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Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939)

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939). Brecht in exile: ‘ öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd ’ (‘An die Nachgeborenen ’). 27.2.1933: Reichstag set on fire – Brecht leaves same night Moves to Svendborg (Denmark) v ia Vienna and Zurich 1934: Brecht visits London

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Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939)

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  1. Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1939)

  2. Brecht in exile: ‘öfterals die Schuhe die Länderwechselnd’ (‘An die Nachgeborenen’) • 27.2.1933: Reichstag set on fire – Brecht leaves same night • Moves to Svendborg (Denmark) via Vienna and Zurich • 1934: Brecht visits London • 1935: Brecht stripped of German citizenship. Visits Moscow & meets Sergei Tretjakov • 1936: attends intl. Writers’ Conference in London • 1938: Leben des Galilei, Furcht und Elend des 3.Reiches staged in Paris • 1939: moves to Stockholm, finishes Mutter Courage • 1940: German forces invade Denmark. Brecht’s household moves to Helsinki (Finland) • 1941: travels through Soviet Union via Leningrad & Moscow and sails for US (settles in Los Angeles) • 1943: first performances of Der gute Mensch von Sezuanand Leben des Galilei in Zurich • 1947: Brecht & Helene Weigel move to Zurich • 1948: Brecht settles in Soviet sector of Berlin. Publication of KleinesOrganonfür das Theater

  3. What is a performance of Mother Courage and her children primarily meant to show? • ‘That in wartime the big profits are not made by little people. That war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes the human virtues fatal even to their possessors. That no sacrifice is too great for the struggle against war.’

  4. Ideology • War as ‘business with other means’ • The socio-political space of (petty) bourgeois individual in overall social/economic/political order • Benjamin’s question of position to vs. relation within the relations of production.

  5. Mutter Courage as allegory • 30 Years’ War (1618-48) • Result of political upheaval following Reformation dividing Christian Europe into Catholic and Protestant states. • In Play: Swedes = Protestantism (2nd Finnish Regiment is part of Swedish Army) • Imperial Forces = Catholic states: • Religion in play mere pretext for political/ economic interests

  6. Holy Roman Empire ca. 1600

  7. Protestant leader King Gustavus-Adolphus of Sweden, 1594-1632

  8. Imperial generals Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly 1559-1632 Albrecht von Wallenstein, 1583-1634

  9. Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1622-1676) • Trutz Simplex oder Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche (ca 1669) • Simplicissimus Teutsch (1668)

  10. Andreas Gryphius(1616-1634) Friedrich Schiller Geschichte des dreissigjährigenKrieges’ 1792 ‘Wallenstein’-Trilogy, 1799 Wallensteins Lager Die Piccolomini Wallensteins Tod • ‘Tränen des Vaterlandes, Anno 1636’

  11. Modernist forms • Painting: Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism • Music: A-tonality, disharmony, dodekaphonic composition • Literature: stream of consciousness, montage, radical perspectivism • Film • Theatre: destruction of ‘interior’, clash of social forces • Monet, Cezanne, Picasso,Blauer Reiter, Die Brücke, Russian formalists • Schönberg, Webern, Berg (2nd Viennese school) • Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Döblin, Kafka • Eisenstein, Vertov • Expressionism, Brecht

  12. Brecht the modernist • Self-fragmentation of ‘work’, breaking up of forms • Meta-aesthetic & self-reflexivity • Auto-poiesis • Perspectivism • Experiments • Process over ‘work’ as finished article • Avant-garde (series of –isms: Naturalism, Im/Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism…

  13. Popular Front (1934) • Union of French Communist party with bourgeois camp against fascism • Realism as overarching aesthetics • In SU: declaration of all forms of Modernism as ‘counter-revolutionary – doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’

  14. The ‘Expressionismus-Debatte’ • Discussion in German exile journals about inherent fascist tendencies in Expressionism • Georg Lukàcz: declares modernist forms ‘subjectivist’ and calls for ‘great realist’ • (‘Realism in the Balance’, 1936)

