Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 5

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  It was one of Brecht’s endless inconsistencies (or ‘contradictions’) that, while believing firmly in the need for change, he established certain standard productions which other directors of his plays were expected to study before deciding their own interpretations. Mother Courage was a prime candidate for this treatment, thanks on the one hand to its high reputation with other theatres throughout the globe and on the other to the critical disagreements which it provoked. The ‘Mother Courage Model’ therefore consists not only of the notes which we print on pp. 277–323 but of a series of carefully-keyed photographs of the Berliner Ensemble production which exists in a published version but was originally made as a much fuller and more detailed album for loan to prospective directors. Brecht’s purpose here has often been regarded as absurdly rigid, and the Ensemble itself has been accused of putting Brecht’s works into some kind of airless museum showcase. On the one hand there have been instances of lifeless copying or resentful friction whenever the standard model was imposed; on the other it has shocked more jealously ‘original’ producers to go as far as they can in some alternative, if not actually opposite, direction. Seldom has any director done what Brecht really had in mind: that is, gone through the ‘model’ to see exactly what problems Brecht was trying to solve in each detail of his production, and how he arrived at his answers, and then gone on to think out an approach of his own based on the same understanding of the play. So the use of Model-books has proved to be a somewhat two-edged device, hindering as much as helping the assimilation of this great play, particularly by non-German theatres.

  Certainly Mother Courage has never become securely established in the English-speaking countries, where the size of the cast and the length of the play present a more formidable initial problem than they do in the German subsidised theatres. Generally it has proved a box-office disaster, and the one production to enjoy a long run – Richard Schechner’s with the Performance Group off-Broadway – seems to have done so more because of its original treatment of the audience than by its conception and performance of the text; it became a vivid, sharply biting Courage experience, almost a happening. The odd thing is that this overall failure in the professional theatre has not impaired the play’s critical and academic reputation, nor even its attraction for amateurs, to whom of course a large cast often seems an advantage. As a result Mother Courage is still somehow lurking in the wings as an enormous challenge, even something of a reproach to our finest directors and actors. Why have they never been able to communicate its pessimism, its savagery and its force? A large part of the reason surely lies in the language, which in the original is unique, the invention of a major poet who chose neither to imitate seventeenth-century dialogue nor to reproduce modern everyday speech but devised his own curt, sardonic lingo, full of elisions and with few conjunctions, vividly conveying not only Courage’s own character but also the hard pressures of the war. This is established in the very first speeches, and from then on it becomes the principal dynamic force of what is otherwise a stragglingly episodic play. Those directors who have enough German to appreciate it have generally treated it as untranslatable, thereby losing their main chance of holding the audience’s attention; the sense has been communicated at the cost of Brecht’s imaginative assault on the ear. Our translation therefore sets out to tackle this key problem by using a somewhat analogous artificial diction, based this time on those north English cadences which can reflect a similarly dry, gloomily humorous approach to great events. It could have been done in other ways – by a Welsh or Irish writer perhaps, or one versed in Lallans – but so far it has not. The aim must be to find a language which will keep the play moving across twelve years of history, a great slice of devastated Europe and, last but not least, three or four hours in the theatre.

  Add this to the barriers sometimes presented by the ‘Model’, plus the widespread feeling among actors that performing Brecht demands outlandish technical methods, and there is some danger of Mother Courage appearing a horribly complicated play. You only have to read it to see that it is not. Even the changes which Brecht made to it are only designed to clarify and bring out more strongly what was already meant to be there; they were correctives, not major switches of direction. All this belongs in the background, to be digested and understood certainly, but not to obstruct the story of the play and the long chain of small, conflicting episodes which goes to make it up. The stage must be cleared, as Brecht cleared it in 1950 to tell German children ‘The story of Mother Courage’:

  There once was a mother

  Mother Courage they called her

  In the Thirty Years War

  She sold victuals to soldiers.

