Historical Context

Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children was written and first produced in the 1940s, a time when Europe, and the world at large, seemed upside down. Brecht’s homeland, Germany, had seen tremendous social and political change after WWI with the rise of the Nazi party and the perpetration of the Holocaust. Surrounding these events, most of rest of the Western world was engaged with Germany in the Second World War. Brecht, having been exiled from Germany for his political views and outspoken opposition, had took up residence in the United States and wrote this play. Mother Courage and Her Children is a product of its time, greatly colored by the war and the Holocaust, as well as the prevalence of Marxism, Brecht’s own political philosophy, throughout Europe. These sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors, the horrors of Nazi society and the plight of the worker, shape the story and message of the play.

Nazi Propoganda, 1932

  The sociopolitical contexts of the tragedy of the Holocaust greatly influenced the theme, and tone of this play. Mother Courage and Her Children was written in the early 1940s in the early years of WWII, and after almost a decade of systematic Nazi German oppression and annihilation of the “inferior” members of society, namely the Jews. The play, set in the 1600s during the 30 Years War, encapsulates the perpetual horror and terror of Nazi Germany. The Holocaust is a definitive illustration of the human capacity for evil and atrocity. This notion is felt substantially in this play’s tone. The deaths of Courage’s sons are arbitrary and, in terms of the story, meaningless. Courage travels through carnage, encountering selfish as well as spineless and faceless soldiers who dole out death, chaos, and hardship at random. Courage even experiences imprisonment first-hand, with all of this suffering raining down from an anonymous, unholy power. This power is not of divinity, but rather man-made. All of the perpetual suffering in this play is brought about by human hands. This senselessness is ubiquitous in the play, setting a tone of fear and futility that mirrors the inexplicable genocide of the German Holocaust.

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Germany, 1938

 The main theme of this play, war, draws a direct parallel between Courage’s story and contemporary European society, revealing a connection to another sociopolitical backdrop: the World Wars. In light of the total destruction and desolation of World War I, Brecht uses allegory to connect the setting of the 30 Years War to the contemporary society. With this parallel, Brecht anticipates the brutal endlessness of World War II. This influence on the setting also extends to the character dynamics. As scholar Caroline Rupprecht writes in her 2006 paper “Post-war Iconographies: Wandering Women in Brecht, Duras, Kluge,” in literature, the devastation of war “manifests itself…in the depiction of actual or expecting mothers who wander through territories in which they have no home – not unlike the millions of displaced persons who wandered across the face of Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.”[1] Mother Courage is a one of these literary mothers of wartime, written even before the end of this war. Through Courage’s character, Brecht discusses both how one’s life is impacted and defined by the war society surrounding them, and how one survives in that society. Brecht is writing in the in-between stage of the World Wars – with the memory of the socially and economically devastating influence of WWI on Germany, and in anticipation of an even more destructive sequel. With this looming reprise of devastation, Brecht’ choice of setting, character premise, and overall tone can be understood as a response to the endlessness of wartime in Europe.

“The living Marx”

Just as the sociopolitical factors of the time influenced this play’ conception, so does the socioeconomic atmosphere of Europe and of Germany, such as the vitality of Marxism, which can be seen particularly in the characters of Courage and Kattrin. During the first half of the 20th century, Karl Marx’s theories of social revolution were spreading vigorously throughout Europe. Courage, true to Marxist theory of capitalism, is a direct example of a worker who is solely defined by her work and the money and product she produces. This definition of a worker by the work that they do, the disassociation of their individual identity from their worth, power, and profit, is Marx’s theory of alienation. Through the character of Courage, Brecht analyses this theory of alienation. As Daram claims, “the harder Courage labors and the more she produces the more miserable she becomes,” eventually losing her children and failing to achieve and sustain a secure social and financial state for her family because of this alienation.[2] However, Kattrin unexpectedly also exhibits characteristics of Marxist theory. According to Vork, author of “Silencing Violence: repetition and Revolution in ‘Mother Courage and Her Children,’” Kattrin, in her muteness and eventual heroic demise, exemplifies the Marxist revolutionary notion of “the performative power of speech, first and foremost seeking to liberate the human voice from those forces of trauma that render it silent.”[3] Kattrin’s death, a sacrifice of her own life for the lives of the helpless townsfolk, is an instantiation of Marxist ideals of resistance, and eventually revolution.[4] In this way, Brecht’s own political orientation can be seen in the female characters in the play.ARTSTOR_103_41822003411251

