Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, a play by B. Brecht, written in exile in Denmark 1938-9. The revised version was first produced in the Schauspielhaus, Zurich, in April 1941. Its first performance in Germany was in the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, in January 1949. The play consists of twelve scenes, each of which is preceded by chapter headings (Spruchbänder) giving a summary of the plot (Fabel). Brecht freely adapted the principal figure, Courasche, from the novel Trutz Simplex by J. C. Grimmelshausen.

The play covers some twelve years (1624-36) of the Thirty Years War (see Dreissigjähriger Krieg), depicting at various locations in Sweden, Poland, and Germany (among them Magdeburg, Ingolstadt, the Fichtelgebirge, and Halle), Mutter Courage's struggle for existence. A cantinière, she follows the troops engaged in fighting for the Protestant cause through victory and defeat, trailing the covered wagon (Planwagen) which houses her goods and is the family home. She has three children of different paternity, Eilif, Schweizerkas, and the dumb Kattrin, all of whom are, at different times and for different reasons, killed. Eilif is executed during the short-lived truce after the battle of Lützen for his brutality against peasants, which had brought him credit during the fighting. Schweizerkas dies for his honesty and loyalty: he refuses to surrender the regimental cash-box to the enemy, whose side his mother has prudently and temporarily taken. Kattrin dies when she asserts her compassion: she is shot on the roof of a farmhouse outside the city of Halle as she successfully beats the alarm, warning the inhabitants for the sake of their children of the approaching imperial forces. At the end of the play Mutter Courage alone pulls the wagon, which at the opening was drawn by her sons, determined to follow her regiment, to restore her business, and to find Eilif, of whose execution she is ignorant.

A number of characters, denoted by their rank and occupation rather than name, support the action, which is designed to expose the horrors of war as experienced by the ordinary people, soldiers, and peasants. Mutter Courage depends on the war for her living; her business fluctuates with the ups and downs of the fortunes of her regiment, but peace threatens to ruin it. Brecht leaves it to his audience to comprehend the futility. Several songs, among them ‘Das Lied vom Weib und dem Soldaten’, ‘Das Lied vom Fraternisieren’, ‘Das Lied von der Großen Kapitulation’, and ‘Das Lied von Salomon’ support the didactic intentions of the play, and ‘Eia popeia’, Mutter Courage's cradle song by her daughter's body, marks its most moving climax. Brecht's comments on the play include his instructions for production contained in the Couragemodell of 1949 (1958) and this statement: ‘Die Courage—dies sei gesagt, der theatralischen Darstellung zu helfen—erkennt zusammen mit … nahezu jedermann das rein merkantile Wesen des Kriegs: das ist gerade, was sie anzieht … Dem Stückeschreiber obliegt es nicht, die Courage am Ende sehend zu machen—, … ihm kommt es darauf an, daß der Zuschauer sieht.’ (Anmerkungen zu ‘Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder’. See also Episches Theater.)