Mother Courage and her Children

Abstract

Written on the eve of the Second World War, while Brecht was living in exile in Scandinavia, Mother Courage and her Children was intended as a reminder that it is not possible to play with fire without getting burnt. The place of its composition fed into the play in a number of ways. The need to give such warning was borne in on Brecht by his perception that the Scandinavians were prepared to collaborate with Hitler’s preparations for war in the expectation of profit and in the mistaken belief that they would not be among Hitler’s victims. The moral of the play — that ‘you need a big pair of scissors to make a cut from a war’ (CM, 68) — had particular relevance to Germany’s less powerful Northern neighbours, as did its setting in the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), a war in which Scandinavian countries (particularly Sweden) were embroiled and which cost Europe dearly in both life and property.