by Tom Kuhn
German song
[Deutsches Lied]
BFA 15, 212; 1949; P1982; D.C.
Youth
[Jugend]
BFA 15, 214; 1949; P1964; D.C.
Bad times
[Schlechte Zeiten]
BFA 15, 214; 1949; P1957; D.C.
Wandering this way and that . . .
[Als ich mich herumgetrieben]
BFA 15, 215; c. 1949; P1967; D.C.
Sit down to eat.
[Nimm Platz am Tisch]
BFA 15, 215; c. 1949; P1967; D.C.
Last night I saw the Great Hag . . .
[Gestern nacht sah ich die grosse Vettel]
BFA 15, 199; 1948; P1982; D.C.
This prose poem, unfinished, belongs in spirit, with the three following, among the ‘Visions’ of the Steffin Collection.
Oh how I saw them once . . .
[Ach, wie doch einst ich sie sah]
BFA 15, 215; c. 1949; P1982; D.C.
The meter of this and the following two poems approximates to classical hexameters.
And I observed a race . . .
[Und ich sah ein Geschlecht]
BFA 15, 216; c. 1949; P1967; D.C.
Also I saw a city . . .
[Und ich sah eine Stadt]
BFA 15, 216; c. 1949; P1982; D.C.
If all the smoke in the world
[Wenn der ganze Rauch der Welt]
BFA 15, 217; c. 1949; P1982; D.C.
To the actor P.L. in exile
[An den Schauspieler P.L. im Exil]
BFA 15, 218; 1950; P1964; D.C.
The actor in question is Peter Lorre. In exile in the United States, he did visit Europe in October 1950 (after the composition of this poem) but turned down the role of Hamlet which Brecht offered him. See also ‘The swamp.’
American airmen
[Die Ammiflieger]
BFA 15, 218; 1950; P1982; D.C.
During the Berlin Airlift, June 1948–May 1949, the Soviet authorities accused their American and British counterparts of dropping vast quantities of pests on East German agricultural land.
Kite song
[Drachenlied]
BFA 15, 219; 1950; P1953; D.C.
One thing not like another
[Eines nicht wie das andere]
BFA 15, 219; 1950; P1964; D.C.
Once there was a mother . . .
[Es war einmal eine Mutter]
BFA 15, 220; 1950; P1967; T.K.
Uncle Eddie
[Onkel Ede]
BFA 15, 220; 1950; P1964; D.C.
We fly over the mountains . . .
[Über die Berge]
BFA 15, 221; 1950; P1964; D.C.
And when the tree hung full of pears . . .
[Und als der Baum voll Birnen hing]
BFA 15, 221; 1950; P1982; D.C.
The warlike schoolmaster
[Vom kriegerischen Lehrer]
BFA 15, 222; 1950; P1951; D.C.
King Fritz is Frederick the Great and Wilhelm Pieck was the first (and only) president of the GDR.
Willem’s palace
[Willems Schloss]
BFA 15, 222; 1950; P1982; D.C.
Willem is President Wilhelm Pieck. Niederschönhausen was his residence in 1949–60.
To R.
[An R.]
BFA 15, 223; 1950; P1993; T.K.
This and the following poem are responses to a poem by Ruth Berlau in which she describes her painful, cold loss of love.
Weaknesses
[Schwächen]
BFA 15, 223; 1950; P1964; T.K.
On the Ruhr there’s a house in ruins . . .
[An der Ruhr zerfällt ein Haus]
BFA 15, 223; 1950; P1993; D.C.
General Lucius D. Clay was 1947–49 military governor of the American Zone. There was a good deal of protest in the Ruhr, in the British Zone, against the dismantling and removal of industrial plants as war reparations.
In the city of Tehran . . .
[In der Stadt Teheran]
BFA 15, 224; 1950; P1951; D.C.
Brecht contributed this and the following three poems (and also ‘Against seduction’ from his Domestic Breviary) to a libretto written by his friend Caspar Neher for Rudolf Wagner-Régny’s comic opera Der Darmwäscher (The Gut-Washer).
Lovely . . .
[Lieblich ist]
BFA 15, 225; 1950; P1951; D.C.
Song of the gut-washer
[Lied des Darmwäschers]
BFA 15, 225; 1950; P1951; D.C.
Around this table here . . .
