Mother Courage and Her Children | Encyclopedia.com

On April 19, 1941, Bertolt Brecht's play "Mother Courage and her Children" premiered in Zurich. From the article:r

"Mother Courage and Her Children | Encyclopedia.com
BERTOLT BRECHT 1939

First produced in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1939, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children is considered by many to be among the playwright’s best work and one of the most powerful anti-war dramas in history. The play is based on two works by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen: his 1669 novel, Simplicissimus and his 1670 play, Courage: An Adventuress. Many critics believe Mother Courage to be the masterwork of Brecht’s concept of Epic Theater. This dramatic subgenre, pioneered by Brecht sought to present theatre that could be viewed with complete detachment.

Through such techniques as short, self-contained scenes that prevent cathartic climax, songs and card slogans that interrupts and explains forthcoming action, and detached acting that wards off audience identification—techniques that came to be known as “alienation effects”—the playwright sought to present a cerebral theatrical experience unmarred by emotional judgement. Brecht wanted audiences to think critically and objectively about the play’s message, to assess the effects of war on an empirical level.

Much to Brecht’s chagrin, however, audiences identified with the play on a deeply emotional level, drawing immediate parallels between the Thirty Years’ War that the characters face and the horrors of World War II. Mother Courage was written in 1938-39, just as World War II was breaking out in Europe. Brecht completed the play while living in exile, having fled his native country in the face of a rising fascist government. It would not be until 1949 that Mother Courage would debut in Brecht’s homeland, with a production in East Berlin, East Germany.

Brecht set the play during the monumental Thirty Years’ War, which occurred three centuries earlier, instead of the contemporary conflict. Brecht hoped that, because the events depicted were removed in time, audiences would be more objective when they viewed the play. But many of the European viewers and critics had first-hand experience with the horrors of war. They easily found personal meaning in the play’s setting and story. Brecht rewrote the play for the 1949 East German production, hoping to minimize an emotional response from the audience, but Mother Courage still proved a powerful experience. In the decades since its debut, the play has grown to be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s landmark dramas and a potent condemnation of war.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Brecht was born Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of a Catholic father, Friedrich Brecht, who worked as a salesman for a paper factory, and a Protestant mother, Sofie.

Brecht grew up in a middle-class household and was precociously intelligent in school. He began writing poems while still in secondary school and had several published by 1914. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Instead of continuing on this path, however, he studied science and medicine at university to avoid the draft. It did not work, and he was drafted in 1918 at the end of World War I. He served as an orderly in the military hospital in Augsburg.

Both his upbringing and his experience in the military profoundly affected Brecht and his writing. He rejected the bourgeois values of his youth and also developed a keen understanding of religion, largely informed by the conflicting influences of his parents’ respective faiths. The wartime horrors that Brecht experienced firsthand in the military hospital led to his life-long pacifist views. He expressed these beliefs in his depiction of the horrific Thirty Years’ War in his 1949 play Mother Courage and Her Children.

Brecht began writing plays as early as 1922, with the production of his first work Baal.

Concurrent with his artistic work, his anti-war beliefs led him to sympathize with communist politics; he

began a long affiliation with communist organizations in 1919, following the end of World War I. After finally abandoning his sporadic university studies, Brecht became the dramaturg (“drama specialist” or writer in residence) at a theater in Munich and began writing full time by 1920.

Over the next thirteen years, Brecht published several short stories and poems and successfully staged many of his own plays. He collaborated with composer Kurt Weill on several musical plays, including one of his best known works, 1929’s The Threepenny Opera. By 1930, Brecht’s plays had become highly political, espousing his belief that communism would solve many of the world’s social inequalities and political problems. When the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) came to power in Germany in the early 1930s, Brecht and his works were essentially banned. He and his family fled the increasingly hostile environment in 1933; the playwright essentially went into exile for the next fifteen years.

Brecht continued to write in exile, hopping between European countries and the United States.

In addition to a novelization of The Threepenny Opera, he produced numerous plays that were specifically critical of the Nazi regime and, in general, the world’s political situation. Of these plays, the anti-war Mother Courage and Her Children became one of his best-known and critically acclaimed works.

The end of World War II found the defeated Germany divided into East and West factions. With the animosity of the Nazi party dispelled, Brecht was invited home. He decided to settle in the communist controlled East Germany, in part because they offered him a theatre and funding. Brecht formed the Berliner Ensemble, which debuted in 1949. That same year Brecht wrote his last original play, The Days of the Commune (though the work would not see production until 1957), as he devoted all his time to running the theater and working as its stage manager. He continued to write poetry and adapt other playwright’s work for his theater, however.

