Mother Courage and Her Children

Summary

Mother Courage and Her Children follows Anna Fierling, a canteen woman nicknamed Mother Courage, who hauls her covered wagon behind the armies of the Thirty Years' War selling food, drink, boots and belts to soldiers. The play covers twelve years, from 1624 to 1636, in twelve scenes, each introduced by a written caption that tells the audience in advance what will happen. Courage has three children by different fathers: the bold Eilif, the honest and simple Swiss Cheese, and her daughter Kattrin, who is mute. Courage lives off the war and believes she can do business with it without paying its price; one by one, the war takes all three children. In Sweden in 1624 a recruiting officer and a sergeant lure Eilif into the army while Courage is busy haggling over a belt. Two years later, in Poland, she finds him being praised by his commander for killing peasants and seizing their cattle. Swiss Cheese becomes paymaster to a Protestant regiment; when the Catholics overrun the camp he hides the regimental cash box and is captured. Courage tries to raise a bribe by pawning her wagon but bargains too long over the price, and he is shot. When his body is brought to her, she denies knowing him to protect herself and Kattrin. The war moves on through Poland, Bavaria and Saxony. Courage sings a song of the great capitulation to a young soldier, persuading him to give up his complaint against an officer. She refuses to give her linen shirts for bandages after a battle, while Kattrin risks her life to save a baby from a burning house. At the funeral of the imperial general Tilly in 1632, Kattrin is attacked and left scarred. The army chaplain and the cook, Pieter Lamb, travel with the wagon; the camp prostitute Yvette Pottier rises by marrying an elderly colonel. When peace briefly breaks out, Courage fears ruin; in the same short peace Eilif is executed for a raid on peasants that would have been praised in wartime, and Courage is never told. The cook inherits an inn in Utrecht and asks Courage to come with him without Kattrin; she refuses to leave her daughter. Near the Protestant town of Halle in 1636, while Courage is away buying goods, Catholic troops prepare a night attack. Kattrin climbs onto a peasant's roof and beats a drum to wake the town, and is shot as the town's alarm begins to sound. Courage returns, sings a lullaby over the body, pays the peasants to bury her daughter, and harnesses herself alone to the wagon to follow the army. Brecht wrote the play in Swedish exile in 1939. It premiered at the Zürich Schauspielhaus on 19 April 1941, and Brecht's own production at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1949, with Helene Weigel as Courage, became the founding work of the Berliner Ensemble. The play is under copyright, and this record does not include a text.

Plot or Argument

• Scenes 1-2: Recruiting and glory (1624-1626)

  In Dalarna, Eilif is recruited while his mother haggles; in Poland, the commander feasts him for a raid on peasants as Courage sells a capon in the next room.

• Scene 3: Swiss Cheese and the cash box

  The Catholics capture the Protestant camp; Swiss Cheese hides the regimental cash, is taken, and dies while his mother bargains over the bribe; she does not acknowledge his body.

• Scenes 4-5: Capitulation and the shirts

  Courage teaches a young soldier the Song of the Great Capitulation; after a battle she grudges her shirts for bandages while Kattrin saves a child.

• Scenes 6-7: Tilly's funeral and the height of business

  During the general's funeral Kattrin is wounded and disfigured; Courage, now prosperous, praises war as a provider.

• Scene 8: Peace breaks out

  News of peace after the death of the Swedish king alarms Courage; Eilif is executed for a peacetime crime; the cook and chaplain quarrel; war resumes.

• Scenes 9-10: The inn at Utrecht

  In a hungry winter the cook offers Courage a home without Kattrin; she chooses her daughter and the road, and they hear a song of a settled home from a farmhouse.

• Scenes 11-12: Kattrin's drum

  Kattrin beats a drum on a rooftop to warn Halle and is shot; Courage buries her and pulls the wagon on alone.

Characters

• Anna Fierling (Mother Courage), canteen woman

  Shrewd trader who lives off the war and loses all three children to it.

• Kattrin, Courage's daughter

  Mute, kind-hearted young woman who gives her life to warn a sleeping town.

• Eilif, Courage's elder son

  Brave and ruthless soldier, praised in war and executed for the same conduct in peace.

• Swiss Cheese, Courage's younger son

  Honest regimental paymaster killed for guarding the cash box.