  15. Modernism as ‘Subjectivism’ (Lukàcz) • means that modernist techniques (e.g. the representation of a person’s inner mind in interior monologue) only captures the ‘appearance’ of the world, not the objective ‘essence’. • I.e. it represents the world upside down, as it appears to the individual. • Hence: modernism is ideological

  16. Ideologeme • ‘historically determinate conceptual or semic complex which can project itself variously in the form of ‘value systems’, philosophical concepts or private/collective fantasy’ • ‘manifest(s) itself either as a pseudoidea – a conceptual or belief system, an abstract value, an opinion or prejudice – or as a protonarrative, a kind of ultimate class fantasy about the “collective characters” which are the classes in opposition’ • (Fredrick Jameson, The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, London, 1981, 87) • Family, Motherhood, Business as Usual

  17. Mother Courage model • ‘Scenic Writing’ – stage, lighting, movements etc. • Signifying systems on stage that can be ‘read’ • E.g. Songs as part of a signification separate from dialogue (by lighting, acting, etc.) • Separation of elements marks independence of signifying systems in conflict with each other

  18. Gestic principle of Epic Theatre • Gestus – word, gesture, action by which attitudes encoded in playtext become visible • gestic language: everybody speaking on two levels all the time • Dialogue in conflict with action • See Brecht’s article:

  19. Gestus • synthetic quality: several aspects of human behaviour are summarised in a complex and allocated specific meaning • generalising quuality: the general becomes visible in the particular gestures (facial expressions/posture/features determined by social gestus) • analytical quality: separates individual phases & features from a complex appearance of human behaviour • constructive quality: combines & relates these individual units into the composition of theatrical event.

  20. ‘Gestic principle’ substitutes ‘mimetic principle’: facial expression expressing the psychological conflict of the character in immediate fashion. • this gives you ‘man as such’: dehistoricises and desocialisescharacter: • i.e. mimetic principle isolates human from social context.

  21. ‘Das Lebenisttitellos’ • MC plucking of fowl, sc. 2: reminder of profit motive while dialogue is about MS’s insight into ideology of warfare • Opening of scene 3: • Basic Gest: in corruptible milieu young man is told to be honest

  22. Brechtian ‘science’ • Not Newtonian (i.e. dependent on removal of subject from experiment to produce ‘objective’ knowledge) • Closer to modern Physics (Heisenberg, Bohr, Mach) – indeterminacy principle • Result dependent on position of observer ‘facts can very seldom be caught with their clothes on’ BOT, 226) • Something cannot be two things at same time (Aristotelian Logic) • Brecht: knowledge that one is not always identical with one ‘is one of the principles of the Great Method’ (Me-Ti. Buch der Wendungen, GS 12)

  23. War as ‘normal’ • War as ‘deep structure’ affecting everything on stage • Opening scene: war as ‘order’ • War and ‘morality’: what ‘virtues’ are extolled in war? • Relativity of virtues vs. idea of their absolute value • War and ‘history’ as instable:

  24. Brecht, ‘FrageneineslesendenArbeiters’ (1938) • Wer baute das siebentorige Theben?In den Büchern stehen die Namen von Königen.Haben die Könige die Felsbrocken herbeigeschleppt?Und das mehrmals zerstörte BabylonWer baute es so viele Male auf? In welchen HäusernDes goldstrahlenden Lima wohnten die Bauleute?Wohin gingen an dem Abend, wo die Chinesische Mauer fertig warDie Maurer? Das große RomIst voll von Triumphbögen. Wer errichtete sie? Über wenTriumphierten die Cäsaren? Hatte das vielbesungene ByzanzNur Paläste für seine Bewohner? Selbst in dem sagenhaften AtlantisBrüllten in der Nacht, wo das Meer es verschlangDie Ersaufenden nach ihren Sklaven. • Der junge Alexander eroberte Indien.Er allein?Cäsar schlug die Gallier.Hatte er nicht wenigstens einen Koch bei sich?Philipp von Spanien weinte, als seine FlotteUntergegangen war. Weinte sonst niemand?Friedrich der Zweite siegte im Siebenjährigen Krieg. WerSiegte außer ihm? • Jede Seite ein Sieg.Wer kochte den Siegesschmaus?Alle zehn Jahre ein großer Mann.Wer bezahlte die Spesen? • So viele Berichte.So viele Fragen.