By the mid-1950s, the importance of Brecht’s plays had been realized and they became popularly recognized. Brecht died on August 14, 1956, in East Berlin, from a coronary thrombosis.

PLOT SUMMARY
Scene 1
Mother Courage and Her Children opens on a highway outside of town in Dalarna, Sweden, in 1624. A recruiting officer and his sergeant are scouting for men to enlist for the Swedish Army’s upcoming campaign in Poland. They discuss the fact that they are having trouble finding soldiers when Mother Courage, her children, and her canteen roll by. The military men stop the canteen, demanding Mother Courage’s papers and asking about her children. She tells them how each child has a different father. The soldiers attempt to recruit the boys, especially Eilif, but Mother Courage interferes.

To distract the soldiers, Mother Courage has them draw slips of paper from the sergeant’s helmet. One of them has a cross symbolizing their early death.

The Sergeant feigns interest in a belt buckle Mother Courage has for sale. While she is distracted, the officer convinces Eilif to enlist, and he leaves with the soldiers. The family workforce now reduced, Kattrin joins her brother Swiss Cheese in pulling the wagon.

Scene 2
Several years later, Mother Courage is still following the Swedish Army through its Polish campaign. When the scene opens outside of the Swedish commander’s tent, Mother Courage is negotiating with the Cook over the price of a chicken, eventually convincing him to buy the fowl. She plucks the chicken for him as they listen to the action inside the tent. The Commander is with the Chaplain and Eilif, who is being hailed as a hero. Eilif led his troops into a skirmish with peasants which resulted in the capture of a number of cattle. Eilif and his mother reunite.

Scene 3
Three years later, Mother Courage, Swiss Cheese, and Kattrin are with their canteen near another camp in Poland. Swiss Cheese is now a paymaster with the regiment. Yvette, a young woman who follows the camp as a prostitute, laments that all soldiers are liars. Yvette leaves, and the Chaplain and the Cook enter. They talk about politics surrounding the war. Their conversation is interrupted when the Catholic forces stage a surprise attack. In the ensuing chaos, Yvette leaves, the Chaplain hides his identity, and Swiss Cheese returns with the cash box containing the regiment’s payroll. His mother wants him to throw it away, but he will not. They hide the money in their wagon.

Three days later, Mother Courage, Kattrin, Swiss Cheese, and the Chaplain sit at the canteen, prisoners of the Catholics. Swiss Cheese worries about his responsibility for the Swedish Army’s money. Mother Courage and the Chaplain leave to buy a Catholic flag and meat. She tells Swiss Cheese not to get rid of the box now because there are spies. Swiss Cheese decides to take the money and bury it by the river. Kattrin tries to warn him that the spies are watching him, but she is unsuccessful. Mother Courage and the Chaplain return. Two Catholic soldiers enter with Swiss Cheese, who has been arrested. Swiss Cheese denies that he knows anyone at the canteen, saying he just ate a meal there. Mother Courage also pretends to not know her son.

Later that evening, Mother Courage tries to come up with the ransom for Swiss Cheese. She hopes to sell her wagon to an old colonel who is involved with Yvette. When the colonel and prostitute arrive, Mother Courage tells them that she only wants to pawn the canteen, buying it back from them once she raises enough money. They negotiate a price. Mother Courage hesitates, trying to negotiate a lower ransom. Her deal making is too slow, however, and Swiss Cheese is executed. Soldiers bring the body by the canteen for identification, but Mother Courage again denies knowing him.

Scene 4
Mother Courage waits outside an officer’s tent. She wants to make a complaint about damage done to her merchandise. As she waits, two soldiers approach. The younger one wants to make a complaint because he was not given a reward for saving a colonel’s horse, and he has not been given enough food. The older soldier tries to dissuade him from complaining. Mother Courage empathizes with the younger soldier’s situation, but she tells him if his rage is not enduring, it is not worth it. After Mother Courage sings “The Song of Great Capitulation,” both she and the young soldier decide not to register their complaints.

Scene 5
It is 1631, and Mother Courage’s canteen wagon is in Bavaria, outside a war-torn village. The Chaplain enters, needing linen to bandage some peasants whose farmhouse has been destroyed. Kattrin wants to give him some shirts from the wagon, but Mother Courage refuses to give up the clothing, stating that the peasants have no money for her goods. Kattrin threatens her mother with a board, and the Chaplain takes the shirts anyway. A child’s cry is heard from a burning farmhouse. Kattrin runs into the building and rescues the child.

