Mother Courage and Her Children


Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht, with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. The name is based on its eponymous character, Mother Courage. Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
Several years after Brecht's death in 1956, the play was adapted as a German film, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, starring Helene Weigel, Brecht's widow and a leading actress. Several critics regard the play as the greatest of the 20th century.

Synopsis

The play is set in the 17th century in Europe during the Thirty Years' War. The Recruiting Officer and Sergeant are introduced, both complaining about the difficulty of recruiting soldiers to the war. Anna Fierling enters pulling a cart containing provisions for sale to soldiers, and introduces her children Eilif, Kattrin, and Schweizerkas. The sergeant negotiates a deal with Mother Courage while Eilif is conscripted by the Recruiting Officer.
Two years thereafter, Mother Courage argues with a Protestant General's cook over a capon, and Eilif is congratulated by the General for killing peasants and slaughtering their cattle. Eilif and his mother sing "The Fishwife and the Soldier". Mother Courage scolds her son for endangering himself.
Three years later, Swiss Cheese works as an army paymaster. The camp prostitute, Yvette Pottier, sings "The Fraternization Song". Mother Courage uses this song to warn Kattrin against involving herself with soldiers. Before the Catholic troops arrive, the Cook and Chaplain bring a message from Eilif. Swiss Cheese hides the regiment's paybox from invading soldiers, and Mother Courage and companions change their insignia from Protestant to Catholic. Swiss Cheese is captured and tortured by the Catholics, having hidden the paybox by the river. Mother Courage attempts bribery to free him, planning to pawn the wagon first and redeem it with the regiment money. When Swiss Cheese claims that he has thrown the box in the river, Mother Courage backtracks on the price, and Swiss Cheese is killed. Fearing to be shot as an accomplice, Mother Courage does not acknowledge his body, and it is discarded.
Later, Mother Courage waits outside the General's tent to register a complaint and sings the "Song of Great Capitulation" to a young soldier anxious to complain of inadequate pay. The song persuades both to withdraw their complaints.
Mother Courage grows desperate to protect her business, so much so that she refuses to give fabric to treat wounded civilians. The Chaplain takes her supplies anyway.
When Catholic General Tilly's funeral approaches, the Chaplain tells Mother Courage that the Courage is again following the Protestant army.
While two peasants are trying to sell merchandise to her, they hear news of peace with the death of the Swedish king. The Cook appears and causes an argument between Mother Courage and the Chaplain. Mother Courage is off to the market while Eilif enters, dragged in by soldiers. Eilif is executed for killing a peasant while stealing livestock, trying to repeat the same act for which he was praised as hero in wartime, but Mother Courage never hears thereof. When she finds out the war continues, the Cook and Mother Courage move on with the wagon.
In the seventeenth year of the war, there is no food and no supplies. The Cook inherits an inn in Utrecht and suggests to Mother Courage that she operate it with him – but he refuses to harbour Kattrin because he fears that her disfigurement will repel potential customers. Thereafter Mother Courage and Kattrin pull the wagon by themselves.
When Mother Courage is trading in the Protestant city of Halle, Kattrin is left with a peasant family in the countryside overnight. As Catholic soldiers force the peasants to guide the army to the city for a sneak attack, Kattrin fetches a drum from the cart and beats it, waking the townspeople, but is herself shot. Early in the morning, Mother Courage sings a lullaby to her daughter's corpse, has the peasants bury it, and hitches herself to the cart.
The main character, Mutter Courage, is inspired by the main character, Courasche, from the novel The Life of Courage by Hans Jacob Grimmelshausen, published in 1670. This woman also travelled with the troops in the thirty-year war. However, unlike Brecht's Mutter Courage, Courasche did not have any children.

Context

Mother Courage is one of nine plays that Brecht wrote in resistance to the rise of Fascism and Nazism. In response to the invasion of Poland by the German armies of Adolf Hitler in 1939, Brecht wrote Mother Courage in what writers call a "white heat"—in a little over a month. As the preface to the Ralph Manheim/John Willett Collected Plays puts it:
Following Brecht's own principles for political drama, the play is not set in modern times but during the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, which involved all the German states, France and Sweden. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling, nicknamed "Mother Courage", a wily canteen woman with the Swedish Army, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play, she loses all three of her children, Schweizerkas, Eilif, and Kattrin, to the very war from which she tried to profit.

Overview

The name of the central character, Mother Courage, is drawn from the picaresque writings of the 17th-century German writer Grimmelshausen. His central character in the 1670 novel The Life of Courage also struggles and connives her way through the Thirty Years' War in Germany and Poland. Otherwise the story is mostly Brecht's, in collaboration with Steffin.
The action of the play takes place over the course of 12 years, represented in 12 scenes. Some give a sense of Courage's career, but do not provide time for viewers to develop sentimental feelings and empathize with any of the characters. Meanwhile, Mother Courage is not depicted as a noble character. The Brechtian epic theatre distinguished itself from the ancient Greek tragedies, in which the heroes are far [|above] the average. Neither does Brecht's ending of his play inspire any desire to imitate the main character, Mother Courage.
Mother Courage is among Brecht's most famous plays. Some directors consider it to be the greatest play of the 20th century. Brecht expresses the dreadfulness of war and the idea that virtues are not rewarded in corrupt times. He used an epic structure to force the audience to focus on the issues rather than getting involved with the characters and their emotions. Epic plays are a distinct genre typical of Brecht. Some critics believe that he created the form.

As epic theatre

Mother Courage is an example of Brecht's concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt, or "V" effect; preferably "alienation" or "estrangement effect" Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene, juxtaposition, actors changing characters and costume on stage, the use of narration, simple props and scenery. For instance, a single tree would be used to convey a whole forest, and the stage is usually flooded with bright white light, whether the scene depicted is a winter's night or a summer's day. Several songs, interspersed throughout the play, are used to underscore the themes of the play. They also require the audience to think about what the playwright is saying.

Roles

  • Mother Courage
  • Kattrin, her mute daughter
  • Eilif, her older son
  • Schweizerkas, her younger son
  • Recruiting Officer
  • Sergeant
  • Cook
  • Swedish Commander
  • Chaplain
  • Ordinance Officer
  • Yvette Pottier
  • Man with the Bandage
  • Another Sergeant
  • Old Colonel
  • Clerk
  • Young Soldier
  • Older Soldier
  • Peasant
  • Peasant Woman
  • Young Man
  • Old Woman
  • Another Peasant
  • Another Peasant Woman
  • Young Peasant
  • Lieutenant
  • Voice

    Performances

In German

The play was originally produced at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, produced by Leopold Lindtberg in 1941. Most of the score consisted of original compositions by the Swiss composer Paul Burkhard; the rest had been arranged by him. The musicians were placed in view of the audience so that they could be seen, one of Brecht's many techniques in epic theatre. Therese Giehse, a well-known actress at the time, took the title role. Teo Otto designed the stage.
The second production of Mother Courage took place in then East Berlin in 1949, with Brecht's wife Helene Weigel, his main actress and later also director, as Mother Courage. Paul Dessau supplied a new score, composed in close collaboration with Brecht himself. This production would highly influence the formation of Brecht's company, the Berliner Ensemble, which would provide him a venue to direct many of his plays. Brecht revised the play for this production in reaction to the reviews of the Zürich production, which empathized with the "heart-rending vitality of all maternal creatures". Even so, he wrote that the Berlin audience failed to see Mother Courage's crimes and participation in the war and focused on her suffering instead.
The next production was directed by Brecht at the Munich Kammerspiele in 1950, with the original Mother Courage, Therese Giehse, and with a set designed by Teo Otto

In English