Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 6

  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

  Priemière 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 ‘Songspiel’ 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: première 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 budgets 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: première 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

  Première 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 première 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, premièred 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: première 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 Hella Wuolijoki invites them to her country estate, which becomes the setting for Puntila, the comedy she and Brecht write there.

  1941

  April: première of Mother Courage in Zurich. May: he gets US visas for the family and a tourist visa for Steffin. On 15th 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 1935 – where he stays with Berlau till May and plans a wartime Schweik play with Kurt Weill. In Zurich the Schauspielhaus gives world premières 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 of Malfi, 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 world première 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.

  1952

  Summer: at Buckow, east of Berlin, Brecht starts planning a production of Coriolanus and discusses Eisler’s project for a Faust opera.

  1953

  Spring: Stalin dies, aged 73. A ‘Stanislavsky conference’ in the East German Academy, to promote Socialist Realism in the theatre, is followed by meetings to discredit Eisler’s libretto for the Faust opera. June: quickly suppressed rising against the East German government in Berlin and elsewhere. Brecht at Buckow notes that ‘the whole of existence has been alienated’ for him by this. Khrushchev becomes Stalin’s successor.

  1954

  January: Brecht becomes an adviser to the new East German Ministry of Culture. March: the Ensemble at last gets its own theatre on the Schiffbauerdamm. July: its production of Mother Courage staged in Paris. December: Brecht awarded a Stalin Peace Prize by the USSR.

  1955

  August: Shooting at last begins on Mother Courage film, but is broken off after ten days and the project abandoned. Brecht in poor health.

  1956

  Khrushchev denounces Stalin’s dictatorial methods and abuses of power to the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow. A copy of his speech reaches Brecht. May: Brecht in the Charité hospital to shake off influenza. August 14: he dies in the Charité of a heart infarct.

  1957

  The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Visions of Simone Machard and Schweyk in the Second World War produced for the first time in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Warsaw respectively.

  The Good Person of Szechwan

  A parable play

  Collaborators: R. BERLAU AND M. STEFFIN

  Music: PAUL DESSAU

  Translator: JOHN WILLETT

  Written in 1938–41. First produced in the Zurich Schauspielhaus on 4 February 1943

  Characters

  WANG, a water-seller

  SHEN TEH-SHUI TA

  YANG SUN, an unemployed airman

  MRS YANG, his mother

  MRS SHIN, a widow

  THE FAMILY OF EIGHT

  LIN TO, a carpenter

  MRS MI TZU, a property owner

  THE POLICEMAN

  THE CARPET-DEALER AND HIS WIFE

  THE YOUNG PROSTITUTE

  SHU FU, the barber

  THE PRIEST

  THE UNEMPLOYED MAN

  THE WAITER

  Passers-by of the Prologue

  Prologue

  A Street in the Capital of Szechwan

  It is evening. Wang, the water-seller, introduces himself to the audience.

  WANG: I am a water-seller in the capital of Szechwan province. My job is tedious. When water is short I have to go far for it. And when it is plentiful I earn nothing. But utter poverty is the rule in our province. All agree that only the gods can help us. To my inexpressible joy a widely-travelled cattle dealer has told me that some of the highest gods are already on their way, and that Szechwan may see them too. They say that the heavens are deeply disturbed by the many complaints that have been going up. For the last three days I have waited at this entrance to the city, especially towards evening, so that I may be the first to greet them. There will hardly be a chance for me later; they will be surrounded by important people and there will be far too many demands on them. But shall I be able to recognise them? They may not arrive in a group. Perhaps they will come singly, so as not to attract attention. It cannot be those men – he studies some workmen passing by – they are coming away from work. Their shoulders are bent by the burdens they have to carry. That fellow is no god either, he has inky fingers. At most he may be some kind of clerk in a cement works. I would not take those gentlemen – two gentlemen walk past – for gods even: they have the brutal faces of men who beat people, and the gods find that unnecessary. But look at these three! They seem very different. They are well nourished, show no evidence of any kind of employment, and have dust on their shoes, so they must have travelled far. It is them! Yours to command, Illustrious Ones!

  He flings himself to the ground.

  THE FIRST GOD, pleased: Have you been expecting us?

  WANG gives them a drink: For a long while. But only I knew that you were coming.

  THE FIRST GOD: We must find a lodging for tonight. Do you know of one?

  WANG: One? Lots! The city is at your service, O Illustrious Ones. Where do you wish to stay?

  The gods exchange significant looks.

  THE FIRST GOD: Try the first house, my son. Take the very first one first.

  WANG: I only fear that I may attract the enmity of the powerful, if I give one of them the preference.

  THE FIRST GOD: Then take it as an order: try the first one.

  WANG: That’s Mr Fo opposite. One moment.

  He runs to a house and hammers on the door. It opens, but one can see him being turned away. He comes hesitantly back.

  WANG: How stupid. Mr Fo happens to be out just now, and his servants dare not take the responsibility, as he is very strict. Won’t he be angry when he finds who has been turned away!

  THE GODS, smiling: Indeed.

  WANG: Another moment then! The house next door is the widow Su’s. She will be beside herself with joy.

  He runs there, but is apparently turned away once more.

  I shall have to ask across the road. She says she has only one very small room, and it’s in no fit state. I will go straight to Mr Cheng’s.

  THE SECOND GOD: But a small room is all we need. Tell her that we are coming.

  WANG: Even if it has not been cleaned? Suppose it is crawling with sp
iders?

  THE SECOND GOD: No matter. The more spiders, the fewer flies.

  THE THIRD GOD, in an amiable way: Try Mr Cheng or anybody else you like, my son. I admit I find spiders a little unattractive.

  Wang knocks at another door and is admitted.

  A VOICE FROM THE HOUSE: Get away with your gods! We’ve got enough troubles of our own.

  WANG, returning to the gods: Mr Cheng is extremely sorry, he has his whole house full of relatives and dare not appear before you, Illustrious Ones. Between ourselves, I think there are evil men among them whom he would prefer you not to see. He is much too frightened of your judgement. That must be it.

  THE THIRD GOD: Are we all that frightening?

  WANG: Only to evil people, isn’t it? We all know that Kwan province has suffered from floods for years.

  THE SECOND GOD: Oh? And why is that?

  WANG: Because they are not god-fearing people, I suppose.

  THE SECOND GOD: Rubbish. Because they didn’t look after the dam properly.

  THE FIRST GOD: Sh! To Wang: Any other prospects, my son?

  WANG: How can you ask? I have only to go to the next house, and I can have my pick. They are all falling over each other to entertain you. An unlucky combination of circumstances, you understand. Half a minute.

  He walks away hesitantly and stands in the street unable to make up his mind.

  THE SECOND GOD: What did I tell you?

  THE THIRD GOD: It may just be circumstances.

  THE SECOND GOD: Circumstances in Shun, circumstances in Kwan, and now circumstances in Szechwan. There are no god-fearing people left: that is the naked truth which you will not recognize. Our mission is hopeless, and you had better admit it.