[Um diese Tafel hier]
BFA 15, 225; 1950; P1951; D.C.
The theatre of the new epoch . . .
[Das Theater des neuen Zeitalters]
BFA 15, 226; 1950; P1964; T.K.
Tschaganak Bersijew, or The cultivation of millet
[Tschaganak Bersijew oder Die Erziehung der Hirse]
BFA 15, 228; 1950; P1950; D.C.
This poem and ‘Report from Herrnburg’ belong among Brecht’s efforts before and after the war to give Communism, in the Soviet Union and then the GDR, a history, with heroic characters and their deeds, to set against not just the Hitler years but also the version of democracy being established in the Federal Republic. ‘The cultivation of millet’ was first published (in 1950) in Sinn und Form and (stanzas 20–52) in Neues Deutschland. It was performed as an oratorio, with music by Paul Dessau, in Halle in 1954. Brecht got the material for the poem from Gennadi Fisch’s Die Volksakademie (1949), a collection of twelve didactic tales having to do with agriculture in the Soviet Union. He made close use of the sixth of them, which tells the story of Tschaganak Bersijew and has the title ‘The man who achieved the impossible.’
Beys: local rulers; aul: a Tartar village or encampment.
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855–1935) was a Russian horticulturist who developed more than three hundred new types of fruit trees and berries in an attempt to prove the inheritance of acquired characteristics. His theories were adopted and elaborated by Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898–1976), who, under Stalin, became known as the “dictator” of Communist biology and grievously set back the science of genetics in the Soviet Union.
The Kursk salient: A German offensive was launched there (to the south of Moscow) on July 5, 1943. The Soviet counteroffensive turned the war decisively against Hitler.
War is made by humankind
[Den Krieg haben die Menschen gemacht]
BFA 15, 239; 1950; P1951; D.C.
The poem was written for the First German Peace Congress, held in East Berlin in November 1950, which directed itself against moves towards West German rearmament at the outbreak of the Korean War. It was first published in Mexico in the Demokratische Post, a German exile paper which began life, in 1941, as the anti-fascist Freies Deutschland/Alemania Libre.
When I left you, afterwards . . .
[Als ich nachher von dir ging]
BFA 15, 240; 1950; P1953; D.C.
This and the following three poems were set by Paul Dessau and performed at a concert in May 1953.
My love gave me a little branch . . .
[Die Liebste gab mir einen Zweig]
BFA 15, 240; 1950; P1953; D.C.
Seven roses the rose bush has . . .
[Sieben Rosen hat der Strauch]
BFA 15, 241; 1950; P1953; D.C.
When it is fun with you . . .
[Wenn du mich lachen machst]
BFA 15, 241; 1950; P1953; D.C.
Masters of their craft buy cheaply
[Die Meister kaufen billig ein]
BFA 15, 240; 1950; P1964; T.K.
Caspar Neher was Brecht’s longtime collaborator and designer. The plays referred to are presumably The Trial of Lucullus and Señora Carrar’s Rifles. The Chinese Lao-tze, the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching and subject of a poem in Svendborg Poems (‘Legend of the origin . . .’), stands here for classical composure and serenity. Who the girlfriend is, we do not know.
I
wait, brother . . .
[Ich warte, Bruder]
BFA 15, 242; c. 1950; P1982; T.K.
Fragment.
Dances
[Tänze]
BFA 15, 242; c. 1950; P1993; T.K.
Encounter with the poet Auden
[Begegnung mit dem Dichter Auden]
BFA 15, 243; c. 1950/51 (uncertain); P1982; T.K.
Auden worked with Brecht in the States; there is no record of a meeting in Berlin. The reference in the last lines is to Sartrean existentialism.
On seriousness in art
[Über den Ernst in der Kunst]
BFA 15, 243; c. 1950/51; P1967; T.K.
Essay no. 1 on The Mother
[Versuch Nr.1 zur Mutter]
BFA 15, 243; c. 1950/51; P1993; T.K.
The Berliner Ensemble put on The Mother in January 1951. The poem looks back at the unsuccessful American production of the play in 1935. Compare ‘Letter to the workers’ theatre “Theatre Union” . . .’ (above).
Report from Herrnburg
Herrnburger Bericht
BFA 15, 246; 1951; P1951; D.C.