  The war did not scare her

  From making her cut

  Her three children went with her

  And so got their bit.

  Her first son died a hero

  The second an honest lad

  A bullet found her daughter

  Whose heart was too good.

  In the end it has to be as simple as that.

  Chronology

  1898

  10 February: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht born in Augsburg.

  1917

  Autumn: Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Brecht to Munich university.

  1918

  Work on his first play, Baal. In Augsburg Brecht is called up as medical orderly till end of year. Elected to Soldiers’ Council as Independent Socialist (USPD) following Armistice.

  1919

  Brecht writing second play, Drums in the Night. In January Spartacist Rising in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg murdered. April—May: Bavarian Soviet. Summer: Weimar Republic constituted. Birth of Brecht’s illegitimate son Frank Banholzer.

  1920

  May: death of Brecht’s mother in Augsburg.

  1921

  Brecht leaves university without a degree. Reads Rimbaud.

  1922

  A turning point in the arts. End of Utopian Expressionism; new concern with technology. Brecht’s first visit to Berlin, seeing theatres, actors, publishers and cabaret. He writes Of Poor BB’ on the return journey. Autumn: becomes a dramaturg in Munich. Premiere of Drums in the Night, a prize-winning national success. Marries Marianne Zoff, an opera singer.

  1923

  Galloping German inflation stabilised by November currency reform. In Munich Hitler’s new National Socialist party stages unsuccessful ‘beer-cellar putsch’.

  1924

  ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ exhibition at Mannheim gives its name to the new sobriety in the arts. Brecht to Berlin as assistant in Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater.

  1925

  Field-Marshal von Hindenburg becomes President. Elisabeth Hauptmann starts working with Brecht. Two seminal films: Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. Brecht writes birthday tribute to Bernard Shaw.

  1926

  Premiere of Man equals Man in Darmstadt. Now a freelance; starts reading Marx. His first book of poems, the Devotions, includes the ‘Legend of the Dead Soldier’.

  1927

  After reviewing the poems and a broadcast of Man equals Man, Kurt Weill approaches Brecht for a libretto. Result is the text of Mahagonny, whose ‘SongspieP version is performed in a boxing-ring at Hindemith’s Baden-Baden music festival in July. In Berlin he helps adapt The Good Soldier Schweik for Piscator’s high-tech theatre.

  1928

  August 31: premiere of The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill, based on Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

  1929

  Start of Stalin’s policy of ‘socialism in one country’. Divorced from Marianne, Brecht now marries the actress Helene Weigel. May 1: Berlin police break up banned KPD demonstration, witnessed by Brecht. Summer: Brecht writes two didactic music-theatre pieces with Weill and Hindemith, and neglects The Threepenny Opera’s successor Happy End, which is a flop. From now on he stands by the KPD. Autumn: Wall Street crash initiates world economic crisis. Cuts in German arts budget
s combine with renewed nationalism to create cultural backlash.

  1930

  Nazi election successes; end of parliamentary government. Unemployed 3 million in first quarter, about 5 million at end of the year. March: premiere of the full-scale Mahagonny opera in Leipzig Opera House.

  1931

  German crisis intensifies. Aggressive KPD arts policy: agitprop theatre, marching songs, political photomontage. In Moscow the Comintern forms international associations of revolutionary artists, writers, musicians and theatre people.

  1932

  Premiere of Brecht’s agitational play The Mother (after Gorky) with Eisler’s music. Kuhle Wampe, his militant film with Eisler, is held up by the censors. He meets Sergei Tretiakov at the film’s premiere in Moscow. Summer: the Nationalist Von Papen is made Chancellor. He denounces ‘cultural bolshevism’, and deposes the SPD-led Prussian administration.