  25. Mutter Courage and ‘history’ • What is ‘history’? • Who writes ‘history’, what does it consist of? • Whose life/experience/deeds are ‘recorded’ and by whom? • Who are the ‘makers of history’? • Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V, King John • Schiller’s plays about 30 Years’ War: Wallensteins Lager, Die Piccolomini, Wallensteins Tod (1798-99) • Historical figures in Mutter Courage?

  26. The Historiscist school of Historiography • ‘Historismus’ (first time used by Schiller 1797). • Leopold von Ranke’s ‘wieeseigentlichgewesenist’ (1795-1886), founder of modern historiography as science: Geschichtswissenschaft • ‘Nacherzählen’ of history by making visible principal characters, actants and forces • Principle of empathy (with whom?) • Principle of absence of judgement • Isolation of historical period from pre-and after-effects (‘every period is immediate to God’) • Attains idea of itself as ‘science’ (i.e. objective) at poin t of attainment of narrativity (Hayden White, The Content of the Form, 1990)

  27. Fustel de CoulangesempfiehltdemHistoriker, wolleereineEpochenacherleben, so solleeralles, was ervomspäternVerlauf der Geschichte wisse, sichausdem Kopf schlagen. Besserist das Verfahrennichtzukennzeichnen, mitdem der historischeMaterialismusgebrochen hat. EsisteinVerfahren der Einfühlung. SeinUrsprungist die Trägheit des Herzens, die acedia, welchedaranverzagt, des echtenhistorischenBildessichzubemächtigen, das flüchtigaufblitzt. Siegaltbei den Theologen des Mittelaltersals der Urgrund der Traurigkeit. […] Die NaturdieserTraurigkeitwirddeutlicher, wenn man die Frageaufwirft, in wen sichdenn der Geschichtsschreiber des Historismuseigentlicheinfühlt. Die Antwortlautetunweigerlich in den Sieger. Die jeweilsHerrschendensindaber die Erbenaller, die je gesiegthaben. Die Einfühlung in den Siegerkommtdemnach den jeweilsHerrschendenallemalzugut. DamitistdemhistorischenMaterialistengenuggesagt. WerimmerbiszudiesemTage den Siegdavontrug, der marschiertmit in demTriumphzug, der die heuteHerrschendenüber die dahinführt, die heute am Bodenliegen. Die Beutewird, wie das immer so üblich war, imTriumphzugmitgeführt. Man bezeichnetsieals die Kulturgüter. SiewerdenimhistorischenMaterialistenmiteinemdistanziertenBetrachterzurechnenhaben. Denn was er an Kulturgüternüberblickt, das istihmsamt und sonders von einerAbkunft, die ernichtohneGrauenbedenkenkann. EsdanktseinDaseinnichtnur der Mühe der großenGenien, die esgeschaffenhaben, sondernauch der namenlosenFronihrerZeitgenossen. EsistniemalseinDokument der Kultur, ohnezugleicheinsolches der Barbareizusein. Und wieesselbstnichtfreiist von Barbarei, so istesauch der Prozeß der Überlieferungnicht, in der es von demeinen an den anderngefallenist. Der historische Materialist rücktdahernachMaßgabedes Möglichen von ihr ab. Erbetrachtetesals seine Aufgabe, die Geschichte gegen den Strichzubürsten. Walter Benjamin, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, 1941

  28. NürnbergerKaiserburg

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