The text was first published in Neues Deutschland on July 22, 1951, and performed as an oratorio, music by Paul Dessau, at a Peace Festival in Berlin on August 3. The East German reception was friendly enough—though there were no more performances in Brecht’s lifetime—but Western critics were contemptuous or sorrowful. Brecht worked from an account of the encounter on the frontier at Herrnburg, near Lübeck, that appeared in Neues Deutschland on June 2, 1950. The ostensible reason for halting and wishing to register the returning youngsters was that they might have become infected with TB.
East German children aged up to fourteen might join the “Young Pioneers” and after that the FDJ (Free German Youth).
Siemens-Plania, the electro-carbon factory in Berlin-Lichtenberg.
‘Lampoon’ criticizes Kurt Schumacher, leader of the SPD, and Konrad Adenauer, the West German chancellor, for their eagerness to integrate the Federal Republic into the Western Alliance. A hotel in Petersberg, on the Rhine outside Bonn, was the seat of the Allied High Commission.
The army cook’s song
[Lied des Feldkochs]
BFA 15, 253; 1951; P1993; D.C.
Brecht’s rewriting of a song written in a mixture of German and Dutch by Ernst Busch for the Berliner Ensemble premiere of Mother Courage. Busch’s song was called ‘Pfeifenpieter’ (‘Peter the Pipe’).
Song for peace
[Friedenslied]
BFA 15, 254; 1951; P1951; D.C.
Brecht’s poem is one of many responses by writers, in the context of the Korean War and worsening East-West relations in Europe, to the possibility of German rearmament. He used a translation of Pablo Neruda’s ‘Paz para los crepúsculos’ (‘Peace to the evening twilight’) as his starting point. Stanza 2 was inscribed on the first new high-rise built for working people in Berlin on the Stalinallee. The Great Banat is a territory in Central Europe divided among Romania, Serbia, and Hungary. In the eighteenth century many Swabian Germans settled there.
On a Chinese tea-root lion
[Auf einen Teewurzellöwen]
BFA 15, 255; 1951; P1951; T.K.
When Brecht put together a collection Hundert Gedichte (One Hundred Poems) John Heartfield designed a cover with the picture of a lion carved from a tea-root. The authorities complained that this was too formalist and had nothing to do with the poems, so Brecht promptly wrote this poem and included it in the volume. It was also used on the back jacket.
Brother horse . . .
[Bruder Gaul]
BFA 15, 255; 1951; P1982; D.C.
Brecht’s very free translation of Clifford Odets’ ‘Move over, Mr. Horse,’ a song from his play Night Music (1940), to which Hanns Eisler contributed a lyrical score.
On the rebuilding of the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus
[Zum Wiederaufbau des Frankfurter Schauspielhauses]
BFA 15, 255; 1951; P1951; D.C.
The lines were published in a Festschrift for the theater. Albert Schweitzer, Carl Orff, Thomas Mann, and Arthur Miller were among the other contributors.
Song about happiness
[Lied vom Glück]
BFA 15, 255; 1951; P1964; D.C.
Brecht wrote the song for a 1952 film called Frauenschicksale (Destinies of Women) made by Slatan Dudow (who also made Kuhle Wampe), comparing the lives of women in the two Germanies.
But once we were resolved at last . . .
[Als wir aber dann beschlossen]
BFA 15, 258; 1952; P1952; D.C.
The lines, originally intended for the high-rise on the Stalinallee (see ‘Song for peace,’ above) were used instead as an inscription on the “Haus Berlin” on the Strausberger Platz.
The twig of blossom . . .
[Der Blütenzweig]
BFA 15, 258; 1952; P1993; T.K.
A fragmentary role-poem for Ruth Berlau.
The man who took me in . . .
[Der Mann, der mich aufnahm]
BFA 15, 259; 1952; P1964; D.C.
Germany 1952
[Deutschland 1952]
BFA 15, 260; c. 1952; P1952; T.K.
Probably written in response to the Federal Republic’s treaty to join the Western Alliance (in May 1952), the poem was also added, as an extra scene, to the film script of Mother Courage and published in the Berliner Ensemble program of The Trial of Joan of Arc. In January 1956 Brecht sent a version of these lines in a letter to a Frankfurt municipal magistrate who was being investigated for “pro-Communist activities”; his wife in turn sent it in an open letter to the members of the West German parliament, observing that it had not been delivered to her husband in custody on the grounds that it contained “an offensive expression of solidarity.” This is possibly the last of Brecht’s many “Germany” poems.