  1933

  January 30: Hitler becomes Chancellor with Papen as his deputy. The Prussian Academy is purged; Goering becomes Prussian premier. A month later the Reichstag is burnt down, the KPD outlawed. The Brechts instantly leave via Prague; at first homeless. Eisler is in Vienna, Weill in Paris, where he agrees to compose a ballet with song texts by Brecht: The Seven Deadly Sins, premiered there in June. In Germany Nazi students burn books; all parties and trade unions banned; first measures against the Jews. Summer: Brecht in Paris works on anti-Nazi publications. With the advance on his Threepenny Novel, he buys a house on Fyn island, Denmark, overlooking the Svendborg Sound, where the family will spend the next six years. Margarete Steffin, a young Berlin Communist, goes with them. Autumn: he meets the Danish Communist actress Ruth Berlau, a doctor’s wife.

  1934

  Spring: suppression of Socialist rising in Austria. Eisler stays with Brecht to work on Round Heads and Pointed Heads songs. Summer: Brecht misses the first Congress of Soviet Writers, chaired by Zhdanov along the twin lines of Socialist Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism. October: in London with Eisler.

  1935

  Italy invades Ethiopia. Hitler enacts the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews. March—May: Brecht to Moscow for international theatre conference. Meets Kun and Knorin of Comintern Executive. Eisler becomes president of the International Music Bureau. At the 7th Comintern Congress Dimitrov calls for all antifascist parties to unite in Popular Fronts against Hitler and Mussolini. Autumn: Brecht with Eisler to New York for Theatre Union production of The Mother.

  1936

  Soviet purges lead to arrests of many Germans in USSR, most of them Communists; among them Carola Neher and Ernst Ottwalt, friends of the Brechts. International cultural associations closed down. Official campaign against ‘Formalism’ in the arts. Mikhail Koltsov, the Soviet journalist, founds Das Wort as a literary magazine for the German emigration, with Brecht as one of the editors. Popular Front government in Spain resisted by Franco and other generals, with the support of the Catholic hierarchy. The Spanish Civil War becomes a great international cause.

  1937

  Summer: in Munich, opening of Hitler’s House of German Art. Formally, the officially approved art is closely akin to Russian ‘Socialist Realism’. In Russia Tretiakov is arrested as a Japanese spy, interned in Siberia and later shot. October: Brecht’s Spanish war play Señora Carrar’s Rifles, with Weigel in the title part, is performed in Paris, and taken up by antifascist and amateur groups in many countries.

  1938

  January: in Moscow Meyerhold’s avant-garde theatre is abolished. March: Hitler takes over Austria without resistance. It becomes part of Germany. May 21: premiere of scenes from Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich in a Paris hall. Autumn: Munich Agreement, by which Britain, France and Italy force Czechoslovakia to accept Hitler’s demands. In Denmark Brecht writes the first version of Galileo. In Moscow Koltsov disappears into arrest after returning from Spain.

  1939

  March: Hitler takes over Prague and the rest of the Czech territories. Madrid surrenders to Franco; end of the Civil War. Eisler has emigrated to New York. April: the Brechts leave Denmark for Stockholm. Steffin follows. May: Brecht’s Svendborg Poems published. His father dies in Germany. Denmark accepts Hitler’s offer of a Non-Aggression Pact. August 23: Ribbentrop and Molotov agree Nazi-Soviet Pact. September 1: Hitler attacks Poland and unleashes Second World War. Stalin occupies Eastern Poland, completing its defeat in less than three weeks. All quiet in the West. Autumn: Brecht writes Mother Courage and the radio play Lucullus in little over a month. November: Stalin attacks Finland.

  1940

  Spring: Hitler invades Norway and Denmark. In May his armies enter France through the Low Countries, taking Paris in mid-June. The Brechts hurriedly leave for Finland, taking Steffin with them. They aim to travel on to the US, where Brecht has been offered a teaching job in New York at the New School. July: the Finnish writer Helia Wuolijoki invites them to her country estate, which becomes the setting for Puntila, the comedy she and Brecht write there.

