by Tom Kuhn
BFA 12, 20; 1934; P1939; T.K.
Little begging song
[Kleines Bettellied]
BFA 12, 21; 1934; P1939; T.K.
The plum tree
[Der Pflaumenbaum]
BFA 12, 21; 1934; P1939; T.K.
My brother was a pilot
[Mein Bruder war ein Flieger]
BFA 12, 22; 1937; P1939; T.K.
This poem refers to the air support given to the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War by the German “Legion Condor” in 1936 and 1937. The second stanza plays on the expansionist policies of the National Socialists and their talk of Volk (people, nation) and Raum (space). The Sierra de Guadarrama is a mountain chain north of Madrid.
God preserve us
[Der Gottseibeiuns]
BFA 12, 22; 1934; P1939; T.K.
Brecht uses a popular dialect word for the Devil which means, literally, “the God-be-with-us.” The reference in stanza 4 is to Hitler’s dietary habits.
None or all
[Keiner oder alle (or Sklave, wer wird dich befreien?)]
BFA 12, 23; 1934; P1937; T.K.
Written in London along with the United Front song (below) and probably a commission from the Comintern. It was set to music by Eisler in 1934 and first published for the Spanish International Brigades in 1937. It was later included in the play The Days of the Commune (1949/56).
Song against war
[Lied gegen den Krieg]
BFA 12, 24; 1934; P1939; T.K.
The term Prolet (“prole”) was adopted as a badge of pride by left-wing workers in the 1920s and 1930s.
Song of the United Front
[Einheitsfrontlied]
BFA 12, 26; 1934; P1937; T.K.
This marching song too was set to music by Eisler (as was the next), and in that memorable setting first performed by a workers’ choir of some three thousand in Strasbourg in 1935. It went on to achieve almost legendary status as an anthem of the left, in the Spanish Civil War and thereafter. The United Front refers to the attempt by the Communist Party to overcome party rivalries and persuade all workers to unite to defend their common interests and to resist Fascism.
Resolution
[Resolution]
BFA 12, 27; 1934; P1937; D.C.
The repeated “Whereas” alludes to governmental decrees (those of the Paris Commune, for example) which typically began with phrases such as “Considérant que le premier des principes de la République française est la liberté . . .” ‘Resolution’ duly found its way into Brecht’s play The Days of the Commune.
Questions of a worker who reads
[Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters]
BFA 12, 29; 1935; P1936; T.K.
Empedocles’ shoe
[Der Schuh des Empedokles]
BFA 12, 30; 1935; P1939; T.K.
Empedocles, the Greek philosopher, poet, and orator, lived, and possibly died, in Sicily in the fifth century BC. He allied himself with a popular movement against the oligarchy and was widely revered. Empedocles’ worldview is of a cycle of eternal change, growth, and decay, in which two cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engage in an eternal battle for supremacy. The principal source for Empedocles’ life is Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, on which Brecht bases his account.
Legend of the origin of the book Tao Te Ching on Lao-tze’s road into exile
[Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration]
BFA 12, 32; 1938; P1939; T.K.
Brecht had known this traditional Chinese tale since the 1920s. The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese book of wisdoms, possibly dating from the sixth century BC, although its authorship is uncertain (the name Lao-tze means just “old master”). It is the founding text of Taoism, in which Brecht took a lifelong interest. The image of Lao-tze riding on his black ox is a favorite amongst Chinese painters, and Brecht later owned a small bronze of this same figure. The doctrine of soft water overcoming hard stone is number 78 of the eighty-one sections of the work. Brecht’s formulation of the tollkeeper’s question in stanza 7 also contains an echo of a 1921 speech by Lenin on the New Economic Policy: “Who will win, the capitalist or soviet power?”
Visit to the banished poets
[Besuch bei den verbannten Dichtern]
BFA 12, 35; 1938; P1939; T.K.
The Buddha’s parable of the burning house
[Gleichnis des Buddha vom brennenden Haus]
BFA 12, 36; 1937; P1939; T.K.
Brecht’s source was a novel, the Danish author Karl Gjellerup’s The Pilgrim Kamanita of 1906 (German 1913).
