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Eteokles in Spain? On Brecht’s Mein Bruder war ein Flieger

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Abstract

One of Bertolt Brecht’s most famous poems, Mein Bruder war ein Flieger, is often invoked as a manifesto for pacifist ideals, but some essential questions (who is the lyric I? what is the literal meaning of the poem?) have hardly received any attention. By evoking the poem’s nature as a Kinderlied, the context of its first publication, and its relationship with Brecht’s play Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar, this article tentatively identifies the source of its final pointe in a famous passage of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes, thereby suggesting—on the basis of textual comparisons—an example of far-reaching, ideological Antikerezeption in Brecht’s oeuvre, working all the way down to his Kalendergeschichten and to his Antigone.

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Notes

  1. A good analysis of its rhetorical structure in Bazing (2001, 28–33).

  2. The only meaningful variants of the 1937 princeps are “war” rather than “ist” in ll. 5 and 7 (with “Guadaramamassiv” in l.10), and above all the title Mein Bruder, der Flieger, to be compared with the title Mein Bruder, der Eroberer penned by Brecht as a variant in the proof copy of the early Svendborger Gedichte once owned by Ruth Berlau, BBA 1971/39 (the other autograph corrections in this copy did find their way into the final edition; I have checked the versions 8786–8790 listed in Ramthun 1970, 410–11). Few minor variants appear in the version that served as a basis for Hanns Eisler's musical rendering of August 1937 (under the title Spanisches Liedchen): see the “Mappe Eisler” (BBA 1251/27), and Phleps (2013, 412–14).

  3. According to BFA 12.363 (see also Kratzmeier 2013, 196) the poem was actually written in 1937, possibly after the famous German attack on Guernica on April 26th.

  4. See Roth (1993, 187–90). One may wonder if some Stichwörter and the rhythm of the short lines (especially the remarkably scanned third strophe: Bazing 2001, 32), might have been present to Brecht: it is particularly noteworthy—in opposition to strophe 1 of Mein Bruder—that the official “Legionslied” (Roth 1993, 190) presents the fighters as volunteers rather than conscribed soldiers: “Als freie Kämpfer wir uns fanden, / wir zogen aus das graue Kleid…”.

  5. See Hecht (1998, 547): Brecht had sent Benjamin some Kinderlieder as early as July 1937, which makes it very likely that Mein Bruder had already been written by that time (Kittstein 2012, 271–72; Jeske 2001, 333).

  6. On this aspect of the Svendborger Gedichte (very evident, e.g., in the famous epigram of the Deutsche Kriegsfibel: “Die Oberen sagen:/Es geht in den Ruhm./Die Unteren sagen:/Es geht ins Grab”) see Whitaker (1985, 124–25).

  7. Marsch (1974, 276): “Brechts Bruder Walter ist in diesem Gedicht sicher nicht gemeint, vielmehr die Deutschen insgesamt, die auf beiden Seiten, in Brigaden der linken Volksfrontregierung (Internationale Brigaden) und der Falange General Francos (Legion Condor), gegeneinander kämpften”. See also Hasselbach (1990, 64–65); Bazing (2001, 29).

  8. His speech at the 2nd International Writers’ Congress in Paris (16–17 July 1937: BFA 22, 323–24; Bohnen 1967, 72–74) ends on an equation between the Italian “Flugzeuggeschwader, die sich auf das unglückliche Abessinien gestürzt hatten” and the German airplanes directed against Spain: two acts of the same imperialistic logic.

  9. The newspapers—above all the Danish Politiken, for which see Bohnen (1967, 59–69, esp. 62–63)—reported at length on the sad stories of family antagonisms during the civil war.

  10. See Knopf (1980, 150–51); BFA 24, 225; Hecht (1998, 522). For a strong political reading of the play see the review on p. 5 of the same Pariser Tageszeitung of Oct. 17th, 1937.

  11. See Kriegsfibel nos. 36 (a German soldier fallen upside down in the Libyan soil) and no. 52 (soldiers sleeping in cavities in the ground).

  12. Pinkert (1988, 126), with the words of caution in note 36.

  13. Droysen (1868, 353–54). It should be stressed that this translation is profoundly different from that of the first edition (1842).

