crimes against humanity, committed with the aim that one ruler can take something from another. It is the story Hobbes tells in his classic description of war, where no benefit arises from human effort, but all live in constant fear and danger of violent death, and human life is lonely, poor, dirty, brutal and brief . "
Courage's comments on the opposing perspective of masters and servants on events are provocative. In his courage model, Brecht points out that the regimental clerk carefully registers what she has said in order to prosecute her if necessary. She hides her provocative views behind ironic praise:
- Mother Courage : “I feel sorry for such a field captain or emperor, maybe he thought he would do something else and what people are talking about in future times, and get a statue, for example conquering the world, that's a big goal for a field captain, he doesn't know any better. In short, he works hard, and then it fails because of the common people, which might want a mug of beer and a bit of company, nothing higher. "
The Berlin production emphasized the effect of the ironic-subversive speech of courage to the death of Tilly by making the pissing scribe stand up to observe the courage more closely. "He sits down disappointed when Courage has spoken in such a way that nothing can be proven."
Baroque topos "upside down world"
Right at the beginning of the play, Brecht has the sergeant say: "Peace, that's just sloppiness, only war creates order." Here Brecht ties in with the baroque topos of the upside-down world, as found in Grimmelshausen, among others. Ingo Breuer points out that Grimmelshausen is “the epoch-typical means of inversion, ie rather a look 'downwards'” and provocatively asks whether this diagnosis does not also apply to Brecht.
The reversal of all values and norms through the war appears in various places in the play. In the second scene, Eilif is awarded a “golden bracelets” by the field captain because he outsmarted a majority of farmers, cut them down and stole 20 oxen from them. When he robbed a farmer and killed his wife during a brief period of peace, he was sentenced to death and executed. This reversal of the rules remains incomprehensible to all.
- Eilif : "I didn't do anything else than before."
- The cook : "But in peace." [...]
- The field preacher : "In the war they honored him for this, he sat on the right of the field captain."
When the mute Kattrin risked her life with her desperate drumming at the end of the piece in order to save the inhabitants of the city of Halle , farmers who fear the consequences accuse her: “Have no pity? Have no heart at all? "
The upside-down world of war also induces the characters to make meaningful linguistic mistakes . So the courage in the 8th scene is appalled, “that peace has broken out”. By inadvertently replacing a word in a phrase with the opposite, courage makes it clear what it actually thinks of peace - for them it is nothing more than a damaging natural event, a calamity, like war for other people: "You meet me in Bad luck. I'm ruined. "(Scene 8)
Positive qualities such as courage , cleverness , loyalty , enthusiasm or compassion are given a completely new status in war. What helps one in peacetime fails completely in times of war. Virtues can no longer be relied on. Brecht compared this phenomenon with the fields of the new physics, in which the bodies experience strange deviations : War has the same effect on virtues that suddenly can no longer be used in a calculating way. The virtues of the little people are only there to make up for the failures of the great:
- Mother Courage : "In a good country you don't need any virtues, everyone can be ordinary, mediocre and cowards if you like." (Scene 2)
This corresponds completely to the principle of life of courage: stay inconspicuous, stay out of everything - and thereby survive. Your skepticism about virtue is justified, because the further course of the plot shows that the positive character sides of your children all cause their downfall: "It is the fault of those who instigate war, they turn the bottom of the people on top," says the field preacher one point (scene 6). The question is whether he's making it a little too easy for himself by excluding the common guilt of the commonplace in the general chaos from the outset.
Faith and War of Faith
One thrust of the play is the criticism of religion, the exposure of the material and power interests behind the facade of the religious war. This criticism is conveyed in part by the contradicting figure of the field preacher, but also by the subversive speeches of Courage and the cook. One topic is the hypocritical speech of the church representatives about renouncing material and erotic desires. This is unmasked z. B. through the field preacher's sexual interest in Kattrin and in courage and his greed for good food and drink. His criticism of the courage that she lives from war contains a twofold contradiction. At the beginning of the play he is a boarder for the military as a field preacher, later he lives from the war gains of courage himself.
Criticism of the warlike "values"
Terms such as “honor”, “heroism” and “loyalty”, especially in the form shaped by the Nazi dictatorship, are anti-virtues for Brecht.
Fowler uses Goebbels' quotes to show the great importance of the concept of honor for the Nazi ideology: "For us National Socialists, however, the question of money is preceded by honor." And shows that the term has negative connotations for Brecht throughout his work. In the drama Mother Courage, the concept of honor initially appears as a demand on the farmers who have been duped by the advertiser to submit to their fate. In scene 3, the courage shows the worthlessness of the concept of honor for the common people:
- Mother Courage : “There are even cases where the defeat for the company is actually a gain for them. Honor is lost, but nothing else. "
Kattrin's reaction to the ensign's word of honor to spare the courage if she stops drumming shows that she has seen through the worthlessness of the concept of honor in war: she “drums harder”.
Another virtue of war that drama targets is heroism. "Unhappy the country that needs heroes," Brecht had Galileo respond to the accusation of cowardice before the Inquisition Court. Courage argues in the same way: whoever needs brave soldiers is a bad field captain.
- Mother Courage : “If he can make a good campaign plan, why would he need such brave soldiers? [...] if a field captain or king is really stupid and he leads his people into the Scheißgass, then the people's courage to die, also a virtue. [...] In a good country there is no need for virtues, everyone can be ordinary, mediocre and cowards if you like. "
The "Song of Woman and the Soldier" and Eilif's fate show the consequence of heroism for the soldier: it causes his death. Courage also ironizes Tilly's “heroic death” in battle as a mere accident.
- Mother Courage : “It was fog on the meadows, it was to blame. The field captain called out to a regiment that they should fight bravely and rode back, but in the fog he was wrong in the direction, so that he was forward and he caught a bullet in the middle of the battle. "
The name of the main character itself refers to courage, but even in the first scene the courage indicates that she always acted out of sober monetary interests, never out of heroism.
The figure of Mother Courage
The complexity of the courage figure
Using the example of the samples for the Caucasian Chalk Circle , John Fuegi shows that Brecht systematically emphasized the contradictions of his figures. If the selflessness of the maid Grusha was worked out in a rehearsal, a negative aspect of her personality was the focus of interest in the continuation, always with the aim of “creating a multi-layered person”. According to Brecht, the way to achieve this is "the conscious application of contradiction." In this sense, Kenneth R. Fowler interprets contradiction as an essential feature of the courage figure and rejects one-sided interpretations of courage as a mother or unscrupulous trader. She deserves both labels, the “hyena of the battlefield” and the maternal figure.
In comments, Brecht himself emphasizes the negative sides of the courage figure. “Courage learns nothing,” Brecht writes over a typescript that he wrote in 1953 for a performance of Courage in Copenhagen. Because learning means changing one's behavior - and that is precisely what courage does not do. She believes at the beginning of the play that the war will bring her profit, and she also believes it at the end of the play when her three children are already dead.
In order to enable an analytical view of courage, Brecht attaches great importance to destroying the audience's sympathy with the means of epic theater . Irritated by the recording of the Zurich premiere as “ Niobe tragedy”, as the tragic fate of the suffering mother, he intensifies the bitter humor and ruthlessness of Mother Courage by changing the text and staging it. Nevertheless, the audience continues to “sympathize” with the courage. It sees in her the suffering mother and the tragic failure of all her efforts.
Ingo Breuer sees in her subversive speeches and her style of language the critical gaze of the common people, as Jaroslav Hašek described it in his figure of the good soldier Schwejk . Schwejk makes authorities look ridiculous with an absurdly exaggerated "fulfillment of duty" and apparently naive, satirical speeches that target the ideals of war and the unreasonableness of its supporters. Courage acts in the same way when it tries to identify itself with a conglomerate of senseless papers or when it analyzes the concept of soldierly virtue. In part, it is precisely the perspective of the trader, the trader who creates the sober view of courage. She recognizes something, which Brecht also admits, namely “the purely mercantile nature of war”. The fact that she does not recognize the danger that threatens her and her children from this sober point of view is her undoing.
The subversive expressions of courage are regularly directed against authorities, "against the rulers and their agents in the military and clergy , on the symbolic level against patriarchy and capitalism." A typical example in drama is the ironization of the goals of the 'great men' and theirs Dependence on the little people. Typical discourse tactics are the confrontation of the "big goals" with the sensual needs of the people as well as the ironic devaluation of the goals.
- Mother Courage : “I feel sorry for such a field captain or emperor, he may have thought he would do something else and what people are talking about in future times, and get a statue, for example he is conquering the world, that is a big goal for a field captain, he doesn't know any better. In short, he struggles, and then it fails because of the common people, which might want a mug of beer and a bit of company, nothing higher. The most beautiful plans have already been put to shame by the pettiness of those where they should be carried out, because the emperors themselves can't do anything, they rely on the support of their soldiers and the people where they are right now, am I right? "
The feminist perspective
Sarah Bryant-Bertail sees Courage as one of the Brechtian female characters who travel endlessly on insecure legs through the social strata of their society - often walking in the literal sense - and who are exiled in a deep sense . From this point of view, the social problems were particularly evident. To this extent, courage is a didactic object. Brecht depicts the path of courage from the seduced and abandoned girl to the increasingly colder businesswoman as a path across the stage, additionally symbolized by the car.
The development of courage is also documented in small, carefully planned details and gestures, for example when she bites a coin to test it. Other props also symbolically represented the various roles of women and their transitions, such as the red high-heeled shoes of the warehouse whore, which Kattrin also tried on.
Fowler sees the protest against the patriarchal principle as a characteristic of Mother Courage. Even the names of their children are determined by the mother and her love affairs, not by the biological fathers. She demonstrates sexual self-determination and clearly demands the freedom to dispose of her body. She confidently chooses her lovers.
- The Sergeant : "Are you kidding me?" [...]
- Mother Courage : "Talk to me decently and don't tell my teenage children that I want to kid you, that's not proper, I have nothing to do with you."
The courage as an unscrupulous trader
"The war is nothing but the business" is the motto of the courage in the 7th scene and she wants to be one of the winners. Fowler therefore considers the crime of courage, her profiteering with the war, to be obvious and can rely on Brecht's interpretation. The figure is drawn as a partner of war and death and thus as a criminal. Fowler points out that she makes her contribution to the war machine consciously, voluntarily, persistently and unapologetically ("deliberate, persistent, and unrepentant"). She acts like this even though she sees through the war propaganda, i.e. not as an innocent victim, not accidentally or fatefully. She also knows the price her behavior demands: the death of her children. In addition, Courage consciously chose to participate in the war:
- Sergeant : "You are from Bamberg in Bavaria, how did you get here?"
- Mother Courage : "I can't wait for the war to come to Bamberg."
Fowler believes inhumanity is an integral part of Mother Courage's trade. Their business was based on the principle that advantages for them and their children could only be achieved through disadvantages for others. Courage knows no pity, not for the peasant people Eilif robbed, not for the wounded in an attack, to whom she refused bandages. The courage song at the beginning of the piece already shows her cynicism towards the soldiers:
- Mother Courage :
- “Guns on empty stomachs
- Your captains, this is not healthy.
- But they are full, have my blessing
- And leads them into the abyss of hell. "
In case of doubt, so Fowler, the courage decides for business and war and against saving their children. Whenever it comes down to saving her children, be distracted by business, negotiate the price for too long, or be absent.
Courage as a mother figure
According to Fowler, the pact with war and death is countered by a maternal side of courage. She tries to save the lives of her children by doing business in the war because there is no alternative for them. The war appears to be eternal because it lasts longer than the time segment shown in the drama. This impression is recorded in the final song of Courage: “The war, it lasts a hundred years.” From their point of view, there is no way to escape the war except an early death.