The carpet weavers of Kujan-Bulak honour Lenin
[Die Teppichweber von Kujan-Bulak ehren Lenin]
BFA 12, 37; 1929–30; P1933; T.K.
Brecht’s source was an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, October 30, 1929, describing conditions in Fergana province in eastern Uzbekistan.
The invincible inscription
[Die unbesiegliche Inschrift]
BFA 12, 39; c. 1934; P1939; T.K.
Brecht’s source was the memoir of an Italian Communist, Giovanni Germanetto, published in German in 1930. Germanetto tells this anecdote in connection with his arrest in Turin in 1917. As in several of these other “chronicles” Brecht follows his source quite closely, even to the extent of borrowing formulations verbatim.
Coals for Mike
[Kohlen für Mike]
BFA 12, 40; 1926; P1926; T.K.
The source for this story is Sherwood Anderson’s novel Poor White (1920, German 1925).
The breaking up of the ship, the Oskawa, by her crew
[Abbau des Schiffes Oskawa durch die Mannschaft]
BFA 12, 41; 1935; P1935; T.K.
Here Brecht retells an episode from Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America (1931).
The Moscow workers take possession of the great Metro on 27 April 1935
[Inbesitznahme der grossen Metro durch die Moskauer Arbeiterschaft am 27. April 1935]
BFA 12, 43; 1935; P1935; T.K.
Brecht probably witnessed a celebration with the workers when he visited Moscow in the spring of 1935. The official opening of the Moscow Underground was on May 15. The reference to “the classics” is to Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
The pace of socialist reconstruction
[Schnelligkeit des sozialistischen Aufbaus]
BFA 12, 45; 1937; P1939; T.K.
Nikolayevsk-on-Amur is a small town in the Russian Far East.
The great October
[Der grosse Oktober]
BFA 12, 45; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The lines about the “Spanish militiaman” are a reference to the involvement of the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War. Yearly parades took place in Red Square on November 7 (the anniversary of the Revolution) and on May 1.
To the waverer
[An den Schwankenden]
BFA 12, 47; c. 1935; P1939; T.K.
To those who have been brought into line
[An die Gleichgeschaltenen]
BFA 12, 47; 1935; P1939; T.K.
In the title Brecht uses the official Nazi expression Gleichschaltung (enforced conformity), which was used for the process of “bringing into line” initiated by the laws against other political parties in 1933. In the subsequent months and years, all variety of institutions and individuals were “gleichgeschaltet.”
On the death of a fighter for peace
[Auf den Tod eines Kämpfers für den Frieden]
BFA 12, 50; 1938; P1938; T.K.
Carl von Ossietzky was the outstanding anti-war journalist of the Weimar Republic. He was imprisoned in 1931 on the pretext of treason, rearrested by the Nazis in the night of the Reichstag Fire and repeatedly beaten and tortured. In 1936 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He was “released” into Gestapo supervision in a Berlin hospital, where he died on May 4, 1938.
Advice to visual artists concerning the fate of their works in the coming wars
[Rat a
n die bildenden Künstler, das Schicksal ihrer Kunstwerke in den kommenden Kriegen betreffend]
BFA 12, 50; c. 1937; P1939; T.K.
The farmer’s address to his ox
[Ansprache des Bauern an seinen Ochsen]
BFA 12, 52; 1938; P1939; T.K.
In conversation with Walter Benjamin, Brecht spoke of this as a “Stalin poem.” There are divergent readings of the last word of the eleventh line: either Schrittmacher (= pace-maker/setter) or Schriftmacher (= script-maker, scribe).
On the birth of a son
[Bei der Geburt eines Sohnes]
BFA 12, 52; 1938; P1938; T.K.
Compare the alternative translation in the collection of Chinese Poems in Part IV.
A worker’s speech to a doctor
[Rede eines Arbeiters an einen Arzt]
BFA 12, 53; 1938; P1939; T.K.
Call to arms; Call to a sick Communist; The sick Communist’s answer to the comrades; Call to the doctors and nurses
[Appell; Appell an einen kranken Kommunisten; Antwort des kranken Kommunisten an seine Genossen; Appell an die Ärzte und Krankenpfleger]
BFA 12, 54–55; 1937; P1939; T.K.