Another related socioeconomic issue that left its mark on this play is the resistance of the working class. This is abundantly clear in the themes of the play. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, they banned independent unions, catalyzing an onslaught of working class resistance to the Nazis.[5] The working class united on the grounds of “common economic experiences, a tradition of class solidarity, and a shared hatred of fascism”.[6] Courage’s main obstacle in the play is the challenge to establish and sustain herself off of her own labor, even with the individual attempts of the soldiers, representatives of the authority, to suppress and cheat her, and with the social circumstance of the war threatening her autonomous success. This obstacle parallels the obstacles of the suppressed and rebelling, working class who, forced into individual isolation, fought against the human authorities subduing them, and the corruption of the Nazi political economy on the whole. Thus, Courage’s characterization and circumstance mimic the resistance and struggles of the working class in Nazi Germany.

ARTSTOR_103_41822001752656Brecht, as a political playwright with interest in exposition and discussion of the failings of society in his epic theatre, incorporated his tempestuous contemporary sociopolitical and socioeconomic context into his play Mother Courage and Her Children. The mark of the Holocaust, both post- and pre-war Germany, the flourishing of Marxism, and the resistance of the working class can all be seen in the themes, characters, tone, and setting of this play. Mother Courage and Her Children, an episodic play about war and resilience, draws strength and meaning from the chaos in which it was first produced and conceived.

 

Works Cited

Brodsky, Patricia P. “The Hidden War: Working-Class Resistance during the Third Reich and the Postwar Suppression of its History.” Nature, Society, and Thought11.2 (1998): 171. ProQuest. Web. 13 May 2016.

Daram, Mahmoud, & Abolfazl Ahmadinia. “Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children: Marxist Concept of Alienation.” International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies [Online], 2.4 (2014): 30-39. Web. 13 May. 2016

Rupprecht, Caroline. “Post-war Iconographies: Wandering Women in Brecht, Duras, Kluge”. South Central Review 23.2 (2006): 36–57. Web…

Vork, Robert. “Silencing Violence: Repetition and Revolution in “Mother Courage and Her Children”.” Comparative Drama 47.1 (2013): 31-54. ProQuest. Web. 13 May 2016.

Bibliography

Brodsky, Patricia P. “The Hidden War: Working-Class Resistance during the Third Reich and the Postwar Suppression of its History.” Nature, Society, and Thought11.2 (1998): 171. ProQuest. Web. 13 May 2016.

Daram, Mahmoud, & Abolfazl Ahmadinia. “Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children: Marxist Concept of Alienation.” International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies [Online], 2.4 (2014): 30-39. Web. 13 May. 2016.

“Marxism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 12 May. 2016
<http://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism>.

Rupprecht, Caroline. “Post-war Iconographies: Wandering Women in Brecht, Duras, Kluge”. South Central Review 23.2 (2006): 36–57. Web…

Theater of War. Dir. John W. Walter. Perf. Meryl Streep, Tony Kushner. 2008. | KanopyStreaming.com. White Buffalo Entertainment. Web. 10 May 2016.

Vork, Robert. “Silencing Violence: Repetition and Revolution in “Mother Courage and Her Children”.” Comparative Drama 47.1 (2013): 31-54. ProQuest. Web. 13 May 2016.

[1] Rupprecht, page 36

[2] Daram, page 37

[3] Vork, page 1

[4] Vork, page 10

[5] Brodsky, page 2

[6] Brodsky, page 2

Images:

Muller, Willi Nationalsozialstische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei, “Gr. Brillant-Feuerwerk , Militar-Marsche , Konzert , im Schloßpark,” 1932, University of Minnesota Libraries.

Ziegfeld, Arnold Hillen, “87,545,000 Germans in Europe,” 1938.

“Der lebende Marx , Gedenkfeier,” 1918/1933, University of Minnesota Libraries.

“Nuremberg: Luitpold Arena: Ext.: Nazi Parade.”

“German soldiers cut beards and side curls of Orthodox Jews,” c. 1930s.