The inevitability of war is conveyed by the drama by comparing war with the forces of nature. For Fowler, Brecht's Marxism provides further arguments for the fatefulness of the situation of courage: As an expression of certain historical conditions and a representative of the petty-bourgeois class, courage is anything but free. Fowler also sees indications of the fatefulness of the events in the fact that Brecht himself spoke several times of a Niobe tragedy, which refers to the tragic fate of a mother who loses her children.
Fowler also interprets her rejection of all bureaucratic control and her vital, promiscuous sexuality as a commitment to life. The relentless search of courage for business opportunities is also an expression of elementary vitality. In addition, the courage appears as a nursing mother ("nurturer"), for her children as well as for cooks, sergeants and soldiers.
She defends her children again and again, exemplifying the fact that she pulls her knife for Eilif in the first scene to protect the son from the advertiser. There are many examples of courage's concern for her children, but it is most evident in the face of her death. The eloquent courage fell silent in the face of Eilif's departure in the first scene and became monosyllabic in the face of the shooting of the Schweizererkas and the dead Kattrin.
The courage as a representative of the unity of war and business
Courage introduces herself and her family as "business people" and then shows in her performance song that her business is closely linked to war and death. The courage makes a decision by addressing the "captains" with her song, not the common soldiers who are supposed to march to their deaths with good shoes and fed up. As a sutler, she takes on the perspective of the rulers who, like her, wage wars with the intention of making a profit. The Courage is only interested in the soldiers' money and accepts their death cynically:
- Mother Courage :
- “But they are full, have my blessing
- And leads them into the abyss of hell. "
For Fowler, the close interlinking of war and business is documented in the suspicious character and anti-social behavior of Courage. They use the misery of others specifically for their business. Hunger increases the price of your capon, fear in Halle makes your purchase cheaper. In addition, she becomes the ideologist of war (“ideologue for this war”). As in the song of the great surrender, it teaches resignation. She preaches renunciation to her children, while she shows her erotic attachment to the war through her love affairs with soldiers.
For Fowler, one of the essential functions of courage in drama is to represent capitalism as a symbolic figure. From this he draws the conclusion that courage could in no way escape war. Business and war and symbolic figures are so closely linked that they must necessarily be inhuman. This fact requires a critical review of every blame on Courage.
The dialectical unity of courage
For Fowler, the long-lasting anger is the rebellious core of the courage figure. Her character combines opposing aspects, "motherly, nourishing creativity as well as war-friendly, inhuman trade". According to Fowler, the contradictions of the capitalist system and its wars are symbolically captured in the contradiction of courage as the central figure of the drama. In contrast to Kattrin's only short-term revolt, Brecht sees here the self-destructive tendency of the system that represents courage. Nevertheless, with her daughter Kattrin, Courage gave birth to a person who points to future rebellion.
Fowler sees the mother courage as a metaphor for belligerent capitalism. In addition, it personifies the essential contradictions of the capitalist system. This included productivity and destructiveness. They reproduce the ideology of their world by seeking their profit in the exploitation and misery of others. They feed the false hope that the common people could also benefit from the war. At the same time, she was one of the great mother figures of Brecht, who embodied the hope for protection and nourishment in the capitalist world. These aspects are inextricably linked. Her social position as a petty bourgeois enables Brecht to show aspects of both the exploiter and the exploited in the courage figure.
Text intention
Brecht's definition of text intent
Brecht has commented several times on the text's intention of the drama, particularly succinctly and briefly under the title “What a performance of 'Mother Courage and Her Children should mainly show'” in the comments on the courage model:
“That the big business that makes war is not done by the little people. That war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes human virtues deadly, also for their owners. That no sacrifice is too great to fight war. "
Courage does not recognize this. The viewer should transcend their point of view and realize that there is a historic chance to prevent further wars. The viewer should recognize that “the wars have become avoidable” through “a new, non-warlike social order not based on oppression and exploitation”.
Brecht wants his audience to “instill a real disgust for the war” and in doing so focuses on the development of a socialist social order. Behind the big deals, capitalism is to be recognized and fought as the true cause of war:
“For that part of the audience who belong to the proletariat, the class that can really act against the war itself, admittedly only if the game is played correctly, the insight into the connection between war and commerce must be revealed: the proletariat as a class can do that Abolish war by abolishing capitalism . "
Brecht projects the diagnosis that capitalism and financial interests are the real cause of wars, historically as far back as the Peasant Wars : “In the Peasant Wars , the greatest misfortune in German history, the fang of the Reformation was pulled as far as social issues were concerned . The business and cynicism remain . "
Fowler sees the Brechtian connection capitalism - war - fascism in the drama in the symbolic equation of war and business represented by courage. For Brecht, fascism and war are not conditions alien to capitalism, but only its extreme form.
The program of the Berliner Ensemble from 1951 illustrates the intention of the production through the symbolic link between war and economy. Teo Otto's drawing of the Courage car is combined with a picture of Standard Oil Company railroad cars , with information about the oil monopoly increasing profits during the war and a text about Wallenstein's ruthless business in the Thirty Years' War. Another double page compares the acquisition costs of military goods with the construction costs of civilian facilities. The aspect of peace politics is represented by drawings by Pablo Picasso and texts on the subject of war and peace from the baroque, classical (Schiller) and present times. The central part of the program booklet presents the topic of resistance: on the fold-out central sheet are photos of the drumming Kattrin and the French woman Raymonde Dien , who tried to block an arms transport to Vietnam in 1950 by lying down on the rails, and instead of tried in a military tribunal and sentenced to one year in prison.
Criticism of Brecht's formulation of the text's intention
In the history of reception, the view of the author of Courage is controversial. The debate about the correct interpretation revolves partly around the question of whether courage should be interpreted exclusively as a symbolic figure, as a representative of the petty bourgeoisie in times of war. According to Bergstedt, for example, Brecht wants “to expose the 'auspicious' participation of the seduced masses in the war business of the fascists and their capitalist backers and to show the terrible consequences that this has for the small profit speculators. He individualizes the large number of such selfish 'followers' in the stage figure of a sutler (from the Thirty Years' War), by means of which he shows the danger of the imminent' business enterprise '. ”From this point of view it seems pointless to discuss the individual guilt of courage .
“As the driving forces of the characters, however individually motivated, reveal themselves as social and find their final explanation in the anachronism of the capitalist basic structure, which is transparent in all recent theatrical works, they cannot be criticized arbitrarily, but only with compelling force with the aim of changing the very social conditions in which they are rooted. ”According to Fowler, Bergstedt's analysis contrasts with Brecht's statements, which also attribute individual guilt to courage.
Helmut Jendreiek interprets the drama in a less deterministic way. He sees signals of the changeability of the world in the drama, even in moments of resignation, for example in the “Song of the great surrender” (“The capable man can do where there is a will, there is a way”) or in the Salomon song (“so is the world and doesn't have to be like that! "). “That the mother, who loses her three children to the war, after all the suffering she still wants to go to war in the end in order to do her business, cannot be explained by tragic delusion and fateful inevitability, but must be the courage as 'badness' and 'Crimes' are culpably ascribed, even if wickedness and crimes are an expression of the prevailing conditions. ”Jendreiek sees the alternative to the behavior of courage in the figure of Kattrin:“ In Kattrin, Brecht shows the other possibility, which is also open to courage: the possibility of one social existence against the bourgeois-capitalist dogma, the existing social order and with it the commercial system and the war are necessary and unalterable. ”Despite this moral position, Jendreiek also sees courage less as an individual character than as a representative of the capitalist world order:“ If the courage wants war because it 'die be It’s the first time for trade ”, it presents capitalism as a world order that is shaped by the will to go to war. The hyena spirit of courage is the spirit of capitalism. Brecht shows that this world order is not life-like in the 'appalling contradiction' between the trader and mother in the courage. "
Numerous interpreters defend the courage against criticism and condemnation in the sense of Brecht. Walter Hinck sees courage in the Schwejk tradition as the embodiment of the “wisdom of the people” and doubts the guilt of courage for the death of their children. Other authors like Bernard Fenn emphasize the vital, life-giving side of courage.
The authors Thomsen, Müller and Kindt also criticize the condemnation of courage in their work “Ungeheuer Brecht”. The critics around Jan Knopf used the term "hyena of the battlefield" as if it came from Brecht himself. The perspective of the field preacher who pronounced this judgment was not given enough consideration. In addition, this statement is ironicized in the text. The dialectic of courage lies not only in the contrast between her business acumen and her motherliness, as Brecht interprets, but also essentially in the contrast between short-term and long-term saving the family by keeping the car. In addition, the piece does not give any concrete reference to alternative courses of action.
Critics and defenders of Brecht's use of the historical context
Some authors are also critical of the suitability of the 17th century for conveying a perspective of social change. John Milfull sees the Thirty Years' War as "an early stage in historical dialectics" that does not provide a suitable backdrop for Brecht's intention. On the contrary: the analogy between the Thirty Years War and World War II undermines Brecht's intentions and produces something like timelessness and universal validity. Brecht portrays an unbearable situation in which people like Courage had no opportunity to change. Milfull sees courage against Brecht as a plebeian heroine who manages to survive in the dark. Fowler criticizes Milfull's remarks, among other things, by referring to the peasant uprisings in the Thirty Years War and the symbolic effect of the resistance in the drama.
Adorno considers the equation of the Thirty Years' War and the Second World War to be a simplification that undermines Brecht's intentions. Brecht needs this “parable” of “primeval wild times” because the society “of his own age is no longer directly tangible in people and things.” But this makes the construct implausible, the guilt of courage “does not necessarily follow from the play the war situation still from the behavior of the small entrepreneur; if she were not absent at the critical moment, the disaster would not happen, and the fact that she has to be absent in order to earn something remains very general in relation to what is going on. "Adorno sees Brecht's drama as an overly simplistic historical analogy , as a “picture primer” and “faulty construction” that lead “to the dramatically unmotivated”.
Brecht himself sees the model of capitalist wars in the Thirty Years' War . This becomes clear in the short documentation of the conversation with a young Courage viewer:
“Yes, the Thirty Years War is one of the first giant wars that capitalism brought to Europe. And in capitalism it is extremely difficult for the individual that war is not necessary, because in capitalism it is necessary, namely for capitalism. This economic system is based on the struggle of all against all, the big against the big, the small against the small. "
Fowler analyzes the problems of the analogy between the Thirty Years' War and World War II by first working out the differences between the epochs:
“The world that the drama shows is not capitalist, but feudal . Its rulers are not the bourgeoisie, but kings, emperors and popes. Their producers are not industrial workers, but farmers. Their order is not related to the notions of a social contract and legality, that is, that the rulers do not conclude contracts with the producers, as they exist more or less between capitalist and worker, but take what they can get by force if it does it depends. "
Fowler nevertheless considers Brecht's procedure to be understandable. The drama does not pursue the intention of the historical portrayal of the 17th century, but uses the Thirty Years War to portray blatant social contradictions such as those brought about by capitalism. In doing so, Brecht consciously reduced the complexity of feudal society and almost exclusively showed the world and the perception of ordinary people. From this point of view, the rulers only appeared from afar. These contradictions, which for the Marxist Brecht only arose in the modern world, show that the drama attacks capitalist structures and not the feudal society. The drama is a symbolic analogy to capitalism (“ symbolic translation of capitalism ”). The bridge between the epochs is formed by profit as the real engine of the Thirty Years' War. Capitalist exploitation appears in the feudal context as the theft of the rich and powerful from the poor. As in other works by Brecht, such as the Threepenny novel, capitalists appeared as criminals. The struggle between the common people arises out of necessity, for example between soldiers and peasants.