Taunting the soldier of the revolution. His answer
[Verhöhnung des Soldaten der Revolution. Seine Antwort]
BFA 12, 56; 1938; P1939; T.K.
Cantata for the anniversary of Lenin’s death
[Kantate zu Lenins Todestag]
BFA 12, 57; 1935; P1939; T.K.
Lenin’s death day is January 21 (1924). Brecht wrote the cantata over several years. Section 12 dates back to 1929, and ‘Praise of the revolutionary’ was incorporated into the play The Mother. Hanns Eisler also set the text to music in stages, a first part in 1932, then in 1935, completing the work only in 1937. The poem contains allusions to Lenin’s speeches (the “water for tea”) and Marx’s writings (the martyrs of the Paris Commune are “enshrined in the great heart of the working class”).
Epitaph for Gorky
[Grabschrift für Gorki]
BFA 12, 60; 1936; P1936; T.K.
The Russian and Soviet writer Maxim Gorky died on June 18, 1936. The poem contains allusions to Gorky’s autobiographical and other writings.
The book burnings
[Die Bücherverbrennung]
BFA 12, 61; 1938; P1939; T.K.
The ‘German Satires,’ we are told, were written for the radio station “German Freedom,” funded by the Communist Party and others, which broadcast anti-Nazi propaganda from a location near Madrid from January 1937 (until 1939, and thereafter, briefly, from a ship in the Baltic). At least a couple of Brecht’s poems were broadcast, and he was very aware of creating a new type of lyric poetry, the messages of which had to stick in the consciousness of his listeners, even if the signal was interrupted or the conditions were far from ideal for listening to poetry. In the first of these poems Brecht refers to an article by the Bavarian writer Oskar Maria Graf in the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung, following the book burnings of May 1933.
Dream of a great bellyache
[Traum von einer grossen Miesmacherin]
BFA 12, 61; 1937; P1939; T.K.
In the title Brecht uses a word, Miesmacher(in), which meant simply “grumbler” or even “spoilsport,” until Goebbels and others appropriated it as an item of National Socialist vocabulary to denounce critics of the regime. There were poor potato harvests in 1935 and 1936. After the Reichstag Fire, the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House.
The Service Train
[Der Dienstzug]
BFA 12, 62; 1937; P1939; T.K.
The difficulty of governing
[Schwierigkeit des Regierens]
BFA 12, 63; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The necessity of propaganda
[Notwendigkeit der Propaganda]
BFA 12, 65; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The poem makes clear reference to events, speeches, and policies in Nazi Germany.
The improvements of the regime
[Die Verbesserungen des Regimes]
BFA 12, 67; 1937; P1939; T.K.
Again there are clear references to National Socialist policies. For example, the Nazis appropriated International Labour Day (May 1, following a decision of the 1889 International Socialist Congress) and turned it into a nationalist “Day of National Work.”
The fears of the regime
[Die Ängste des Regimes]
BFA 12, 68; 1937; P1938; T.K.
Wishing someone a “good morning” was, in the Third Reich, tantamount to refusing to give the Hitler greeting. Brecht seems to have invented the story of the Assyrian Tar, although he may have been elaborating and confusing tales of the city of Nineveh—destroyed by prophecy rather than by military might.
Guns before butter
[Kanonen nötiger als Butter]
BFA 12, 70; 1938; P1938; T.K.
“Iron ore has always made empires strong, butter and lard can only ever make a people fat,” so said Göring in 1935, and the phrase was taken up by Rudolf Hess the next year: “Guns before butter.” John Heartfield published a famous photomontage in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung in December 1935 of a family sitting down to a meal of metalwork.
The young and the Third Reich
[Die Jugend und das Dritte Reich]
BFA 12, 71; 1937; P1937; T.K.
War, they say, is well prepared
[Der Krieg soll gut vorbereitet sein]
BFA 12, 72; 1937; P1938; T.K.
Love of the Führer
[Die Liebe zum Führer]
BFA 12, 72; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The reference in the last lines is to the so-called Night of the Long Knives of June 30, 1934, when Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders, left-wing Nazis, conservatives, and other potential Hitler opponents were murdered.