  1941

  April: premiere of Mother Courage in Zurich. May: he gets US visas for the family and a tourist visa for Steffin. On 15 th they leave with Berlau for Moscow to take the Trans-Siberian railway. In Vladivostok they catch a Swedish ship for Los Angeles, leaving just nine days before Hitler, in alliance with Finland, invades Russia. June: Steffin dies of tuberculosis in a Moscow sanatorium, where they have had to leave her. July: once in Los Angeles, the Brechts decide to stay there in the hope of film work. December: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brings the US into the war. The Brechts become ‘enemy aliens’.

  1942

  Spring: Eisler arrives from New York. He and Brecht work on Fritz Lang’s film Hangmen Also Die. Brecht and Feuchtwanger write The Visions of Simone Machard; sell rights to MGM. Ruth Berlau takes a job in New York. August: the Brechts rent a pleasant house and garden in Santa Monica. Autumn: Germans defeated at Stalingrad and El Alamein. Turning point of World War 2.

  1943

  Spring: Brecht goes to New York for three months – first visit since 193 5 – where he stays with Berlau till May and plans a wartime Schweik play with Kurt Weill. In Zurich the Schauspielhaus gives world premieres of The Good Person of Szechwan and Galileo. November: his first son Frank is killed on the Russian front.

  1944

  British and Americans land in Normandy (June); Germans driven out of France by end of the year. Heavy bombing of Berlin, Hamburg and other German cities. Brecht works on The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and with H. R. Hays on The Duchess of Malfi. His son by Ruth Berlau, born prematurely in Los Angeles, lives only a few days. Start of collaboration with Charles Laughton on English version of Galileo.

  1945

  Spring: Russians enter Vienna and Berlin. German surrender; suicide of Hitler; Allied military occupation of Germany and Austria, each divided into four Zones. Roosevelt dies; succeeded by Truman; Churchill loses elections to Attlee. June: Private Life of the Master Race (wartime adaptation of Fear and Misery scenes) staged in New York. August: US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrenders. Brecht and Laughton start discussing production of Galileo.

  1946

  Ruth Berlau taken to hospital after a violent breakdown in New York. Work with Auden on Duchess ofMalfi, which is finally staged there in mid-October – not well received. The Brechts have decided to return to Germany. Summer: A. A. Zhdanov reaffirms Stalinist art policies: Formalism bad, Socialist Realism good. Eisler’s brother Gerhart summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. November: the Republicans win a majority in the House. Cold War impending.

  1947

  FBI file on Brecht reopened in May. Rehearsals begin for Los Angeles production of Galileo, with Laughton in the title part and music by Eisler; opens July 31. Brecht’s HUAC hearing October 30; a day later he leaves the US for Zurich.

  1948

  In Zurich renewed collaboration with Caspar Neher. Production of Antigone in Chur, with Weigel. Berlau arrives from US. Summer: Puntila wo
rld premiere at Zurich Schauspielhaus. Brecht completes his chief theoretical work, the Short Organum. Travel plans hampered because he is not allowed to enter US Zone (which includes Augsburg and Munich). Russians block all land access to Berlin. October: the Brechts to Berlin via Prague, to establish contacts and prepare production of Mother Courage.

  1949

  January: success of Mother Courage leads to establishment of the Berliner Ensemble. Collapse of Berlin blockade in May followed by establishment of West and East German states. Eisler, Dessau and Elisabeth Hauptmann arrive from US and join the Ensemble.

  1950

  Brecht gets Austrian nationality in connection with plan to involve him in Salzburg Festival. Long drawn-out scheme for Mother Courage film. Spring: he and Neher direct Lenz’s The Tutor with the Ensemble. Autumn: he directs Mother Courage in Munich; at the end of the year The Mother with Weigel, Ernst Busch and the Ensemble.

  1951

  Selection of A Hundred Poems is published in East Berlin. Brecht beats off Stalinist campaign to stop production of Dessau’s opera version of Lucullus.