From this point of view, criticisms that criticize the lack of realism in the portrayal of the Thirty Years' War, such as Jürgen Kreft, who rated “Mother Courage and Her Children” in this sense as a “pseudo-realistic” piece, appear to be wrong.
Criticism from the perspective of tragic fate
Franz Norbert Mennemeier also sees a metaphysical dimension in the drama . In the portrayal of the endless war lies the "complaint about the transience of existence and the nullity of human works, good as well as bad", which is particularly expressed in the disenchanting songs. In view of the state of the world, the behavior of courage is an expression of "self-defense and the elementary coping with existence ... and not moral guilt."
Benno von Wiese also interprets the piece differently than Brecht. For him, courage is a tragic figure, she experiences "the iron fatality of the process, the human suffering that goes far beyond anything to blame, the tragedy of our existence in general."
Part of the more recent research explains the interpretation of the play as a tragedy from the post-war situation. The “shocking portrayal of the horrors of war” opened up “opportunities to identify with the childless mother, the mourning, the homeless” and had confirmed “the post-war public in its self-image of the victim”. In this sense, the focus was “on the tragic fall of the family”.
Further figures and figure constellations
The children of courage
The children of courage represent the embodiment of the virtues of which the Solomon song (scene 9) speaks in stanzas 2-4: Eilif is bold like Caesar , Schweizerkas honest like Socrates and Kattrin selfless like Saint Martin . Again and again, Mother Courage makes her fear clear that these virtues would become dangerous in war.
Günter Thimm interprets the departure of the children of Courage from the guarding family into a hostile “culture” as a structural principle of the drama and other Brecht plays and relates them to the biography of the author, who fell out of all ties due to his exile situation. The conflict between a safe family and a threatening environment is already laid out in the name "Mother Courage". “The dilemma is clear: either she focuses on keeping the family together; then she would have to neglect her trade. Or she is busily engaged in her trade, but would necessarily have to neglect her children as a result; they then end up in the war. ”At the beginning of the play, Thimm sees the family as a firmly established context in which everyone has their place: the sons have to pull the wagon, Kattrin sits next to the mother. A kind of “pick-up” would then pull the children out of the family unit one by one, even if they initially returned there occasionally.
Eilif
Eilif Nojocki is the bold son. The Feldhauptmann and the Solomon Song compare him to Julius Caesar .
Edgar Hein works out that Eilif is Courage's favorite son: “On the one hand, she tries not to hide how much she prefers him. 'This is my dearest of all.' (Scene 8, p. 72) 'He is my clever and daring son.' (Scene 2, p. 21) 'He's smart.' (Scene 8, p. 71) 'He inherited the intelligence from his father.' (Scene 1, p. 12) Her father was also her favorite of many men. ” Marie Luise Kaschnitz has a similar opinion:“ Righteousness was once an object of love, but there wasn't much left behind, not much for the Swiss cheese, its nature which actually contradicts courage in everything. She also has a maternal sense of responsibility towards this son, but her love belongs to the other children ... "
Eilif perishes because he does not know when to be bold and when not. In the war he is considered a hero when he outwits, beats down and robbed an armed group of peasants because brutality in war is considered “normal” and “commendable”. He was later executed for the same act during a brief period of peace.
Edgar Hein points out that Brecht definitely had a sympathy for boldness and rowdiness. “The abused as a war hero, that is Brecht's teaching, could have become a sympathetic sports champion in other social and historical circumstances, a fighter, a boxing star in his casual savagery. His murders and looting are not in his interest, but in that of his commanders [...] "
Brecht's Berlin production showed Eilif's boldness in the second scene with a saber dance, which is to be performed “both with fire and with nonchalance”. The development from the poor son of a sutler to a war hero was reflected in the change from poor to expensive clothing. It is part of Brecht's concept that Courage learns nothing of the death of her son until the end: the viewer knows more than the actors. Brecht comments:
“About the possibility of seeing her son again, she says with a light heart: 'Now it's war again, everything will work out.' She will drive over his grave. "
Swiss cheese
Fejos, known as Schweizeras, is the honest, honest son of Courage. His virtue is his undoing because, like his brother, he does not recognize the limits of the principle that he embodies. His attempt to save the Lutheran regimental treasury entrusted to him does not help anyone; so he sacrifices his life senselessly. The mother, who could have saved him by bribery, haggled too long, obeying her own principle, for the price of liberation.
Unlike Eilif, whom she warns of his heroism, the courage reinforces Schweizererka's honesty. She considers him "simple-minded" and therefore believes that he can only survive if he is "completely and utterly honest". She doesn't trust him to use the tricky survival tactic. "Do not forget that they made you their paymaster because you are honest and not bold like your brother, and above all because you are simple-minded that you certainly don't think about running away with it." In the end she feels Courage that absolute honesty in war can be just as dangerous as other human virtues. When Schweizererkas hides the regimental treasury from the enemy, she warns him: “Schweizererkas, your conscientiousness almost scares me. I taught you to be honest, because you are not clever, but it has to have its limits. "
With his combination of honesty and stupidity, Schweizererkas puts the whole family in danger when he hides the regimental cash register in the car. But he makes up for his mistake when he steadfastly denies knowing Mother Courage and his sister. The field preacher's hymn song relates the death of the Swiss to the suffering and death of Jesus. "The field preacher: Such cases, where one gets caught, are not unknown in the history of religion. I remember the passion of our Lord and Savior. ”Edgar Hein interprets this as“ cynical alienation ”, the“ sacrificial death ”of the Swiss“ has no redeeming sense ”.
Brecht based his staging of the third scene in which Schweizererkas was shot on the contrast between the idyllic camp and the chaos after the enemy attack. Likewise, the emotional impact of the fate of the Swiss cheese is reinforced by a contrast: In a conversation with his sister, he should be shown completely unsuspecting:
“It seems difficult for actors to suppress their compassion for the character they are playing and not to let their knowledge of imminent death show. It is precisely this that makes the Schweizererkas touching, when he is caught, that he has spoken to his sister without premonition. "
Another remark about the conversation between brother and sister shows that Brecht wants to arouse emotions here: “The little conversation between the mute Kattrin and the Swiss cheese is calm and not without tenderness. Shortly before the destruction, it becomes clear again what is being destroyed. The scene goes back to an old Japanese play in which two boys become friends in that one shows the other a flying bird and the other shows him a cloud. "
Edgar Hein sees in the figure of the Schweizererkas the criticism of the sense of duty of small German civil servants in the war, of the German civil service apparatus which "functioned until the end of the Nazi era [...], which with its unreflective Prussian ethic of duty, consciously or unconsciously, favored the Nazis. "
Kattrin
With the figure of the mute Kattrin Haupt, Brecht wanted to create an opportunity for his wife Helene Weigel, who was deprived of language in exile. When designing the figure, he draws on models from earlier pieces. Like the maid Grusha Vachnadze in the Caucasian Chalk Circle or the maid Anna in the similar story The Augsburger Kreidekreis she takes on a strange child out of pity . At risk of death, she rescues the baby of a peasant family from a burning house, the roof of which is about to collapse. She shows strong maternal feelings for the child.
- Mother Courage : “Have you happily found another baby to lug around? Give it to your mother on the spot, otherwise I'll have another hour-long fight until I tore it out of you, don't you hear? "(Scene 5)
In the scene, Kattrin had already threatened her mother because, out of greed, she did not want to provide bandages to the injured farmers. Kattrin's compassion is stronger than any commercial interest here and elsewhere. She is "the real mother figure of the play, not clouded by business considerations."
The symbolic figure of the Kattrin is St. Martin , who shares his cloak with the beggar out of pity. As with the virtues of her siblings, the Solomon song sees selflessness and compassion as a deadly danger.
Brecht attaches importance to the fact that Kattrin is shown "from the beginning as intelligent", since her disability seduces the actress to show her as "dull". Brecht's production showed Kattrin with the baby like a thief, "the baby as part of the booty".
“Everything is neglected when their love for children is denounced as something dull animal. Saving the city of Halle is an intelligent act. How else could it come out what must come out, namely that the most helpless is ready to help. "
Kattrin's longing for love draws the piece through two details: her play with the warehouse whore's red shoes and the smile of the soldier and Kattrin in the sixth scene. After that, while defending new goods for her mother, she is disfigured by an injury to her forehead and resigned. She rejects the whore's red high-heeled shoes, which her mother gives her as a consolation, and thus “blames her mother for the misfortune” (Brecht), since she had sent her to fetch new goods. Her scar makes Kattrin “shy of light”, in the 8th and 11th scenes Brecht had the actress cover her disfigurement with her hand when someone looks at her.
In the 9th scene, Kattrin's attitude becomes clear again. When she overhears a conversation between the cook and mother, in which it becomes clear that the cook only wants to offer the mother a home if she leaves the disfigured daughter behind, she packs her bundle and wants to flee. Even beforehand, courage had made clear the danger that Kattrin posed in the war due to her character: “She suffers from pity. The other day I found another hedgehog hidden with her, where we ran over. ”Nevertheless, the courage in this scene also shows motherly feelings by holding Kattrin back and feeding her the soup she had begged for. She pretends to her daughter that she's only staying because of the car. Brecht sees it as "the awkward politeness of small people who attribute selfish motives to the victims they bring in order to spare others the humiliation of having to accept the sacrifice."
In the 11th scene, Kattrin sacrifices her life to save the city of Halle from an attack by the mercenaries. Her pity was awakened when she heard from a peasant woman about the danger for the children in the city. With a drum she takes refuge on the roof and drums to warn the sleeping city, according to Brecht's notes, in a two-bar beat that chants the word "violence". She “reworks the originally military instrument and uses it to wake up the city.” No promise and no threat, even the threat of destruction of the car, can prevent her from her rescue act. Their selfless act arouses the solidarity of the young farmer who supports them at risk of death. The farmer is knocked down, Kattrin shot.
Edgar Hein emphasizes the contradictions in the rescue act: “A mute wakes the sleeper; who cannot become a mother becomes the child's savior; the poor animal acts humanly; the powerless becomes a rebel. "
For Kenneth R. Fowler, Kattrin represents the victims of the war. Doubly injured, mute and disfigured, her salvation of the threatened city exceeds the deeds of her brothers, who ultimately would have promoted the war. Kattrin breaks with the principle of self-interest, which promotes the war of all against all. "Kattrin realizes that her own well-being cannot be built on the suffering of others, that the well-being of everyone is inextricably linked." Her maternal concern exceeds that of courage because she aims exclusively at life, with no business interests.
Kattrin's rescue act is not motivated purely emotionally or instinctively, which shows the wise and consistent implementation. Even if the effect of her actions could not stop the war permanently, which the Solomon song critically reflects, Fowler sees in Kattrin's act a moment of “transgression of an anti-social world”, a “revolt of the common people”.
The cook Pieter Lamb
The cook is an adventurer and womanizer who once seduced Yvette Pottier, the warehouse whore, under his nickname “Pipepieter” and brought him down the wrong path. In the eighth picture, Yvette reveals her admirer who has become “fat”.
- Yvette : “It's lucky I can warn you about that. This is the worst one that has walked all over the Flemish coast. One on each finger that he brought into disaster. "
He is the self-confident character of the play, leads the sharpest speeches and sees through the situations most clearly. His Salomon song shows a central motif of the piece:
- "All virtues are dangerous in this world, the [...] don't pay off, only the bad things, that's the world and doesn't have to be like that."