What the Führer does not know
[Was der Führer nicht weiss]
BFA 12, 73; 1937; P1937; T.K.
Words that the Führer cannot bear to hear
[Wörter, die der Führer nicht hören kann]
BFA 12, 74; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The cares of the Chancellor
[Die Sorgen des Kanzlers]
BFA 12, 75; 1937; P1937; T.K.
In stanza 5 the reference is again to the Röhm affair.
Comfort from the Chancellor
[Trost vom Kanzler]
BFA 12, 76; 1937; P1938; T.K.
The Jew, a misfortune for the Volk
[Der Jude, ein Unglück für das Volk]
BFA 12, 76; 1938; P1939; T.K.
The government as artist
[Die Regierung als Künstler]
BFA 12, 77; 1937; P1938; T.K.
The duration of the Third Reich
[Dauer des Dritten Reiches]
BFA 12, 78; 1937; P1937; T.K.
A prohibition on theatre criticism
[Verbot der Theaterkritik]
BFA 12, 79; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The aestheticization of politics was one of Brecht’s great themes. Here Brecht includes references to Leni Riefenstahl’s films, the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg, and Wagner’s operas. Baldur von Schirach was Reichsjugendführer and one of the ideologues of the Party, often satirized for his effeminate manner. Joseph Goebbels had one leg shorter than the other, following a childhood illness.
You, sitting there in the bow of the boat
[Du der du, sitzend im Buge des Bootes]
BFA 12, 81; 1939; P1939; T.K.
Brecht spent much of the 1930s in a house in Skovsbostrand on the south coast of the Danish island of Fyn, near Svendborg. The poems of this section make frequent reference to his situation there.
On the label emigrant
[Über die Bezeichnung Emigranten]
BFA 12, 81; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The “sound” is the arm of the sea that Brecht could see from the house in Skovsbostrand.
Thoughts on the duration of exile
[Gedanken über die Dauer des Exils]
BFA 12, 82; c. 1937; P1939; T.K.<
br />
Refuge
[Zufluchtsstätte]
BFA 12, 83; c. 1937; P1939; T.K.
The “oar” is probably a reference to a style of thatched roof in Denmark, with a wooden frame on the ridge. The Brechts’ house in Skovsbostrand had such a roof.
And in your country?
[Und in eurem Lande?]
BFA 12, 83; 1935; P1939; T.K.
One typescript is addressed to Lion Feuchtwanger in France; another was sent, with a dedication, to Berthold Viertel in America.
Driven out with good reason
[Verjagt mit gutem Grund]
BFA 12, 84; 1938; P1939; T.K.
To those born after
[An die Nachgeborenen]
BFA 12, 85–87; 1939; P1939; T.K.
Part IV
The War Years: Poems in Europe and America, 1938–1945
STUDIES
On Dante’s poems to Beatrice
[Über die Gedichte des Dante auf die Beatrice]
BFA 11, 269; 1934; P1951; D.C.
This poem is an almost identical version of ‘The twelfth sonnet,’ written for Margarete Steffin. Although written earlier than the others published here, in 1938 Brecht took this one up again as the first of his group of eight Studies.
On Shakespeare’s Hamlet
[Über Shakespeares Stück Hamlet]
BFA 11, 269; 1938; P1951; D.C.
See also ‘Sonnet: The winner.’ As there, Brecht alludes to Act 4, Scene 4, of the play; and he adds Fortinbras’s comment on the dead Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, lines 404–5.
On Kant’s definition of marriage in his Metaphysics of Morals
[Über Kants Definition der Ehe in der Metaphysik der Sitten]
BFA 11, 270; 1938; P1951; D.C.
Brecht alludes quite closely to Part I, paragraph 4, of Kant’s treatise published in 1797.
On Lenz’s bourgeois tragedy The Tutor
[Über das bürgerliche Trauerspiel Der Hofmeister von Lenz]
BFA 11, 270; 1940; P1951; D.C.
The full and ironic title of J.M.R. Lenz’s play (1772–73) is The Tutor, or Advantages of a Private Education. Brecht adapted the work for performance by the Berliner Ensemble in 1950. Its hero Läuffer seemed to him (and many others) to epitomize the craven adaptability of Germany’s intelligentsia.