Scene 6
A year later, the canteen is outside of Ingolstadt, where the funeral of a fallen commander is taking place. Mother Courage serves drinks to soldiers who are not at the funeral. While waiting on her customers and taking inventory, Mother Courage and the Chaplain discuss how long the war will last. She wonders if she should buy more goods while they are cheap. Each states their belief that the war will never end.

Mother Courage decides to buy more supplies, sending Kattrin into town to pick them up. The Chaplain reveals that he would like a relationship with Mother Courage, but she turns him down. Kattrin returns with a large cut on her forehead. Mother Courage tries to give her Yvette’s red boots, but the clearly upset girl is uninterested in the boots that she once coveted.

Scene 7
Mother Courage, Kattrin, and the Chaplain pull the wagon down a highway. Mother Courage sings a song about the profitability of war over peace and the need for constant movement.

Scene 8
It is still 1632, and the canteen is parked outside of a camp. A peace is unexpectedly brokered. Mother Courage is pleased because she might see Eilif again. The Cook arrives. The Chaplain decides to put on his pastor’s clothing now that the Catholics no longer pose a threat to him. The Cook and the Chaplain bicker over Mother Courage. Mother Courage decides that she must get rid of her goods.

While Mother Courage is in town, Yvette shows up looking for her. She sees the Cook there and realizes that he is an old boyfriend who abandoned her years ago. A soldier stops by with Eilif in chains. He has been arrested for murdering a peasant and stealing cattle. The Chaplain leaves with Eilif and the soldier. It is implied that Eilif will be executed. Mother Courage returns with news that the war has resumed. The Cook stays with Mother Courage and Kattrin.

Scene 9
It is 1634, and Mother Courage and her canteen are again traveling behind the Swedish Army. Business is bad. The Cook gets a letter that his mother has left him an inn in Utrecht. He invites Mother Courage to come and run it with him. She refuses when she learns the invitation does not extend to Kattrin. The Cook exits for a moment, and Kattrin and Mother pull the canteen away, leaving him behind.

Scene 10
Kattrin and Mother Courage stop and listen to someone singing in a farmhouse. The song concerns their prosperity in the house.

Scene 11
Near Halle, a Protestant village, the canteen is outside of a small farmhouse for the night. Mother Courage is in town getting supplies. Three Catholic soldiers come out of the woods and hold the peasants captive, including Kattrin. One of the peasant boys is taken by the soldiers. He shows them the path to town. An older peasant man climbs to the roof and sees a Catholic regiment moving through the forest toward the unsuspecting town. There will be no warning, they believe, because the watchman must have been killed. Kattrin hears them talk of the children that might be harmed in the surprise attack. She climbs onto the roof with her drum and begins pounding out a warning on it. The soldiers come back. They shoot her when she refuses to stop making noise. Kattrin dies.

Scene 12
It is the following morning. Mother Courage sits by Kattrin’s body. She expresses her disbelief that Kattrin is dead. The peasants bury Kattrin while Mother Courage departs to follow the army. She pushes the wagon by herself.

CHARACTERS
The Chaplain
When the Chaplain is introduced, he works for the Swedish Army. He is attached to the same unit as the Cook and Eilif. In scene three, when the Catholics attack and imprison the unit, Mother Courage helps him hide his true identity. He travels with Mother Courage and Kattrin for several years as they follow the Catholics. He chops wood and helps out as he much as he can. When there is a temporary peace, he returns to his clerical life.

The Cook
When the Cook is first introduced, he is in the employ of the Swedish Army, working for the Commander. Mother Courage sells him a chicken for an exorbitant price. He is a blond Dutchman who smokes a special pipe. He was a one-time boyfriend of Yvette, and she thinks he is a scoundrel. He is attracted to Mother Courage. When the Cook’s mother dies, he inherits an inn in Utrecht. He asks Mother Courage to come with him to run it, but she refuses because he will not let Kattrin come along.

Mother Courage
Mother Courage is the woman around whom the play is constructed. She is middle-aged and has three children by three different men: two sons named Eilif and Swiss Cheese and a daughter named Kattrin. Mother Courage runs a mobile canteen which sells food and goods. She is a cutthroat businesswoman and follows the war, and the commerce it provides, wherever it goes. Formerly known as Anna Fierling, Mother Courage got her name from an incident in Riga in which she drove her canteen through a bombardment to sell her bread and came out alive.