Against the field preacher, he sarcastically exposes his religious justification for the war:
- The cook : “In a way it is a war in that it is pillaged, stabbed and plundered, not to forget bissel desecration, but it is different from all other wars in that it is a religious war, that is clear. But it also makes you thirsty, you have to admit that. "
Fowler interprets this statement as the priority of the material over idea and fate, since the cook puts the destruction and misery of war in the foreground. The most important point of contact between cook and courage lies in the vital greed for enjoyment and love. The chef is not afraid of the sharp tongue of courage, he even values it as a challenge:
- The cook : "You still have hair on your teeth, but I appreciate you for it."
As a leitmotif, the cook is characterized by the prop of the pipe, which symbolizes his sexual successes:
- Yvette : "[...] and they even called him a pipe-picker because he didn't take the pipe out of his mouth, it was so casual with him."
Fowler analyzes the chef's relationship with Mother Courage based on the pipe symbol. He had dreamed of the courage:
- The cook lights his stub pipe : "Just that I get a glass of brandy from a beautiful hand, nothing worse."
The phallic image of the pipe turns the combination of a beautiful hand, brandy and the lighting of the fire into a sexual motive. The symbolic function of the pipe becomes even clearer in the 6th scene. The chaplain discovers that Courage kept the cook's pipe all along. He interprets the smoking tool as a sign of the cook's aggressive masculinity. She describes him as a " Donschuan ", as a " violent man ", "bitten through" as she is.
"Courage's personal interest in the cook, represented by the pipe in her pocket, and her interest are underlined when the field preacher calls out later that she not only kept her but 'smoked out of it!'"
In the 8th scene, Courage's interest in the cook is once again made clear via the pipe symbol:
- The cook : "The story with the Yvette ..."
- Mother Courage : “In my eyes, it didn't do you any harm. On the contrary. What smokes is fire, that is. So are you coming with us? "
At the end of the drama, the Cook of Courage opens up an alternative to their war business. He can take over his late mother's pub in his hometown of Utrecht . He wants to take the brave courage with him, but on the condition that she goes along without Kattrin, who is damaging to his business, mute and disfigured. In the face of this choice, Courage acts like a mother and decides to live with the daughter, although Kattrin, who overheard the conversation, clears the way by trying to run away. Courage does not resent the cook's condition: "I don't say what you say is unreasonable [...]" The separation from the cook is cool and without a parting word: "We'll go the other way, and we will put the cook's stuff out that he will find the stupid man. "
For Fowler, the cook is one of the representatives of the working class in the play. As the worker works for the employer, the cook works for the aristocratic officers and is dismissed and humiliated as soon as it suits them:
“The essential similarity between the cook and the worker, who both produce for another without being able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, is expressed when the field preacher reproaches the cook for his criticism of war and rulers: 'After all, you eat his bread' (Means the bread of the king). The cook counters ideology with reality: 'I don't eat his bread, I bake it for him.' "
With the connection between the intelligent trader Mother Courage and the cook, Brecht suggests an alliance between the intelligentsia, the working class and the petty bourgeoisie, and ultimately between doubly exploited women and men, according to Fowler. For Brecht, cooking and the kitchen are symbols of productivity, social centers of the working class and, at the same time, the realm of women. The kitchen is not only the basis of material life, it is also the place where rebellion arises.
The (Protestant) chaplain
For Brecht, the function of the field preacher is first and foremost the refutation of the talk of the “religious war”. The dubious role of the clergyman is first shown in the contemptuous attitude of the military towards the preacher. Brecht comments on the staging of the 2nd scene: “From the treatment that the field preacher receives on the part of the field captain, we have to see the role that faith plays in a religious war.” In his staging of the 2nd scene, Brecht leaves the To endure various humiliations without contradiction to clergymen in order to clearly show the "lowliness of the position". "From this position comes the field preacher's cynicism ."
When the small camp of Courage is attacked by Catholic troops in the 3rd scene, the Protestant clergyman loses his office, takes off his priestly robe and enters the service of Courage as a waitress. As a professional believer in a war that is called a war of faith and in truth it is not, he becomes the comic character of the play. Brecht lets him stand in the way of everyone during the attack, shows him as "too cowardly to flee." He is ordered to do the dishes with Kattrin.
“The field preacher has found his shelter. He has his own food bowl and he makes himself awkwardly useful, hauling Schäffer with water, cleaning cutlery, etc. Besides, he's still a stranger; for this reason or because of his phlegm, he shows no exaggerated participation in the tragedy of the upright son. "
Courage forces the chaplain to make his contribution to the household and makes him chop wood. He defends himself against this, citing his theology studies and his ideological skills:
- The field preacher : “I can only put a regiment in such a mood with one speech that it looks at the enemy like a sheep-hearth. Their life is to them like an old, stifled rag that they throw away in thought of the final victory. God has given me the gift of speech. I preach that hearing and seeing will pass away. "
The field preacher stands for the function of the church in the war, which is also associated with National Socialist propaganda through the term final victory . The soldiers should willingly sacrifice their own lives for the war aims of the mighty and close their eyes and ears to reality. "Courage condemns this hostility towards material life when it replies: 'I don't want my hearing and seeing to go by.'"
The field preacher often loses out when dealing with other people. He's not brave. However, he helps Kattrin with the care of wounded farmers and inwardly frees himself more and more from the influence of his companion the longer he is with her. Gradually, the bitter humor that is inherent in the courage and the cook shows up in him too. In his advertisement for the courage he seems involuntarily funny. At least as far as his realistic worldview and the use of language are concerned, he has expanded his level of consciousness and accompanies the condemned Eilif, although still not free of vanity and weakness, to execution as one who has learned something from the lower, the proletariat has what it cannot (yet) put into practice.
The warehouse whore Yvette Pottier
Yvette has three appearances, two in the 3rd, one in the 8th scene. Each time the viewer gets a different insight into her life and character. The stage directions for the 3rd scene portray her as a “pretty person”, as a whore, lightly dressed and outfitted with a “colorful hat” and “red high heels”. Because of her sexually transmitted disease, she is avoided by the soldiers. Only when the camp was conquered by the Catholic League did it open up new opportunities. The conquerors are not yet aware of their infection. She is now concerned about her role as a successful warehouse whore who does her business with the enemy as well as with her own soldiers: "... I can't walk around like that when the Catholics come ... How do I look? Is It Too Much Powder? … I have to go over to my tent… ”. In this short scene she gives the impression that she is going about her usual job, eager to use every opportunity to get the greatest possible benefit from the changed war situation.
Shortly afterwards, Courage reports that three days later Yvette “picked up a colonel , maybe you’ll buy a sutler’s shop.” Yvette’s second appearance in the third scene is accompanied by her “ancient” friend. Yvette hopes that the Courage will have to sell her the sutler's car in order to save her son with a bribe . Disappointed, she realizes the plan of Courage, who only wants to pawn her car. Despite her dismay at the change of heart, Yvette reacts skilfully. She knows that there is no time to lose, the money has to be found. In all the years of prostitution, she has learned to wrap men around her finger. That is why she quickly succeeds in getting the desired promise from the colonel, and she hurries away, not without having received another courage order to act.
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Her deep sympathy for the fate of the condemned man is evident from the words she had on her return. Her experience tells her that he hardly has a chance anymore. She urgently advises Courage to meet the full demand and finally, resignedly, sets off again to continue acting. In the fight for the unfortunate Schweizererkas she remains the only one active, the interest in the car itself has visibly faded into the background. She returns again, this time to report on the execution. She never mentions her disappointment at the lost chance of opening a sutler's trade; despite her visible shock, she now takes care of the well-being of Courage and her daughter.
Edgar Hein interprets Yvette's behavior in the wagon trade and the life of the Swiss cheese in a clearly negative way: “The social advancement has deformed the life of the whore. [...] Without conscience she takes advantage of the predicament of her former confidante: 'I know she has to sell.' She cunningly plays off a 'blond ensign' against her senile admirer and financier in order to make him generous. Coldly she throws down her triumph: 'Don't be hopeful if you want your Swiss cheese back.' She beats the trader with her own weapons. She greedily rummages around in her presumed possessions, counts stockings and shirts. 'I have to go through everything so that nothing gets out of my car.' When courage urges her to hurry, since it is a matter of life and death, she replies, unsteady with greed: 'I only want to count the linen shirts.' Courage calls Yvette, as she will be called later: 'a hyena'. "Hein states positive traits in Yvette's reaction to the death of the Swiss cheese: Affected by the death of the honest son," Yvette breaks despite her anger the solidarity of the common people through the lost business. "
When Yvette appears for the third time - 3 years have passed according to the stage directions - she does so as the widow of the Colonel's older brother. “Yvette comes in black, rigged up, with a stick. It's much older, thicker, and very powdered. Behind her is a servant. ”So she made a“ career ”. "At least one that made a difference in the war," says the courage in view of Yvette, who is clearly freed from financial worries. Yvette replied without pride: "It just went up and down and up again."
Only now does the viewer find out why Yvette became a warehouse whore: As a young girl, like so many others, she was seduced by the cook. Now the courage warns her: "This is the worst that has been walking around on the whole Flemish coast ... watch out for it, someone like that remains dangerous even in a state of decay!" Yvette, who had been "disgraced" by the cook found no other way to survive but prostitution . And this could only pay off with soldiers during the chaos of war. As a girl from a simple background , Yvette could only hope for survival under the circumstances if she accepted the fate of the whore.
But now she stands - in the eighth scene - as the widow of a colonel in front of the cook who threw her into this train. All your contempt for the hated profession and contempt for someone who is to be blamed for it out of unscrupulousness and unscrupulousness breaks out. The best way to punish him is by mocking his shabby “manhood”, she is aware of that and she enjoys it. “Get up when a lady draws you into conversation! ... shut up, sad ruin! ... That something like this person could once lead me off the straight path! ... The fact that I stopped you now will one day be credited to the top, pipefisher. "
Brecht ironically characterizes Yvette's change from the young, attractive whore to the ugly rich widow in the courage model: “Yvette Pottier is the only character in the play who makes her happy; it has sold cheaply. The good food has disfigured her as much as the scar has disfigured Kattrin; she is bold, so that one has the impression that eating has become her only passion. "Edgar Hein sees the condemnation of social advancement as a loss of human qualities in the change of the figure:" She has 'gotten up', so humanely outclassed. "
Fowler sees in the figure of the prostitute a metaphor favored by Brecht for the dehumanization of workers into a mere object. According to Karl Marx, the prostitute embodies the worker who has nothing to sell but himself. The person who sells himself and his labor is the incarnation of alienated work. Yvette describes himself half as an animal, half as a commodity: "everyone walks around me like a lazy fish".
Brecht's artistic concept
Epic theater
The main aim of the Brechtian theater concept is to prevent the audience from identifying with the characters on the stage. The courage and its dealings should be judged critically and not experienced empathetically. The behavior of courage and the loss of their three children should not arouse pity, but trigger learning processes. For this purpose, what is happening on stage is "alienated" ( alienation effect - V-effect). Performers, stage design and music should destroy the appearance of stage reality again and again.
A noticeable means of alienation is the “titularium”, the summary of the scene's content before it is presented on the stage. In addition to this renunciation of tension, the open form, the loose arrangement of the events and locations are characteristic of Brecht's drama concept. Brecht abandons the classic structure of the drama according to Aristotle and Gustav Freytag ( exposition and exciting moment , climax with peripetia , retarding moment and solution or catastrophe). He breaks through the traditionally demanded limitation of time and place and renounces the connection of the audience through identification and empathy.