  14. Droysen gives due emphasis to the partitive genitive χθονός, which makes for a complicated syntax (Groeneboom 1938, 225), and has been suspected by several scholars (Brunck’s correction into χθόνα—a reading also found in a single medieval manuscript—has been adopted by Hermann, Blomfield, Wecklein, Paley, Hutchinson).

  15. See Seaford (2012, 171); Thalmann (1978, 47 and 75–76). By contrast, Hutchinson (1985, xxiiii) insists on patriotism as the Thebans' motivation.

  16. In Droysen's translation (373, ll. 711–15): “'s ist scharfschneidiger Stahl, welcher ihr Land/blutig vertheilt, jedem wieviel ihm/Fallend zum Grabe genügt,/Seines, des größeren Reichs verarmet”. See Lupas–Petre (1981, 252).

  17. See Lausberg (1999, 189). On Brecht’s selective literary memory see Wizisla et al. (2007, 13–16).

  18. See Seidensticker (1992, 350): “There is not a single area of Brecht's rich literary production, from lyric poetry to drama and literary and theoretical prose, that does not show the impact of his study of the ancient world”. Witzmann (1965, 15–22). For a theoretical reflection see Hohenwallner (2004, 1–10). Specifically on Brecht's approaches to Greek tragedy see now Revermann (2016).

  19. See Wizisla et al. (2007, 292 no. 2166). It should be stressed that not many Greek classics of Brecht's library are actually annotated by him (apart from the Iliad and Plutarch's Lives, I point to the Greek Anthology and to Aristotle's Poetics and Politics). Surprisingly, Aeschylus is not mentioned (nor is any dramatic author) among Brecht's books in the interesting reconstruction of his Svendborg library by Weiss (1978, 311–19).

  20. See Hohenwallner (2004, 46–50). Witzmann (1965, 39). The underlined passage stresses the analogy established by Droysen between the myth of Prometheus and some myths of succession in Semitic cultures.

  21. BFA 22/2, 613-14: “Die Welt des Aischylos, was immer die Universitäten von Harmonie murmeln mögen, war erfüllt mit Kampf und Schrecken”. See also a reference to Aeschylus' exclamations of sorrow in the Reisen des Glückgotts (1940-43) in BFA 10/1, 89.5 and 10/2, 930.31: “Seid Künstler, Sterbende!/Mit dem äschileischen Schrei/Glückt es vielleicht”.

  22. See Bohnen (1967, 97), and Knopf (1980, 152–53) for the “Greek” simplicity of the play and of its immediate predecessor, J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea.

  23. Since the nineteenth century (Bergk, Wilamowitz; but already Droysen, who did not accept the lines after 926) scholars believe that Aeschylus' genuine original text ends on l. 860, and that what follows has either been tampered with or (esp. after l. 1005) entirely added a posteriori.

  24. Müller (1980). Ignasiak (1982, esp. 209–10) for a more elaborate (and debatable) ordering. See most recently Kratzmeier (2013, 163–68).

  25. Knopf (2002, 409–10 and 413). Both the Socrates piece and Mein Bruder question the effect of conquest wars on the “kleine Leute”, and come to a pessimistic conclusion.

  26. It should be remarked that Brecht does not use this model when presenting the Spanish civil war in Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar: Bohnen (1967, 191–93).

  27. See Ignasiak (1982, 85): “Die Geschichte profitiert aber davon, daß es sich bei Brecht nicht um einen Bürgerkrieg handelt, sondern um einen Krieg, den zwei verschiedene Völker ökonomischer Vorteile wegen führen”. In 1955, Brecht tentatively explained this choice as a lapsus memoriae: Werner (1978, 599–601); Wagner (2002, 314).

  28. See the opening of the Antigone, ll. 8–12 “Und, jünger als er, Polyneikes/Sieht den Bruder zerstampft unterm Gäulehuf. Weinend/Reitet er aus unfertiger Schlacht, denn anderes andrem/Bescheidet der Schlachtgeist, wenn der hart/Anregend einem mit dem Rechten die Hand erschüttert”; see also Antigone's stubborn distinction between the war for Kreon and that for Thebes in ll. 400–418. Cp. Witzmann (1965, 75–100, esp. 82); and Brecht's note on the real reasons of war and violence in Hecht (1965, 111–12).

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Pontani, F. Eteokles in Spain? On Brecht’s Mein Bruder war ein Flieger . Neophilologus 101, 575–583 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9528-6

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