Throughout the play, Mother Courage continually demonstrates that the preservation of her business is the most important thing in her life. She tries to avoid having her sons recruited for the war, not because she fears for their safety but because their help is needed pushing the wagon. When she fails to do so and Swiss Cheese is captured and sentenced to death, she haggles over the price of his ransom until it is too late. Still, she has a soft spot for her daughter, Kattrin, who is simple-minded and cannot speak. Mother Courage refuses the Cook’s offer to run an inn with him because he will not allow Kattrin to accompany them. By the end of the play, all three children have died, and Mother Courage pulls the canteen alone.

Feyos
See Swiss Cheese

Anna Fierling
See Mother Courage

Kattrin Haupt
Kattrin is Mother Courage’s only daughter. The product of a relationship that Mother Courage had with a German man, Kattrin is a mute, due to an incident that occurred when she was little: a soldier stuck something in her mouth. She does a great deal of work for her mother, washing dishes and cleaning up the canteen wagon. Mother Courage promises that she will get Kattrin a husband when there is peace.

Like her half-brother Swiss Cheese, Kattrin is sensitive and simple. She likes children and pretty things. For example, she covets Yvette’s red boots. When Kattrin hears that a family of peasants needs linen for bandages, she gives the Chaplain shirts behind her mother’s back. She also runs into a burning house to save a child despite her mother’s protests. Sometime later, Kattrin runs an errand into town for her mother and comes back with a gash across her forehead. It is implied that she has been assaulted and raped. At the end of the play, Kattrin sacrifices her own life to save her mother and the people in a town; she overhears about a surprise attack and bangs a drum from a rooftop to warn the townspeople. Soldiers shoot her to keep her quiet.

Eilif Noyocki
Eilif is Mother Courage’s eldest son and the result of her union with an intelligent soldier. Protective of his mother, he is a hotheaded young man who is sure of his prowess with firearms and knives. He is recruited by Swedish officers at the beginning of the play to fight on the side of the Protestants. When Mother Courage sees him again several years later, he is regarded as a hero for a successful attack he has led. He stole a large number of cattle from a group of peasants. Several scenes and years later, a temporary peace has been achieved, and Eilif is arrested for stealing cattle. It is implied that he is executed for the crime, but the actual act is not shown.

Eilif’s story is a prime example of Brecht’s hatred of war. His rise and fall are used as an example to illustrate the playwright’s belief that war creates confused values and a skewed reality. When Eilif steals the herd of cattle during wartime, he is hailed as a hero. Yet when a peace comes, he is arrested and executed for that very act.

Peter Piper
See The Cook

Yvette Pottier
Yvette is a young woman who also follows the war and the soldiers for business reasons; she is a prostitute. She was led into this life when she became involved with the Cook as a young girl in Flanders. He abandoned her, and she ran after him. She becomes involved with a colonel and tries to help save Swiss Cheese from execution. Yvette eventually marries the colonel’s brother. He dies, but she is apparently left enough money to survive.

Madame Colonel Sarhemberg
See Yvette Pottier

Swiss Cheese
Swiss Cheese is Mother Courage’s younger boy. He is the son of a Swiss military engineer who was also a drunkard. Like his brother Eilif, Swiss Cheese is protective of his mother, but, unlike his ruthless brother, he is a more sensitive, honest

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Mother Courage and Her Children was filmed in 1960, featuring much of the cast of the 1949 German stage production, including Helene Weigel as Mother Courage. It was directed by Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth.
The play was also adapted into a television production by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1959.
person. His mother says that he is simple and good at pulling wagons. After Eilif is recruited into the army, Swiss Cheese works as a paymaster for the Swedish Second Regiment. During an attack by the Catholics, he tries to protect the cashbox by hiding it, first in the canteen and then in a mole hole by the river. He is caught by two Catholic officers. When the officers bring him by, Swiss Cheese pretends like he does not know Mother Courage, hoping to protect both himself and his family. He is later executed while his mother haggles over the price of his ransom. When his body is brought to her for identification, she claims to not know him. Swiss Cheese is buried in an anonymous mass grave.

War and Peace
Mother Courage and Her Children takes place during the Thirty Years’ War, a religious war (Catholic versus Protestant) which ravaged Europe in the seventeenth century (1618-48). Every event, attitude, and emotion felt in this play is affected by the circumstances of war. Mother Courage’s livelihood is based on a canteen wagon through which she sells food and various goods to soldiers. She and her children pull the wagon, following the Swedish regiments to wherever the war takes them.