As a function of openness, Jan Knopf points out that the plot can be continued. The war was not over at the end of the play, the hope of courage to see her son Eilif again was - as the viewer knew - in vain: Spectator, but not the hero sees, insofar as it is 'ironic' for them) this irony passes on to the viewer and his reality: he is overtaken by the irony of the story portrayed when he does not see. "
Alienation in directorial work
The epic form is not only documented in the form and content of the piece, but above all on the stage. For Brecht, the first step in staging is to destroy a realistic, soulful atmosphere. The stage design in the Deutsches Theater in 1949 showed props and structures "realistic in terms of design and construction material, but with artistic suggestion", plus a light as bright as possible, white, "as much of it as the apparatus provided." Above the scene hung in large letters the place names of the respective war events.
In his comments on the courage model, Brecht votes against the “business of deception”, the tendency of the theater to “excessively increase illusion”, against the attempt “of a 'magnetic' way of playing that creates the illusion that one is living in a momentary, coincidental, ' real 'process at'. The actor should speak his text from an inner distance, just communicate it, as it were.
Brecht relies on precisely playing out small gestures; during rehearsals he works to brave the “impatience” of the actors, “who are used to getting carried away”. Nevertheless, Brecht also wants to address the emotions of the audience, the fate of courage should not leave indifferent. In a comment on the third scene, for example, he emphasizes the drama of the failure of courage: “What is important is the courage's never-ending willingness to work. She is hardly ever seen without her working. It is this ability that makes the piece's unsuccessfulness shattering. "
However, this emotional involvement must by no means lead to permanent identification with Courage if one does not want to misunderstand the piece. Brecht shows this in scene 4, when Courage convinces a young soldier and, indirectly, himself that any protest against the military is pointless. Through the "song of the great surrender ", the courage shows complete resignation towards the powerful:
- Mother courage
- “And before the year was over
- I learned to swallow my medicine [...]
- When they were once done
- They had me on my ass and on my knees.
- (You have to stand with the people, one hand washes them
- others, you can't go through the wall with your head. "(4th scene)
Brecht comments that “the scene, played without alienation”, could lead to complete resignation. “Such a scene is socially disastrous if the actress of Courage invites the audience through hypnotic play to get used to it.” What Brecht wants to show in this scene is the resignation of the petty bourgeoisie towards fascism and war. "Because it is not so much the badness of your person as that of your class [...]"
Interesting for the concept of epic theater is probably the most emotional, the 11th scene of the play, when the silent Kattrin sacrifices her life to save the city of Halle. Some critics see the strength of the play in those dramatic scenes that, in their opinion, go beyond the Brechtian concept. Brecht himself points out that emotional scenes and moments of identification certainly fit into the concept of epic theater, but should only remain moments. Brecht comments in the courage model:
“Viewers may identify with the silent Kattrin in this scene; They may empathize with this being and joyfully feel that such powers are present in themselves - but they will not have empathized through the whole piece; hardly in the first scenes, for example. "
He pays careful attention to distanced play in the staging, wants to "save the scene from a wild excitement on the stage". For this purpose, for example, during rehearsals, he has the actors append the following formula to the characters ’utterances:“ Said the man ”or“ Said the woman ”. Other well-known stage directions from Brecht require the statements to be transferred to the third person, into the past, or the stage instructions must be spoken.
Brecht meticulously works out every detail with regard to the gestures and arrangement of the groups. The farmers begging the soldiers for their farm and for their lives, for example. B. should be played like a ritual that often occurred in war, a "ceremony of defensive gestures". Carefully thought-out pantomime aims to reveal the true character of the figure and the situation - partly against the spoken word. Edgar Hein distinguishes between different strategies: the contradiction between body language and speech, the representation of hidden character traits, the underlining of an emotion and the symbolic representation of a motif.
Brecht comments self-critically about the Berlin performance that the epic concept has not yet been fully implemented here. To clarify his idea, he refers to rehearsals in which actors briefly demonstrated essential aspects of a scene to newcomers. "Then the actors 'marked' the positions and tones, and the whole thing got this deliciously relaxed, effortless, non-intrusive that stimulates the viewer to independent thoughts and feelings."
Alienation effects through language
By reversing the meaning and changing ingrained idioms and proverbs, Brecht creates irritation and a revealing effect: the dominant thinking is questioned as the thinking of the rulers. The best-known example in Mother Courage comes from the "Song of the Great Surrender". The automated film forms a well-known medieval quote: “Man thinks, God directs.” Brecht reverses the meaning of the proverb that believes in fate and God by inserting a colon: “Man thinks: God directs”.
Jan Knopf sees this linguistic alienation as a structural principle of the drama:
“[...] man is no longer under the protection of God, his guidance, against whom all human thinking and planning are in vain, it just seems 'as if' - man is alone, relying on the superhuman, the divine is error . These linguistic revaluations characterize the piece throughout and correspond to the content: instead of wars, 'peace' breaks out, raids are protective actions, virtues are vices, war is lovingly treated as a 'person' - 'The war can take a breather, yes, he can, so to speak, have an accident '(the field preacher in the 6th scene) and humanity' shoots in the herb in peace '(the sergeant in the 1st scene) etc. "
Arrangement of the scenes
Since Brecht wants to do without the tension curve of the classical drama and the individual scenes do not follow a strict structure, Brecht uses other means to structure the drama. The revival of the song of courage from the beginning to the end of the piece forms a kind of framework, which in the Berlin production supported the repetition of the open horizon of the stage design. The two pictures show a clear contrast. If the first picture shows the family united on the intact wagon, the impoverished courage in the end pulls the empty wagon alone to war.
“The two contrasting acts embrace the piece. The rolling covered wagon, a leitmotif that runs through the entire dramatic plot, is at the beginning with a fresh tarpaulin a well-stocked warehouse of a prosperous retail store, at the end, with a tattered tarpaulin and empty, the misery of a tired old woman. "
Between these extremes, the plot develops according to different principles. Descending curves show the slow destruction of the family and, at the same time, the impoverishment of the population in the war zone. The development of the commercial success of Courage strikes a curve. "It culminates almost exactly in the middle, again with the image of the car pulling under the scene title (7): Mother Courage at the height of her business career."
Another structural principle is the coupling of events to the course of the Thirty Years' War. The year numbers for the individual scenes are given in the title or can be reconstructed from the content. The reference to prominent events of the war and the dates create the "impression of historical authenticity". The years from spring 1624 to winter 1636 are shown with different time leaps between the images. Because of the detail, the viewer knows that the war began before the events depicted and will continue for a long time.
Relationships between scenes also arise through parallelizations and contrasts. Edgar Hein demonstrates several such connections, for example the connection between scenes 2 and 8 through Eilif's two “heroic deeds” or scenes 7 and 10 through the contrast between the settled peasants and the freedom of courage. “The contrasts in scenes and motifs run through the whole piece. Jendreiek speaks of a bipolar structural principle, Marianne Kesting of scenic rhythms. "
Helmut Jendreiek speaks of “epic assembly techniques” with “three design principles”: the inserted introductions to the scenes, the songs and the actual scenes. Jendreiek sees the epic self represented in songs and scene titles, which knows more than the characters acting on the stage. The titles would "historicize" these figures, i. that is, that they "appear as not fixed, but changeable."
In 1966, Henning Rischbieter looked at the 12 pictures representing 12 years from different angles. If one analyzes the places of the action, there are 11; if one considers the unit of time, then 14 units of meaning. References to the classic form of the five-act drama would arise if one put the development of the family in the foreground.
- Act 1: Eilif leaves the family and becomes a successful soldier
- Act 2: Loss of the Swiss cash
- Act 3: Courage sends Kattrin alone into town to buy goods. On the way back, Kattrin is raped and defaced. End with the climax of the piece: Courage curses the war.
- 4. Eilif is shot as a murderer without her mother knowing about it.
- 5. Kattrin sacrifices herself to save the city of Halle.
Double scenes
The double scenes also provide a critical look at what is happening on stage. In the second scene, Eilif's encounter with the field captain and the kitchen scene between cook and courage are presented at the same time. In the third scene, the audience simultaneously observes Kattrin's game with the warehouse whore's red shoes and the conversation between Courage, field preacher and cook. Jan Knopf traces Brecht's idea of duplication back to experiments in expressionist film and emphasizes the relativizing effect of duplication:
“In terms of content, both actions relativize each other and at the same time show that they belong together; Seen from the viewer's point of view, they seem like the end of the drama: he sees more than the people are able to see. Brecht tries to make the viewer aware of his vision - in relation to the blindness of the people. "
According to Knopf, the classic wall show in the 6th scene also produces a comparable effect : the field preacher reports on Tilly's funeral taking place in the background, while the courage in the foreground counts socks. This contrast also relativizes the historical event, which also has an effect on the fate of the common people.
Function of music and songs
There are a total of twelve songs in the piece, distributed unevenly over the twelve scenes, which repeatedly interrupt the plot in order to interpret and interpret it. They are part of an attempt to destroy the impression of reality on the stage. The songs are intended to enable actors and audiences to have role distance. In the Berlin production of 1949, the stage design and lighting clearly set the songs apart from the rest of the action. Nevertheless, the songs remain more closely connected to the scene than in earlier Brecht pieces.
literature
List of symbols
- GBA = Bertolt Brecht: Works. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition, edited by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, Klaus-Detlev Müller. 30 volumes and a register volume, 1998–2000
- Mother Courage = Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. In: GBA Volume 6, Pieces 6, Suhrkamp, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 978-3-518-40066-1 , pp. 7-86.
Text output
- Pre-print of the 6th scene in: Internationale Literatur (ZS), Moscow December 1940.
- Stage manuscript from 1941, Theaterverlag Kurt Reiss, Basel 1941.
- English edition, translated by HR Hays: Mother Courage , Norfolk 1941 (first complete edition)
- Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. First printed by Suhrkamp, Berlin 1949.
- Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. A chronicle from the Thirty Years War. In: Attempts , Issue 9 [2. Edition] (experiments 20–21), Suhrkamp, Berlin 1950, pp. 3–80 (20th attempt, modified text version).
- Mother Courage and her children . Stage version by the Berliner Ensemble, Henschel, Berlin 1968.
- Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. A chronicle from the Thirty Years War , 66th edition, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2010 (first edition 1963), ISBN 978-3-518-10049-3 (edition suhrkamp 49).
- Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children : In: GBA (Volume 6): Pieces 6, Suhrkamp, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 978-3-518-40066-1 , pp. 7–86.
- Bertolt Brecht; Jan Esper Olsson (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children - Historical-Critical Edition , Liber Läromedel, Lund 1981, ISBN 91-40-04767-9 .
filming
- 1955: Mother Courage and her children (film, unfinished) Director: Wolfgang Staudte
- 1957: Mother Courage and her children (theater recording), directed by Bertolt Brecht and Erich Engel ( German TV radio )
- 1961: Mother Courage and her children (theater recording), DEFA film, based on a production by Bert Brecht and Erich Engel in the Berliner Ensemble , with Helene Weigel , Angelika Hurwicz , Ekkehard Schall , Heinz Schubert , Ernst Busch and other ensemble members, film director : Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth , music by Paul Dessau
Secondary literature
- Poet, composer - and some difficulties, Paul Burkhard's songs for Brecht's «Mother Courage», NZZ from March 9, 2002 (online)
- Boeddinghaus, Walter: Beast human in Brecht's mother courage. Acta Germanica 2 (1967), pp. 81-88.