• The Chaplain, Protestant army chaplain

  Clergyman who sheds his robes, travels with the wagon and argues about war.

• The Cook (Pieter Lamb), army cook

  Courage's sometime suitor, who offers her an inn without Kattrin.

• Yvette Pottier, camp follower

  Young woman of the camp who later marries a colonel and grows rich.

Lessons

• Living off the war

  Courage's livelihood depends on the war continuing, and each of her children dies at a moment when her mind is on business. Brecht built the play to show the cost of trying to profit from violence while staying clear of it.

  • What is Courage doing at the moment each child is lost?
  • Why does she fear the brief peace in Scene 8?
  • Can a person profit from a great evil without sharing in it?

• Kattrin's drum

  The silent daughter, scarred and ignored, performs the play's one act of complete self-giving when she drums to warn the town of Halle. Brecht gives the most powerful action to the character who cannot speak.

  • What leads up to Kattrin's choice on the roof?
  • Why do the peasants pray instead of acting, and what does Kattrin do differently?
  • What makes her act heroic when so much of the play mocks heroism?

• Virtues in wartime

  Eilif's boldness, Swiss Cheese's honesty and Kattrin's compassion each lead to death. The play's songs suggest that in a corrupt war even virtues become dangerous. Audiences have long debated whether Brecht meant to condemn the virtues or the war that punishes them.

  • Which virtue destroys each child?
  • Why is Eilif shot for a deed that earned praise two years before?
  • Does the play suggest virtue is useless, or that war corrupts everything it touches?

• Epic theatre

  Brecht's scene captions announce what will happen, and the songs interrupt the action, so the audience watches how rather than wondering what. He wanted spectators to judge the action rather than lose themselves in Courage's feelings, though many audiences have still found her deeply moving.

  • Why would a playwright tell the audience the ending of a scene before it starts?
  • How do the songs change the way we view the characters?
  • Can a play make you think and feel at the same time?

Context

The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) began as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire and drew in Denmark, Sweden and France; armies lived off the land, and some German regions lost a large share of their population to fighting, famine and plague. Brecht set the play in the war's middle years, including the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who died at Lützen in 1632, and the imperial general Tilly, who died the same year. He wrote it in 1939 as Europe moved toward a new war.

Composition

Brecht wrote the play in the autumn of 1939 while living at Lidingö near Stockholm, drawing on Grimmelshausen's 17th-century tales of the war, especially the novel of the camp follower Courasche, and on a Finnish-Swedish ballad figure, the canteen woman Lotta Svärd in Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål. The premiere took place in neutral Switzerland at the Zürich Schauspielhaus on 19 April 1941, with Therese Giehse in the title role. Brecht revised the text for his 1949 Berlin production with Helene Weigel, using music by Paul Dessau, and documented that staging in a detailed model book.

Reception

The Berlin production toured Europe in the 1950s and made the play and Weigel's performance famous. Brecht noted that the Zürich audience had pitied Courage as a suffering mother, and he sharpened her trading in revision so that spectators would see her as failing to learn; critics have debated ever since whether the play is a tragedy or a demonstration, and many productions find both. It is among the most performed German plays of the 20th century, and English translations by Eric Bentley, John Willett, David Hare and Tony Kushner, among others, have been staged.

Comparisons

• euripides-trojan-women-and-other-plays

  Hecuba and Courage are mothers who lose their children to war; Euripides shows the defeated women's grief, Brecht a mother who trades with the armies that destroy her family.

• henry-v

  Shakespeare's king gives war glory and brotherhood; Brecht's recruiting officer and commander use similar language to lure and praise Eilif, and the play turns that rhetoric against itself.

• all-quiet-on-the-western-front

  Both works, written between the world wars, show ordinary people ground down by a war whose great causes they never see.

• tolstoy-war-and-peace

  Tolstoy questions the generals' control of events from above; Brecht looks at war from the supply wagon, where great battles are matters of prices and stock.

• the-red-badge-of-courage

  Crane's young soldier and Courage's son Eilif both seek proof of bravery, and both works ask what courage in war really is.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The captions before each scene, which give away what will happen.
• What Courage is doing at the moment each of her children is lost.
• The songs, especially the Song of the Great Capitulation in Scene 4, and how they interrupt the action.
• The chaplain's arguments about war and religion as the play goes on.
• Kattrin's silent actions, from the baby in Scene 5 to the drum in Scene 11.