Each of Mother Courage’s children suffer the consequences of war and are eventually destroyed

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
The character of Mother Courage is often compared to Niobe, a character in Greek mythology. Research Niobe and compare and contrast her with Mother Courage.
Research the effect of war on the psyche of the common man. Is there a psychological explanation for Mother Courage’s actions?
Compare the histories of the Thirty Years’ War and World War II. How do events in World War II parallel what is portrayed in Mother Courage and Her Children?
Playwright Brecht was a communist. How do the tenets of communism manifest themselves in the themes and events of Mother Courage?
by it. Eilif is recruited when soldiers are needed for the Swedish Protestant army. He becomes a brutal soldier, losing his humanity, his sense of right and wrong, and, ultimately his life. Swiss Cheese joins the same army as a paymaster for a Protestant regiment—he takes the clerical position so that he will not have to fight in the war. Still, his position leads to his death. Kattrin loses her life when she tries to warn a town of a surprise attack by Catholics.

Other characters’ lives are also affected profoundly by war. Yvette became a camp follower when her soldier boyfriend abandoned her. She started following regiments looking for him and eventually became a prostitute to support herself. Numerous common folk are depicted throughout the play, many of whom see their homes and land destroyed by the fighting.

Despite the loss of her children to the war, Mother Courage does quite well financially. Though business does go bad several times—notably during a short peace—Mother Courage survives every calamity that befalls her. Eilif is not so lucky. He attacks peasants and steals cattle during wartime and is considered a hero. He does the same thing during the short peace—though he does not know there is a truce—and is arrested. By the end of the play, Mother Courage has to pull the canteen wagon by herself, but her business drive motivates her to persevere. She has to survive. Through his protagonist’s actions, Brecht shows war as a never-ending commercial opportunity, but he also highlights its affects on the common man and woman. He shows peace being less prosperous, a state in which finances are less assured.

Choices and Consequences: Commerce versus Family
Though Mother Courage runs her canteen to support herself and her children, she often makes choices that put her commerce before her family. Each of her children are adversely affected while she is brokering business deals: Eilif is recruited by the Swedish army officer while Mother Courage tries to sell a belt buckle; Swiss Cheese is executed by the Catholics while she haggles over the price of his ransom; Kattrin dies while Mother Courage is in town buying goods.

Mother Courage also makes choices in support of her children, however, especially Kattrin. The Cook likes Mother Courage and travels with the canteen briefly; he asks her to run an inn with him. Mother Courage eagerly accepts, telling Kattrin that she will finally fulfill the many promises she has made to her mute daughter. Yet when she learns that Kattrin is unwelcome at the inn, Mother Courage refuses to go and abandons the Cook by the side of the road. Ultimately, Mother Courage is capable of doing right by her children but not at the expense of her business.

STYLE
Epic Theater
Mother Courage and Her Children is a prime example of Brecht’s concept of Epic Theater. Instead of following a traditional Aristotelian model of theater, which calls for directly linked action and an emotional climax at the end of the play, Brecht constructs the play more like an epic poem. Each scene is only loosely linked, though there is something of a plot. The play also has an ambiguous, open ending; it is not clear where the remaining years of the war will take Mother Courage. Further, Brecht tries to distance the audience from the action of the play with what he calls alienation effects. He does this to limit the audience’s emotional involvement with the play and its characters. This distancing is performed in the hopes that the viewer can concentrate on the meaning of the action and its inherent social criticism.

These ideas take several forms in Mother Courage. Before each scene, a summary of the events to come are projected to the audience. Thus, they know what will happen and can focus on the meaning of the action. Most every action that could provoke an emotional response—the execution of Swiss Cheese, for example—is not shown onstage, and its emotional aftermath—the grieving—is never shown. Such choices direct the audience’s attention to Brecht’s intellectual antiwar message. There are also songs that emphasize the themes of the play while undercutting its reality by interrupting the action. Black comedic elements, especially in the dialogue of Mother Courage, add to the dramatic tension, being intellectual rather than emotional in nature.

Setting
Mother Courage and Her Children is an antiwar drama set in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, specifically covering the years 1624-1636. The action takes place in a number of locales in Europe, including (in order) Darlana, Poland, Bavaria, Fichtelgebirge, central Germany, and Halle. Almost every scene is set in the outdoors, on roads and highways, next to camps or peasants’ farms, or inside tents. This represents the constant change and flux of a wartime environment. The settings illustrate the impermanence in Mother Courage’s life. There are only two constants in each scene of the play: Mother Courage and her canteen wagon, and these items are notable for their mobility; they are capable of moving quickly as the war progresses.