A happy encounter
[Glückliche Begegnung]
BFA 15, 260; 1952; P1964; D.C.
Brecht wrote out a copy of the poem and gave it to his friend, the painter Hans Tombrock. One thing “lost in translation”: in line 4 the German word lesen means “to read”; in line 8 it means “to pick, pluck, gather.”
You are exhausted after long hours of work . . .
[Du bist erschöpft von langer Arbeit]
BFA 15, 261; 1952; P1965; D.C.
The poem is very likely unfinished. Brecht drafted lines for its possible completion, among them: “is it a torment to you? / then truth is a torment to you” and “a man who likes the sound of his own voice / is perhaps not wholly deaf / to the truth.”
It is better to live . . .
[Es ist besser, zu leben]
BFA 15, 262; c. 1952; P1982; D.C.
A free version of lines from the Hávamál, which Brecht, a lover of crime fiction, came across in English in Leigh Brackett’s No Good from a Corpse.
A happy occurrence
[Glücklicher Vorgang]
BFA 15, 262; c. 1952; P1964; D.C.
Not so we’ll hate one another . . .
[Nicht damit wir uns hassen]
BFA 15, 262;1952/53; P1993; D.C.
This is Brecht’s reworking of a very free translation of a passage (called ‘Prayer’) in Voltaire’s Traité sur la tolérance which he came across in an anthology entitled Lieder und Gedichte für den Frieden (Songs and Poems for Peace). The few alterations he makes to that version convert the lines from prayer to secular exhortation.
Unhappy occurrence
[Unglücklicher Vorgang]
BFA 15, 263; 1952/53; P1964; D.C.
Here the high-rises (on the Stalinallee), built in the grandiose Soviet style, disconcert their builders.
Rain among the pines
[Regen im Kiefernhain]
BFA 15, 263; 1952/53; P1982; D.C.
This is Brecht’s reworking of a translation, probably by Ruth Berlau, of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s ‘La Pioggia nel pineto’ (‘Rain in the pinewood’).
BUCKOW ELEGIES
[If the
re were a wind]
[Ginge da ein Wind]
BFA 12, 310; c. 1954; P1964; D.C.
The flower garden
[Der Blumengarten]
BFA 12, 307; 1953; P1953; D.C.
The solution
[Die Lösung]
BFA 12, 310; 1953; P1964; D.C.
Changing the wheel
[Der Radwechsel]
BFA 12, 310; 1953; P1957; D.C.
A bad morning
[Böser Morgen]
BFA 12, 310; 1953; P1957; D.C.
The old ways, still
[Gewohnheiten, noch immer]
BFA 12, 307; 1953; P1953; D.C.
Hot day
[Heisser Tag]
BFA 12, 308; 1953; P1953; D.C.
The new tongue
[Die neue Mundart]
BFA 12, 311; 1953; P1964; D.C.
Great times, wasted
[Grosse Zeit, vertan]
BFA 12, 311; 1953; P1964; D.C.
Iron
[Eisen]
BFA 12, 315; 1953?; P1957; D.C.
Smoke
[Der Rauch]
BFA 12, 308; 1953; P1953; D.C.
Eight years ago
[Vor acht Jahren]
BFA 12, 314; 1953; P1964; D.C.
The one-armed man among the trees
[Der Einarmige im Gehölz]
BFA 12, 312; 1953; P1964; D.C.
Truth unites
[Die Wahrheit einigt]
BFA 12, 315; 1953; P1964; D.C.
Rowing, conversation
[Rudern, Gespräche]
BFA 12, 307; 1953; P1953; D.C.
Provisions for a purpose
[Lebensmittel zum Zweck]
BFA 12, 312; 1953; P1964; D.C.
See also ‘Jacob’s sons go forth . . .’
On reading a modern Greek poet
[Bei der Lektüre eines spätgriechischen Dichters]
BFA 12, 312; 1953; P1964; D.C.
The poet is C. P. Cavafy; his poem is ‘Trojans.’
Fir trees
[Tannen]
BFA 12, 313; 1953?; P1957; D.C.
The sky this summer
[Der Himmel dieses Sommers]