{"id":245313,"date":"2023-10-02T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=245313"},"modified":"2023-10-02T06:01:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T05:01:43","slug":"from-a-german-war-primer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/from-a-german-war-primer\/","title":{"rendered":"From a German War Primer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A<\/span>mong the highly placed
\nIt is considered low to talk about food.
\nThe fact is: they have
\nAlready eaten.<\/p>\n

The lowly must leave this earth
\nWithout having tasted
\nAny good meat.<\/p>\n

For wondering where they come from and
\nWhere they are going
\nThe fine evenings find them
\nToo exhausted.<\/p>\n

They have not yet seen
\nThe mountains and the great sea
\nWhen their time is already up.<\/p>\n

If the lowly do not
\nThink about what\u2019s low
\nThey will never rise.<\/p>\n

The bread of the hungry has all been eaten
\nMeat has become unknown. Useless
\nThe pouring out of the people\u2019s sweat.
\nThe laurel groves have been
\nLopped down.
\nFrom the chimneys of the arms factories
\nRises smoke.<\/p>\n

The house-painter\u00a0speaks\u00a0of great times to come
\nThe forests still grow.
\nThe fields still bear
\nThe cities still stand.
\nThe people still breathe.<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0calendar the day is not yet shown
\nEvery month, every day
\nLies open still. One of those days
\nIs going to be marked with a cross.<\/p>\n

The workers cry \u00a0out for bread
\nThe merchants cry out for markets.
\nThe unemployed were hungry. The employed
\nAre hungry now.
\nThe hands that lay folded are busy again.
\nThey are making shells.<\/p>\n

Those who take the meat from\u00a0the\u00a0table
\nTeach contentment.
\nThose for whom the contribution is destined
\nDemand sacrifice.
\nThose who eat their fill speak to the hungry
\nOf wonderful times to come.
\nThose who lead the country into the abyss
\nCall ruling too difficult
\nFor ordinary men.<\/p>\n

When the leaders speak of peace
\nThe common folk know
\nThat war is coming.
\nWhen the leaders curse war
\nThe mobilization order is already written out.<\/p>\n

Those at the top say: Peace\u00a0and\u00a0War
\nAre of different substance.
\nBut their peace and their war
\nAre like wind and storm.<\/p>\n

War grows from their peace
\nLike son from his mother
\nHe bears
\nHer frightful features.<\/p>\n

Their war kills
\nWhatever their peace
\nHas left over.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0the wall was chalked:
\nThey want war.
\nThe man who wrote it
\nHas already fallen.<\/p>\n

Those at the top say:
\nThis way to glory.
\nThose down below say:
\nThis way to the grave.<\/p>\n

The war which is coming
\nIs not the first one. There were
\nOther wars before it.
\nWhen the last one came to an end
\nThere were conquerors and conquered.
\nAmong the conquered the common people
\nStarved. Among the conquerors
\nThe common people starved too.<\/p>\n

Those at the top say comradship
\nReigns in the army.
\nThe truth of this is seen
\nIn the cookhouse.
\nIn their hearts should be
\nThe selfsame courage. But
\nOn their plates
\nAre two kinds of rations.<\/p>\n

When it comes to marching many do not know
\nThat their enemy is marching at their head.
\nThe voice which gives them their orders
\nIs their enemy\u2019s voice and
\nThe man who speaks of the enemy
\nIs the enemy himself.<\/p>\n

It is night
\nThe married couples
\nLie in their beds. The young women
\nWill bear orphans.<\/p>\n

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle
\nIt smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
\nBut it has one defect:
\nIt needs a driver.<\/p>\n

General, your bomber is powerful.
\nIt flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
\nBut it has one defect:
\nIt needs a mechanic.<\/p>\n

General, man is very useful.
\nHe can fly and he can kill.
\nBut he has one defect:
\nHe can think.<\/p>\n

1937<\/strong><\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\"\"<\/a>Bertolt Brecht was a German\u00a0theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the\u00a0Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote\u00a0<\/em>The Threepenny Opera\u00a0with\u00a0Kurt Weill\u00a0and began a life-long collaboration with the composer\u00a0Hanns Eisler. Immersed in\u00a0Marxist\u00a0thought during this period, he wrote didactic\u00a0<\/em>Lehrst\u00fccke\u00a0and became a leading theoretician of\u00a0epic theatre\u00a0(which he later preferred to call \u201cdialectical theatre\u201d) and the\u00a0<\/em>Verfremdungseffekt. During the\u00a0Nazi Germany\u00a0period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during\u00a0World War II\u00a0to the United States, where he was surveilled by the\u00a0FBI.\u00a0After the war he was subpoenaed by the\u00a0House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to\u00a0East Berlin\u00a0after the war, he established the theatre company\u00a0Berliner Ensemble\u00a0with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress\u00a0Helene Weigel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the highly placed
\nIt is considered low to talk about food.
\nThe fact is: they have
\nAlready eaten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":160855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[2009,1962,1022,1147,868],"class_list":["post-245313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-anti-war","tag-bertold-brecht","tag-marxism","tag-nazism","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245315,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245313\/revisions\/245315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}