Foreshadowing
Though Mother Courage and Her Children is a factually straightforward drama that, through Brecht’s alienation effects, informs the audience of forthcoming events, the playwright does employ some elements of foreshadowing to more subtly intimate future developments. One event in the first scene foreshadows the deaths of Mother Courage’s children as well as others. Mother Courage claims to have “second sight.” When the recruiters try to

take Eilif away, she has them all draw lots. She tears up a piece of paper into four slips and draws a cross one of them. Everyone who draws, the three children as well as the Swedish sergeant, picks the piece of paper with the cross on it. The cross symbolizes that death is coming to these characters.

Irony
Irony is defined as incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result of those events. There is an underlying irony that drives the plot of Mother Courage. Mother Courage engages in her trade to support herself and her family in the unstable economy of war. The expectation is that she will earn enough for her family’s survival. But this very enterprise—and Mother Courage’s all-consuming focus on it—contributes to the death of her three children. Mother Courage focuses on preventing Eilif’s recruitment by two Swedish soldiers until an opportunity for a sale presents itself. She haggles over the amount she should pay for Swiss Cheese’s ransom to prevent his execution. Though she wants to save her son, she does not want to compromise her finances. Mother Courage is in a village trying to buy up low-priced goods from scared citizens when Kattrin is gunned down by Catholic soldiers preparing to make a surprise attack. Though this last death might not have been preventable by Mother Courage, her absence ensures no intercession on her child’s behalf. It is ironic that Mother Courage’s goal is the survival of her family but the means for that survival becomes the instrument of the children’s demise.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The years just before and at the outbreak of World War II were tense and uncertain ones for much of Europe. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist (also known as Nazi) party, became dictator of Germany in 1933. Hitler secretly armed Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty which ended World War I and allied himself with Italy and Japan. In 1938, Germany occupied Austria and annexed most of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Hitler continued to invade and occupy many nations in Europe in 1940, adding Denmark, a number of Norwegian port cities, The Netherlands, Belgium, and much of France to his empire. Though Great Britain stopped Hitler’s planned invasion across the British Channel in 1940, the dictator continued his march across Europe. Great Britain and other countries tried to fight back, but it was not until the United States was drawn in to the war by Japan’s bombing of Peal Harbor at the end of 1941, that their efforts had success. World War II did not end in Europe until 1945.

Though Mother Courage and Her Children is set during the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century, Brecht draws several parallels between that war and the events that were unfolding in Europe as he wrote the play. Uncertainty was a way of life in both eras. Men of all ages were conscripted to fight in the war. In 1930s Germany, every man between the ages of nineteen and forty-five were deemed fit for military service, amounting to more than eight million people in the army alone.

Just as Mother Courage looks to the Thirty Years’ War as a business arena, so too was World War II a commercial enterprise. The United States, as well as Germany and other European countries, converted almost all their national infrastructure to service the war; industry became focused on turning out war goods at ever-increasing rates. In the United States, the federal government spent $370 billion on World War II. Even before the U.S. entered the war, however, the American economy geared up to produce goods for war-torn Europe. This boom in production fostered a new age of industrial technology in the U.S. and would pave the way for the prosperity of the postwar years. Despite the frenzied production, which in the United States meant around the clock shifts in factories, there were shortages of consumer items all around the world. This was partially due to the scarcity of some raw materials, again because of the war. In occupied countries, shortages were the most acute. Small-time entrepreneurs such as Mother Courage were able to supply in-demand items and carve a profitable niche for themselves.

Individuals in every country, directly involved or not, suffered during World War II and not just because of the wartime economic realities. In Germany, Hitler and his Nazi party held a tight ideological grip on the populace. In addition to their anti-Semitic policies, the Nazis did not allow freedom of the press or other forms of free expression. People who did not agree with government ideology and expressed those beliefs were dealt with in a harsh manner; many were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. A great number of Jewish scientists and artists, as well as every-day citizens, fled the country if they were able. Though Brecht was not Jewish, he professed communist beliefs and was critical of the Nazi party. Many of his plays were banned. He escaped, his family fleeing Germany in 1936. He spent almost all of the next decade moving around Europe and the United States, avoiding the Nazi occupation. His story is typical of many people in wartime Germany. Such refugees usually had only one focus: survival, just like Mother Courage.