- Bertolt Brecht: Texts on pieces, writings 4. In: GBA Vol. 24, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1991
- Bertolt Brecht: Courage model 1949. In: Schriften 5, GBA Vol. 25, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1994, pp. 169–398
- Ingo Breuer: Theatricality and memory: German-language historical drama since Brecht. Cologne et al. 2004, Dissertation Marburg 2001. Cologne German Studies, NF, 5
- Sarah Bryant-Bertail: Space and time in epic theater: the Brechtian legacy, Columbia, SC: Camden House; Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000, Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture, ISBN 1-57113-186-8
- Stephan Buchloh: “Perverse, endangering young people, subversive”: Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate, Frankfurt / Main [u. a.] (Campus-Verlag) 2002, also dissertation: Freie Universität Berlin 1999
- Gerd Eversberg : Bertolt Brecht - Mother Courage and Her Children: Example of Theory and Practice of Epic Theater. Hollfeld (Beyer) 1976
- Kenneth R. Fowler: The Mother of all Wars: A Critical Interpretation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. Department of German Studies, McGill University Montreal, August, 1996, A thesis subntitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy [1]
- Therese Giehse: I have nothing to say: Conversations with Monika Sperr. Munich (Bertelsmann) 1974
- Claire Gleitman: All in the Family: Mother Courage and the Ideology in the Gestus. Comparative drama. 25.2 (1991), pp. 147-67
- Wilhelm Große: Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children . King's Explanations: Text Analysis and Interpretation (Vol. 318). C. Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2011. ISBN 978-3-8044-1924-7
- Werner Hecht: Materials on Brecht's “Mother Courage and Her Children”, Frankfurt am Main 1964
- Fritz Hennenberg (Ed.): Brecht song book. Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-37716-7
- Fritz Hennenberg: Simon Parmet, Paul Burkhard. The music for the premiere of “Mother Courage and Her Children”. In: notate. Information sheet and bulletin of the Brecht Center of the GDR. 10 (1987), H. 4, pp. 10-12. (= Study No. 21.)
- Manfred Jäger: On the reception of the playwright Brecht in the GDR. Text + criticism. Special volume Bertolt Brecht 1. (1971), pp. 107-118
- Helmut Jendreiek: Bertolt Brecht: Drama of Change, Düsseldorf (Bagel) 1969, ISBN 3-513-02114-3
- Kenneth Knight: Simplicissimus and Mother Courage, Daphnis 5 (1976), pp. 699-705
- Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, Stuttgart (Metzler) 1986, unabridged special edition, ISBN 3-476-00587-9 , notes on Mother Courage pp. 181–195
- Joachim Lang: Epic Theater as Film: Bertolt Brecht's stage plays in audiovisual media, Königshausen & Neumann 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3496-1 , ISBN 978-3-8260-3496-1
- Leopold Lindtberg: Personal memories of Bertolt Brecht. Speeches and essays. Zurich (Atlantis) 1972, pp. 20-124.
- Gudrun Loster-Schneider: From women and soldiers: Balladesque text genealogies from Brecht's early war poetry. In: Lars Koch; Marianne Vogel (Ed.): Imaginary worlds in conflict. War and history in German-language literature since 1900, Würzburg (Königshausen and Neumann) 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3210-3
- Joachim Lucchesi : Emancipate your orchestra! Incidental music for Swiss Brecht premieres. In: Dreigroschenheft, Volume 18, Issue 1/2011, pp. 17–30 (previously published in: dissonance. Swiss music magazine for research and creation, issue 110 (June 2010), pp. 50–59.)
- Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Bertolt Brecht: Activity and reception from the return from exile to the founding of the GDR, Kroberg im Taunus 1976
- Marion Luger: "Mother Courage and her children". The analysis of the song as a means of alienation, 36 pages, Grin Verlag 2009, ISBN 3-640-42956-7
- Krisztina Mannász: The epic theater using the example of Brecht's mother courage and her children: The epic theater and its elements by Bertolt Brecht, VDM Verlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-639-21872-5 , 72 pp.
- Franz Norbert Mennemeier: Mother Courage and her children. In: Benno von Wiese: The German Drama. Düsseldorf 1962, pp. 383-400
- Joachim Müller: Dramatic, epic and dialectical theater. In: Reinhold Grimm: Epic Theater. Cologne (Kiepenheuer & Witsch) 1971, ISBN 3-462-00461-1 , pp. 154-196
- Klaus-Detlef Müller: Brecht's “Mother Courage and Her Children” . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 1982. ISBN 3-518-38516-X (extensive anthology with articles and other materials)
- August Obermayer: The dramaturgical function of the songs in Brecht's mother Courage and her children. Commemorative publication for EW Herd. Ed. August Obermayer. Dunedin: University of Otago, 1980. pp. 200-213
- Teo Otto: sets for Brecht. Brecht on German stages: Bertolt Brecht's dramatic work on the theater in the Federal Republic of Germany. Bad Godesberg (InterNationes) 1968
- Andreas Siekmann: Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children . Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 2000. ISBN 3-12-923262-1
- Petra Stuber: Scope and Limits: Studies on GDR Theater. Research on the GDR society, Berlin (left) 2000, 2. durchges. Edition
- Dieter Thiele: Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. Frankfurt (Diesterweg) 1985
- Günter Thimm: The chaos was not gone. An adolescent conflict as a structural principle of Brecht's plays. Freiburg Literature Psychological Studies Vol. 7, 2002, ISBN 978-3-8260-2424-5
- Friedrich Wölfel: The song of the mother courage. In: Rupert Hirschenauer (ed.): Paths to the poem. Munich (Schnell and Steiner) 1963. pp. 537-549
Web links
- Bertolt Brecht: The epic theater (around 1936) ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Bertolt Brecht: About experimental theater (1939) ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- German Historical Museum Berlin: Bertolt Brecht 1898–1956
- Proseminar of the University of Würzburg on Mother Courage and her children (synopsis)
- Manfred Wekwerth: What does reality actually mean on stage? or The real chances of the theater . Marxist sheets 4/2009
Individual evidence
- ^ Harenberg Lexikon-Verlag (ed.): Havenberger Lexikon der Weltliteratur
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Couragemodell 1949. in: Schriften 5, GBA Vol. 25, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1994, pp. 169–398
- ↑ Gerhard Stadelmaier : Mother Courage and her children: Zadek staged Brecht , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 6, 2003.
- ^ Peymann's production ( memento from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Berliner Ensemble.
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children, in: GBA Vol. 6, p. 57, cited below as "Mother Courage"; Original in: Experiments, Book 9, 2nd edition (experiments 20-21), Berlin / West (Suhrkamp) 1950, pp. 3-80 (20th experiment); for the text variants see GBA vol. 6, p. 381ff .; Brecht himself wrote a table of contents for the version with 9 scenes under the title “Dramatic Curve”: Bertolt Brecht: Schriften 4, in: BFA, vol. 24, p. 258ff.
- ↑ To explain why the "poor people ... need courage", Mother Courage states in the 6th picture that they basically have little chance, "they are lost." It takes courage to have children in the world during war set and till the field in war. "That they tolerate an emperor and a pope shows an uncanny courage, because they cost their lives." (Mother Courage, p. 57)
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, 4th scene, p. 50
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 65
- ↑ For the summary of the plot, see also Brecht's pointed description of the first version under the title “Dramaturgischekurve” (typescript) from 1939, in: Bertolt Brecht: Schriften 4, in: GBA vol. 24, p. 258
- ↑ Mother Courage, notes p. 377f .; According to Steffin, the complete writing took from 27./28. September 29th to October 29th / November 3rd, 1939
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 182
- ↑ Werner Hecht: Materials on Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children", Frankfurt am Main 1964, p. 90
- ↑ cf. Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 11
- ↑ see Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, pp. 183f.
- ↑ Trutz Simplex, Chapter 3, quoted from: zeno.org http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Grimmelshausen,+Hans+Jakob+Christoffel+von/Romane/Trutz+Simplex/Das+3.+ Chapter? Hl = grabbed + the + courasche +
- ↑ cf. Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 12f.
- ↑ a b c Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 183
- ↑ Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, 5th chapter, quoted from zeno.org http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Grimmelshausen,%20Hans%20Jakob%20Christoffel%20von/Romane/Der%20ablebnisliche%20Simplicissimus%20%28Ausgabe % 201956% 29 / The% 20f% FCnth% 20book / 5th% 20chapter
- ↑ The courage learns nothing, in: Bertolt Brecht: Texts to pieces, writings 4, in: GBA vol. 24, p. 271
- ↑ a b Ingo Breuer: Theatricality and memory. 2004, p. 111
- ↑ The courage learns nothing, in: Bertolt Brecht: Texts to pieces, writings 4, in: GBA vol. 24, p. 271f.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht Handbuch Theater, 1986, p. 179f.
- ↑ a b The courage learns nothing, in: Bertolt Brecht: Texts to pieces, writings 4, in: GBA vol. 24, p. 272
- ↑ a b c Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 184
- ↑ Mother Courage and Her Children, pp. 30f.
- ^ 1. Book of Kings, 2.32
- ↑ Mother Courage, Notes, p. 404
- ↑ This quote originally goes back to the Old Testament , where the Lord exterminated the soldiers of the Egyptians in the pursuit of the Israelites "with horse and man and chariot" by having the waters of the Red Sea beat over them.
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, p. 30
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 58
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 31
- ^ “ Brecht was skeptical of the freedom which the bourgeoisie claimed to represent. ”; Kenneth R. Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 244 (translation by Mbdortmund)
- ↑ Bert Brecht: Freedom and Democracy. in: Große commented BFA, vol. 15, poems 5, pp. 183f.
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 245
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 185
- ↑ Ingo Breuer: Theatricality and Memory. 2004, p. 110
- ↑ Günther Rühle , The Long Way of Mother Courage. The world premiere in Zurich and its aftermath - Bertolt Brecht between New York, Zurich, Berlin and Munich, Theaterheute, November 2003, p. 30
- ↑ a b see Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 182
- ↑ quoted from: Günther Rühle, The Long Path of Mother Courage. The world premiere in Zurich and its aftermath - Bertolt Brecht between New York, Zurich, Berlin and Munich, Theaterheute, November 2003, p. 30.
- ↑ Günther Rühle, The Long Way of Mother Courage. The world premiere in Zurich and its aftermath - Bertolt Brecht between New York, Zurich, Berlin and Munich, Theaterheute, November 2003, p. 30.
- ↑ Bernhard Diebold: 'Mother Courage and Her Children', premiere of Bertolt Brecht's dramatic chronicle. Die Tat , Zurich, April 22, 1941, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 53f.
- ↑ Bernhard Diebold: 'Mother Courage and Her Children', premiere of Bertolt Brecht's dramatic chronicle. Die Tat , Zurich, April 22, 1941, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, pp. 54f.
- ↑ a b Bernhard Diebold: 'Mother Courage and Her Children', premiere of Bertolt Brecht's dramatic chronicle. Die Tat , Zurich, April 22, 1941, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 56
- ↑ Bernhard Diebold: 'Mother Courage and Her Children', premiere of Bertolt Brecht's dramatic chronicle. Die Tat , Zurich, April 22, 1941, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 57
- ↑ a b c E. Th. (Probably Elisabeth Thommen): A world premiere by Bertolt Brecht, National-Zeitung No. 183, Basel April 22, 1941; quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 59
- ↑ E. Th. (Probably Elisabeth Thommen): A world premiere by Bertolt Brecht, National-Zeitung No. 183, Basel April 22, 1941; quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 58
- ↑ see Fowler, The Mother of all Wars. S. XIX: “ The drama had to wait until April 1941 before its world premiere in Zurich (when Brecht was in Finland 1940-1941), but from that moment the lines were drawn for two competing interpretations: one which, like Brecht, blamed the merchant for her participation in war, and one which seemed implicitly to excuse the mother for that same participation. ”
- ↑ quoted from: Petra Stuber: Spaces and Limits: Studies on the GDR Theater. Research on the GDR society, Berlin (left) 2000, 2. durchges. Edition, pp. 54f.