Key terms and names

Thirty Years' War

The war of 1618-1648 among Catholic and Protestant powers in central Europe, through which Courage's wagon travels.

Canteen wagon

Courage's covered cart of goods for sale to soldiers, her home and livelihood.

Epic theatre

Brecht's style of drama, which narrates and comments on events so that the audience judges them rather than simply feeling with the characters.

Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt)

Brecht's devices, such as captions and songs, that make the familiar look strange so it can be examined.

Tilly

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, the Catholic general whose funeral forms the background of Scene 6.

Halle

The Protestant town Kattrin saves by drumming in Scene 11.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Courage lose each of her three children?
2. Comprehension Why is Eilif praised in Scene 2 and executed in Scene 8?
3. Interpretation Why does Courage deny knowing Swiss Cheese when his body is brought in?
4. Interpretation What does the Song of the Great Capitulation teach the young soldier, and is Courage right?
5. Interpretation Why does Courage refuse the cook's offer in Scene 9, and what does that choice show about her?
6. Big Question Does Courage learn anything by the end of the play? Should she have?
7. Big Question Is it ever right to stay silent to protect oneself when an innocent person suffers?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 6:24 (Scripture)

  No man can serve two masters: ye cannot serve God and mammon. Courage tries to keep her children and her trade at once, and the play shows her choosing the trade at decisive moments.

• John 15:13 (Scripture)

  Jesus calls laying down one's life for one's friends the greatest love. Kattrin goes further than the verse's example, giving her life for strangers asleep in Halle who will never know her name.

• Augustine, City of God XIX.7 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine writes that the wise man must lament the necessity of even just wars. The chaplain's shifting talk of holy war in the play offers a contrast to Augustine's sober view.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Courage hopes to live off the war while keeping her family safe from it. But the war rewards boldness, punishes honesty and destroys compassion, and each child is lost while she is doing business. Therefore no one can profit from war without being consumed by it, and the play's closing image of Courage harnessed to her wagon shows the cost.

Rhetorical device: dramatic irony through scene captions. Each scene's caption tells the audience in advance what will happen, as before Scene 3, so that they watch Courage's bargaining over Swiss Cheese's bribe knowing it will fail.

Debate: Resolved: that Mother Courage is responsible for the deaths of her children.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Brecht wanted audiences to judge Mother Courage, not simply pity her. Using Scenes 3 and 12, argue whether the play succeeds.

Comparison with The Trojan Women and Other Plays: Compare Hecuba and Mother Courage as mothers who lose their children to war. How does each playwright want the audience to respond?

Medical Lens

The play shows the medical side of 17th-century war mostly by its absence of care: wounded peasants after a battle need linen for bandages that Courage is reluctant to give, Kattrin is left with a scarred face after an assault, and hunger and plague hang over the later scenes. Kattrin's muteness, which Courage attributes to an early wartime injury, is presented as a social and dramatic fact, not studied medically. Courage's refusal to acknowledge her dead son's body and her lullaby over Kattrin are notable depictions of suppressed and delayed grief.

• Scene 3

  Courage must not show recognition when Swiss Cheese's body is brought before her.

  Grief Death Dying
• Scene 5

  After a battle the chaplain demands linen for bandaging wounded peasants.

  WAR Wounds
• Scene 6

  Kattrin returns with a wound over the eye that will leave her disfigured.

  WAR Wounds Disability Deformity
• Scenes 9 and 12

  Hunger in the war-ruined countryside; Courage's lullaby over her dead daughter.

  Starvation Nutrition Grief

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Write Brecht-style captions for three scenes of another play you know, announcing the outcome in advance, and discuss what the audience's attention shifts to.

• Essay

  Is Mother Courage a tragic heroine or a warning example? Argue from Scenes 3, 9 and 12.

• Fiction

  Write the night of Scene 11 from the point of view of a townsperson in Halle who wakes to Kattrin's drum.

Further Reading

• Life of Galileo, Bertolt Brecht

• Brecht on Theatre, Bertolt Brecht, ed. John Willett

• Courage: The Adventuress, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

  Brecht's 17th-century source.

• The Thirty Years War, C. V. Wedgwood