Die Mutter

Mutter, Die, a play in 14 episodes in prose and verse by B. Brecht described as Leben der Revolutionärin Pelagea Wlassowa aus Twer and based on M. Gorky's novel Mother (1907). It was written (in collaboration with G. Weisenborn) in 1931 and first performed on 17 January 1932, the anniversary of the death of ‘the great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg’ (Versuche, vol. 7) in Berlin (Theater am Schiffbauerdamm). (See Luxemburg, R.)

The worker Pavel Vlassow and other collaborators in the revolutionary movement win his mother's support, which becomes stronger after Pavel's arrest for his part in the demonstrations of 1 May 1905, his exile in Siberia, and his death on his flight towards the Finnish frontier. Rejecting the consolation of religion, Pelagea controls her grief at her son's death, for the cause to which she is committed can only be promoted by rational conduct; it is better for her son to have died than to lead a bad life with religion, which in her (and her party's) view has done nothing to relieve the lot of the poor. Her sufferings nevertheless cause her to fall ill. When she hears of the Tsar's mobilization and the outbreak of the war, she, too, decides to mobilize: the sick mother decides to lead the sick party and is braver than the workers although she is beaten up by the police. In 1917 the 60-year-old ‘mother of the revolution’ heads with the red flag the anti-war demonstrations of the strikers and naval deserters, and appeals in the epilogue for an all-out fight for victory.