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Briefe 2, in: BFA, vol. 29, p. 372
- ↑ Journale 2, p. 284, entry from November 25, 1948
- ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of the world riddles, vol. 2, p. 281
- ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of the world riddles, Vol. 2, p. 314
- ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of the world riddles, vol. 2, p. 323f.
- ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of the world riddles, Vol. 2, p. 326
- ^ The cast of the Berlin premiere: Ein Werber: Wolfgang Kühne ; Sergeant: Gerhard Bienert ; Mother Courage: Helene Weigel; Eilif: Ernst Kahler ; Swiss cheese : Joachim Teege ; Kattrin: Angelika Hurwicz ; Cook: Paul Bildt ; Field Captain: Paul Esser ; Field preacher: Werner Hinz ; Kit master: Artur Malkowski ; Yvette Pottier: Renate Keith ; elderly soldier: Gustav Mahnke ; Second Sergeant: Werner Segtrop ; The one-eyed man: Hans Hasche; Colonel: Franz Weber ; Writer: Ingo Osterloh ; younger soldier: Gert Schaefer ; First soldier: Herbert Richter ; Second soldier: Gerhard Knape ; A farmer: Curt Lampe; A farmer's wife: Paula Kramer; A soldier: Richard Thümmler; The old woman: Käthe Reichel ; The young man: Ottokar Runze ; A soldier: Hans Schille; Female voice: Hanna Kleinschmid; A singing girl: Madlon Harder; The ensign: Herwart Grosse ; First soldier: Hubert Suschka ; Second soldier: Johannes Knittel ; The old farmer: Erich Dunskus ; The farmer's wife: Gerda Müller ; The young farmer: Peter Marx; Direction: Erich Engel and Bertolt Brecht; Stage design: Heinrich Kilger ; Musical director: Heinz Hartig; Music: Paul Dessau; quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Brecht's mother Courage and her children, 1982, p. 71ff.
- ↑ Journale 2, p. 286, entry from December 10, 1948
- ↑ Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of world riddles, Vol. 2, p. 32
- ↑ Manfred Wekwerth: Political Theater and Philosophy of Practice or How Brecht Made Theater November 23, 2005 ( Memento from February 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ cf. Werner Mittenzwei: Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht or The handling of the world riddles, vol. 2, p. 326f.
- ↑ Paul Ruella: Against the German war Myth: Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" at the Deutsches Theater. Berliner Zeitung, January 13, 1949, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p. 75
- ↑ a b Paul Ruella: Against the German war Myth: Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" at the Deutsches Theater. Berliner Zeitung, January 13, 1949, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p. 77
- ↑ Paul Ruella: Against the German war Myth: Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" at the Deutsches Theater. Berliner Zeitung, January 13, 1949, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p. 76f.
- ↑ Paul Ruella: Against the German war Myth: Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" at the Deutsches Theater. Berliner Zeitung, January 13, 1949, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p. 78
- ↑ bpb.de: Sabine Kebir: Brecht and the political systems - From politics and contemporary history (APuZ 23-24 / 2006) , p. 28; Accessed January 9, 2011
- ^ Fritz Erpenbeck: Some remarks on Brecht's "Mother Courage". in: Die Weltbühne, edited by M. v. Ossietzky and H. Leonhard 1949, pp. 101-103; quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.), Mother Courage and her children, suhrkamp materials, 1982, p. 83
- ↑ Hans Wilfert: Suffering from war. New Time from January 13, 1949; quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p. 296
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Bertolt Brecht: Activity and reception from the return from exile to the founding of the GDR, Kronberg im Taunus 1976, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p 298
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Bertolt Brecht: Activity and reception from the return from exile to the founding of the GDR, Kronberg im Taunus 1976, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (Ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p 297
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Bertolt Brecht: Activity and reception from the return from exile to the founding of the GDR, Kronberg im Taunus 1976, quoted from: Klaus-Detlef Müller (ed.): Mother Courage and Her Children, 1982, p 300f.
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children, Munich 1994, p. 88
- ↑ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co: Biographie, Authorized extended and corrected German version by Sebastian Wohlfeil, 1997, ISBN 3-434-50067-7 , p. 731
- ^ John Fuegi: Brecht & Co, 1997, p. 733
- ↑ in the original German; Eric Bentley: Bentley on Brecht, Evanston, Ill. (Northwestern University Press) 2008, p. 429
- ↑ See comments on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 519
- ↑ Gerhard Ebert: Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children". Premiere 50 years ago at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. New Germany . January 11, 1999
- ^ Roland Barthes: Théâtre capital, France Observateur, July 8, 1954, German in: Roland Barthes (author); Jean-Loup Rivière (Ed.): I've always loved the theater very much, and yet I almost never go there again. Writings on the theater. Berlin (Alexander Verlag) 2001 ISBN 3-89581-068-1 , p. 102f.
- ↑ Farshid Motahari: Brecht and Peymann in Tehran. Kölner Stadtanzeiger online from February 13, 2008, 1:33 p.m.
- ↑ Notes on the Courage Model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner and Frankfurter Edition, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, pp. 516f.
- ↑ Notes on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, pp. 517f.
- ↑ See comments on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 517
- ↑ on the role of Peter Hoenselaer at the Dortmund theater see: Mathias Bigge, Kulturpolitik im Ruhrgebiet. in: Rainer Bovermann, Stefan Goch, Heinz-Jürgen Priamus (eds.), The Ruhr area, A strong piece of North Rhine-Westphalia, Politics in the Region 1946–1996, Essen 1996, ISBN 3-88474-524-7 , p. 513
- ↑ quoted from: Notes on the Courage Model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 523
- ↑ See comments on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 518
- ↑ Couragemodell 1949, appendix: The use of the model, in: Bertolt Brecht, BFA, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 394
- ^ Berliner Ensemble, Helene Weigel (Ed.): Theater work. 6 performances by the Berliner Ensemble, Dresden 1952
- ↑ See comments on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, pp. 519f.
- ↑ See comments on the courage model, in: Bertolt Brecht, Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Schriften 5, vol. 25, p. 520
- ↑ welt.de: The Father and His Legacy of October 16, 2010, accessed on January 9, 2011
- ^ Matthias Matussek: Erben: Cake battle for Brecht . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1997, pp. 179 ( Online - Apr. 7, 1997 ).
- ↑ see Matthias Matussek: Erben. 1997, p. 179f.
- ↑ see Matthias Matussek: Erben. 1997, p. 180f.
- ↑ see 100 years of Volkstheater. Theatre. Time. History. Jugend und Volk, Vienna-Munich 1989 ISBN 3-224-10713-8 ; See Kurt Palm: From Boycott to Recognition: Brecht and Austria, Löcker, 1984, p. 196 and: Peter Thomson, Vivien Gardner: Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. Cambridge University Press 1997, p. 120
- ↑ Brecht Courage . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1963, p. 13 ( Online - Jan. 9, 1963 ). Vienna: break into the castle . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1966, pp. 170-173 ( Online - Oct. 31, 1966 ).
- ↑ Stephan Buchloh: "Perverse, harmful to young people, hostile to the state": Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate, Frankfurt / Main [u. a.] (Campus-Verlag) 2002, p. 141
- ↑ Stephan Buchloh: "Pervers, harmful to young people, subversive", 2002, p. 162
- ↑ cf. Stephan Buchloh: “Pervers, Juvenile Danger, Staatsfeindlich”, 2002, pp. 162f.
- ↑ cf. Stephan Buchloh: “Pervers, Juvenile Danger, Staatsfeindlich”, 2002, pp. 165f.
- ↑ Paul Dessau, Zur Courage-Musik, p. 122
- ↑ cf. Bertolt Brecht: Journale 2, BFA, Volume 27, p. 307, October 14, 1949
- ^ Bertolt Brecht: Prosa 5, GBA Volume 20, pp. 582-587
- ↑ Brecht: Colored brown . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1960, p. 49 ( Online - Jan. 20, 1960 ).
- ↑ a b see Joachim Lang: Episches Theater als Film: Bühnenstücke Bertolt Brecht in the audiovisual media, 2006, p. 247
- ↑ Italics by Jan Knopf; Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch Theater, 1986, p. 185
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch Theater, 1986, p. 185
- ↑ a b Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch Theater, 1986, p. 186
- ^ Friedrich Schiller, History of the Thirty Years War. quoted from: Ingo Breuer: Theatricality and Memory. 2004, p. 112
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children, 6th scene. In: GBA Vol. 6, pp. 60f.
- ↑ see Couragemodell 1949, p. 216
- ↑ Mother Courage, 6th scene, p. 61
- ↑ See Fowler's compilation of the atrocities of war in the chapter "The Hyena" in: ders .: The Mother of all Wars, p. 1ff.
- ↑ Mother Courage, 9th scene, p. 73
- ↑ Fowler, The Mother of all Wars, p. 3 (“ This is the tale of war told by Mutter Courage and her children. It is a story of cruelty, barbarism, and unfreedom, of a crime against humanity perpetrated that one ruler can take from another. It is that story which Hobbes told us in his classic description of war, where no benefit is had from human industry, but all live in continual danger and fear of violent death, and 'the life of man (is) solitary , poor, nasty, brutish, and short '. ")
- ↑ a b see Courage Model 1949, p. 214
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, 6th scene, p. 54
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children. In: GBA vol. 6, p. 9
- ↑ Ingo Breuer: Theatricality and Memory. 2004, p. 115
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 20
- ↑ Mother Courage, pp. 69f.
- ↑ Mother Courage, Scene 11, p. 82
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 62
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 22
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 60
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 246ff.
- ^ Joseph Goebbels: Goebbels speeches. Edited by Helmut Heiber, Düsseldorf 1970, p. 47; quoted from: Fowler, p. 255
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. Chapter “Honor”, p. 255ff.
- ↑ see Mother Courage, p. 9 (scene 1)
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 9 (scene 1)
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 82 (scene 11)
- ↑ quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 264
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 23 (scene 2)
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 264f.
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 53 (scene 6)
- ^ Brecht at the rehearsal on August 26, 1954; quoted from: John Fuegi, Brecht & Co, 1997, p. 815
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars, pp. XXf.
- ↑ Courage learns nothing. In: Bertolt Brecht: Texts on pieces, writings 4. In: GBA vol. 24, notes, p. 537
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Note on Mother Courage. In: BGA, Schriften 4, p. 284
- ↑ (“ against the rulers and their agents in the military and the clergy, and, on the symbolic level, against the domination of the patriarchy and capitalism ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 274 (translation: Mbdortmund)
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 278
- ↑ cf. Sarah Bryant-Bertail: Space and time in epic theater, 2000, p. 64.
- ↑ cf. Sarah Bryant-Bertail: Space and time in epic theater, 2000, p. 66 ff.
- ↑ cf. Sarah Bryant-Bertail: Space and time in epic theater, 2000, p. 69.
- ↑ cf. Sarah Bryant-Bertail: Space and time in epic theater, 2000, p. 74.
- ↑ (“ PATERNITY DENIED ”); see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 208 f.
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, 1st scene, p. 11
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 61
- ↑ “ A sutler who lives from war and feeds its engines, she helps to perpetuate war and its misery. A partner of war, and so of death, she well earns the epithets 'criminal' and 'hyena of the battlefield'. The crime itself, her business with war, cannot be denied, for her participation is there for all to see. ”; Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 4
- ↑ Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 4
- ↑ Fowler refers to the fortune telling scene at the beginning of the play and to her statement to the recruiter that getting too close to war is like walking the lamb to the slaughter
- ↑ late text variant, not included in the complete edition, quoted from Fowler, p. 6
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 12 (" Inhumanity is integral to Courage's business. ")
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 10
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 14: “ Courage's criminality, her preference for war over peace, death over life, extends even to her own children. Each time that war closes on them she is absent on business, that is to say, she chooses her partnership with war and death over the lives of her children - which puts the lie to her desire to bring her children through the war. ”
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 25ff.
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 74 (" Courage is an expression of her historical conditions ")
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 77f.
- ↑ Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 31
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 33 (" Toothed and clawed, she is a tigress protecting her cub. ")
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 42
- ↑ a b c Mother Courage, p. 10 (scene 1)
- ↑ “ Courage's identification with the rulers is only appropriate, for as a sutler, as a businesswoman, she like the rulers, is involved in war only 'for profit'. ”; Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 182
- ↑ see Kenneth R. Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 183
- ↑ Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 186
- ↑ (“ Courage's involvement with soldiers shows how she is bound - even libidinally - to war. ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 186
- ↑ (“ That is, Courage is not only a dramatic figure, a representation of a seventeenth-century sutler in the Thirty Years War, she is also a symbolic representation of capitalism. ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 189
- ↑ (“ necessarily inhuman ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 190
- ↑ (" She is the Hyena, in other words, because she represents Business as Usual. "); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 191
- ↑ (“ maternai, nurturing creativity and her war-mongering, inhuman mercantilism ”); see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 383
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 383ff.
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 392
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 393
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 394
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Couragemodell 1949, p. 177; also printed as the motto on the first inside page of the Berliner Ensemble's program booklet under the slightly different title “What a performance of 'Mother Courage and Her Children should show today'”; the phrase “continuation of business by other means” alludes to a quote from Carl von Clausewitz : “War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.” from “Vom Kriege”, quoted from: Comments on the courage model. In: Bertolt Brecht, Berlin and Frankfurter Edition, Schriften 5, Vol. 25, p. 523
- ↑ a b c Bertolt Brecht: Couragemodell 1949, p. 173
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The business of courage. In: BFA, Schriften 4, p. 265
- ↑ Couragemodell 1949, p. 241f.
- ↑ a b Courage model 1949, p. 242
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: To mother courage and her children. In: BGA, Schriften 4, p. 264
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 120f. (" Throughout this work it must always be kept in mind when considering evidence that there is no criticism of fascism by Brecht which is not simultaneously a criticism of capitalism. ")
- ^ Palitzsch, Hubalek (editing and design), Berlin 1951
- ↑ The blockade of a train with military goods by Raymonde Dien was a much discussed action against the Indochina War during the Cold War , from the American point of view a propaganda action of the Communist Party, see for example the polemical article from Time
- ↑ Bergstedt: The dialectical principle of representation. P. 141, quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 84
- ↑ Bergstedt: The dialectical principle of representation. P. 287, quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 84
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 84f.
- ↑ Mother Courage, 9th scene, p. 76
- ↑ Helmut Jendreiek: Bertolt Brecht: Drama der Wandel, Düsseldorf (Bagel) 1969, p. 86, quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 84
- ↑ Helmut Jendreiek: Bertolt Brecht. 1969, p. 192
- ↑ Jendreiek 1969, p. 172
- ↑ Walter Hinck: Mother Courage and Her Children: A Critical People's Play. In: ders .: Brechts Dramen, p. 166f .; quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 93
- ^ Bernard Fenn: Characterization of Women in the Plays of Bertolt Brecht. European University Studies, Lang (Peter) GmbH., June 1982, ISBN 3-8204-6865-X
- ↑ a b Frank Thomsen, Hans-Harald Müller, Tom Kindt: Ungeheuer Brecht. A biography of his work. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-20846-5 , p. 238
- ↑ a b Brecht monster. P. 238
- ↑ Monster Brecht. P. 244
- ↑ Monster Brecht. P. 246
- ↑ (“ early stage of the historical dialectic ”); John Milfull: From Baal to Keuner: The "Second Optimism" of Bertolt Brecht. Series: Australian-New Zealand Studies on German Language and Literature, Bern, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 978-3-261-01015-5 , p. 130; quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 102f.
- ↑ (“ timelessness and universality ”); John Milfull: From Baal to Keuner, 1974, p. 134; quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 103
- ↑ see John Milfull. From Baal to Keuner, 1974, p 132ff .; quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 103
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 104f.
- ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Engagement. Notes on Literature III, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 123
- ^ Adorno: Commitment. 1965, p. 122f.
- ^ Adorno: Commitment. 1965, p. 122
- ^ Adorno: Commitment. 1965, p. 123
- ^ Bertolt Brecht: Conversation with a young viewer. In: BFA, Schriften 4, Vol. 24, p. 272
- ↑ (“ The world which the drama seems to represent, for example, is not capitalistic, but feudal. Its rulers are not the bourgeoisie, but kings, emperors, and popes. Its producers are not industrial workers, but peasants. Its order is not based on the notions of a social contract and legality, that is, the rulers do not make contracts with the producers such as exists more or less between the capitalist and the worker, but in effect take what they desire at the point of the sword . ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 126f.
- ↑ Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 136f.
- ↑ (“ it is typical of Brecht's work that exploitation should appear as theft ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 139f.
- ↑ Jürgen Kreft: Realism problems with Brecht or: How realistic is Brecht's realism? ( Memento of March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) p. 6–10 (PDF file; 276 kB)
- ^ Franz Norbert Mennemeier: Modern German Drama. Reviews and characteristics. Volume 2, 1933 to the present, Munich 1975, 2. verb. and exp. Berlin 2006, p. 395, quoted from: Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 107
- ^ Franz Norbert Mennemeier: Modern German Drama. 2006, p. 108
- ^ Benno von Wiese, Between Utopia and Reality: Studies on German Literature. Düsseldorf (Bagel) 1963, p. 266
- ↑ see Günter Thimm: The chaos was not used up. An adolescent conflict as a structural principle from Brecht's plays, 2002, p. 126ff.
- ↑ cf. Günter Thimm 2002, p. 127
- ↑ Günter Thimm 2002, p. 128
- ↑ "Feldhauptmann: There is a young Caesar in you"; Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children, 2nd scene, p. 23.
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children, Munich 1994, p. 58
- ^ Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Mother Courage. Between always and never: shapes and themes of poetry. Frankfurt am Main (Insel) 1971, p. 198; Fowler denies this and leads Kaschnitz 'interpretation back to the interpretation of Giehse in Munich. “ Of course, Kaschnitz may base her interpretation on the performance by Giehse in Munich, in which Giehse as Courage did show that Courage loved Schweizerkas less. ”; Fowler, p. 34
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 60
- ↑ a b c Courage model 1949, p. 192
- ↑ a b c d Courage model 1949, p. 223
- ↑ both Mother Courage, 1st scene, p. 75
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 27
- ↑ Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 35
- ↑ Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 39
- ↑ a b Edgar Hein 1994, p. 62
- ↑ a b c see Couragemodell 1949, p. 201
- ↑ see Couragemodell 1949, p. 202
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 52
- ↑ Edgar Hein 1994, p. 55
- ↑ a b c Courage model 1949, p. 211
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 210
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 216
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 74
- ↑ see Mother Courage, p. 76
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: Courage Model 1949, p 226
- ↑ Irmela von der Lühe, Claus-Dieter Krohn : Fremdes Heimatland: Remigration and literary life after 1945, Göttingen 2005
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Bertolt Brecht, p. 58
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 379
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 380
- ↑ (“ an exemplary moment of the transcendence of an asocial world ”; “ a revolt of the little people ”); see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 381
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 68
- ↑ Mother Courage, pp. 75f.
- ↑ (“ With this the cook initiates a criticism of the war and, by focusing on its destruction and misery, gives priority to the material over the 'idea' (the faith). ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 226
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 64 (scene 8)
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 50 (3rd scene)
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 213f.
- ↑ a b Mother Courage, p. 58 (6th scene)
- ↑ (“ Courage's personal interest in the cook is represented by the pipe in her pocket, and this interest is underlined when the chaplain later exclaims that she has not only kept it, but 'draus smoked!' ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 214 (translation: Mbdortmund)
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 71 (8th scene)
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 77
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 67
- ↑ (“ The essential similarity between the cook and the worker, who both produce for another without enjoying the fruits of their labor, is expressed when the chaplain censures the cook for his criticism of war and ruler: 'Finally eat his bread' ( that is, the bread of the king). The cook points out the reality to the ideologue: 'I don't eat his bread, I bake him.' ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 234 (translation: Mbdortmund)
- ↑ see Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 234ff.
- ↑ Fowler refers to Brecht's poem “The Bolsheviks discover in Smolny, in the summer of 1917, where the people were represented: In the kitchen” (Gedichte Vol. 1, p. 179) and a Keuner story in which Keuner explains why he preferred city B to city A: “In city A I was asked to sit at the table, but in city B I was asked to come into the kitchen.” See Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 242
- ↑ (“ by cooking up, not only food, but also rebellion ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 242f.
- ↑ all Couragemodell 1949, p. 192
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 195
- ↑ (“ Courage condemns this hostility to material life when she answers:… ”); Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 217 (translation by Mbdortmund)
- ↑ Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 26
- ↑ Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 33
- ↑ Mother Courage, 3rd scene, p. 41
- ↑ a b c Edgar Hein, Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 69
- ↑ Mother Courage, 8th scene, p. 67
- ↑ a b c d Mother Courage, 8th scene, p. 68
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 222
- ↑ (“ As we saw in the previous section, the prostitute represents the worker who must sell her very self, for all she has to trade on the market is her 'labor power'; she is the commodity, the incarnation of labor alienated from itself. ”) Fowler: The Mother of all Wars. P. 171
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 191
- ↑ all Couragemodell 1949, p. 176
- ↑ all Couragemodell 1949, p. 186
- ↑ Couragemodell 1949, p. 198.
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 49.
- ↑ a b Courage model 1949, p. 207.
- ↑ Couragemodell 1949, p. 206.
- ↑ Courage Model 1949 S. 231st
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 232.
- ↑ see Edgar Hein, Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 39.
- ↑ Courage model 1949, p. 233.
- ↑ cf. Edgar Hein, Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 39 ff.
- ↑ Original by Thomas von Kempen : "Homo proponit, sed deus disponit."
- ↑ Mother Courage, p. 49; see also: Wolfgang Mieder, Man thinks: God directs - no talk of it! Proverbial alienation in the work of Bertolt Brecht, Peter Lang, Bern, ISBN 978-3-906761-53-4 .
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 192.
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 27 f.
- ↑ see Edgar Hein 1994, p. 28
- ↑ Edgar Hein 1994, p. 26
- ↑ Edgar Hein, Mother Courage and Her Children, p. 28.
- ↑ Helmut Jendreiek: Bertolt Brecht: Drama der Zusammenarbeit, 1969, p. 198
- ↑ Helmut Jendreiek: Bertolt Brecht: Drama der Wandel, 1969, p. 199
- ↑ a b see Henning Rischbieter: Brecht II. Friedrichs Dramatiker des Welttheater Volume 14, Velber 1966, p. 23f.
- ↑ Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 191
- ↑ see Jan Knopf: Brecht-Handbuch, Theater, 1986, p. 192
