247 The Unseemly Old Lady. Die unwürdige Greisin. GW 11, 315, Pr. 2, 96, GBFA 18, 427. In Tales from the Calendar.
(1939.) The character is evidently based on Karoline Wurzler (1839–1920) of Achern in the Black Forest, who married Brecht’s grandfather Stephan Brecht, a lithographic printer, and had five children. Karl, the book printer who features in the story and continued living in the family house at Achern till his death in 1965, reportedly dismissed his nephew’s account as ‘a fabrication from start to finish’ (see W. Frisch and K. W. Obermaier: Brecht in Augsburg, Aufbau Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1975, p. 26). It was the basis of René Allio’s film La vieille dame indigne, SPAC Cinéma, Paris, 1964.
254 A Question of Taste. Esskultur. GW 11, 227, Pr. 1, 310, GBFA 20, 7.
(1940.) Published in Swedish in Göteborgs-Posten, Göteborg, 18 December 1943. Brecht’s journal for 26 January 1940 records his writing of this ‘little detective story’ based on an evening spent with Jean Renoir and the Berlin film director Carl Koch, an old friend, during a visit to Paris in September 1933. Meeting Renoir again in Santa Monica in October 1943, he watched him eating a sausage and found it ‘so amusing as to be almost exciting. Nothing much wrong with his senses’.
261 The Augsburg Chalk Circle. Der Augsburger Kreidekreis. GW 11, 321, Pr. 2, 7, GBFA 18, 341. In Tales from the Calendar.
(1940.) Dated by Brecht ‘Lidingö January 1940’ and sent by him on 20 November that year to Mikhail Apletin of the Soviet Writers’ Union for transmission to Internationale Literatur, who published it in their issue of June 1941. An earlier, fragmentary version was called ‘The Odense Chalk Circle’ and was set in Denmark. Augsburg was Brecht’s home town in south Germany. The BBA contains a scheme by Paul Dessau for the composition of a ‘dramatic ballad for music’ in three parts based on the story. This appears to date from about 1944, just when Brecht was turning his Dollinger figure into the Azdak of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, whose music Dessau eventually wrote.
279 Two Sons. Zwei Söhne. GW 11, 363, Pr. 2, 24, GBFA 18, 357. In Tales from the Calendar.
(c. 1946.) A note in Brecht’s journal for 12 May 1945 gives the outline of a film ‘which one might make for g[ermany]’.
. . . a peasant woman who spends 2 days struggling with herself and her family (including her son who is on leave) to decide whether to slip half a loaf of bread to a starving prisoner. she does so, and brings her soldier son to the allies in a cart, bound with cattle-ropes—to make him safe.
A later entry (24 March 1947) shows that he sent the story to Slatan Dudow, the Bulgarian film director, in East Berlin, It was not however filmed until 1969, when Helmut Nitzschke directed it for DEFA as the first part of the film Aus unserer Zeit, with Felicitas Ritsch and Ekkehard Schall as mother and son, and a commentary by Brecht’s widow Helene Weigel.
283 Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Körner. Lebenslauf des Boxers Samson-Körner. GW 11, 121, GBFA 19, 216.
Published in Die Arena, Berlin, in four monthly issues from October 1926 to January 1927 inclusive. Paul Samson-Körner, the German middleweight champion, was a friend of Brecht, whose collaborator Emil Hesse Burri was one of his sparring partners. A scheme in BBA headed ‘approximate résumé’ suggests that Brecht intended to write a short book of some 70–80 pages, of which only about one third was completed. The rest was to have covered the following themes:
Training at sea—boilermaker in Hoboken—cold Chicago: the bed of newspapers, the freight car and the free lunch—hitchhiking across America—making a living as porter, dishwasher, short-order cook, banana stevedore, cardshuffler, dumb-bell artist, snow-shoveller, boilermaker, boxer—half an hour driving an excavator in the Mormon quarter—the fight with the ‘Prussian Lion’—among the cardsharpers—back to Hoboken as a cattle man—first bouts—to Panama as a steel construction worker—1916, champion of Panama—taxi owner in New York—foreman in the Chilean copper mines—champion of Chile and Peru—outstanding fights with Dan McClure, Tom Gibbons et al. in New York—story of Jack Johnson the black world champion—behind the scenes of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight—return to Germany—championship bouts in Germany.
However the February–March 1927 issue of Arena merely carried the well-known photograph of the champion about to deliver an uppercut to Brecht’s jaw, together with an apologetic note reading:
The next instalment of our serial ‘Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Körner’ is missing from this issue. Samson and Brecht wish to take a break from their story. Brecht felt a little run down after all that writing, and asked Samson to take him into training. Our picture shows the two men before things got serious. They are now boxing every day. They will resume their story with renewed energy in the next issue of Arena.
Not so. There the matter rested. According to Herta Ramthun’s note in GW, Brecht’s theatre projects had begun to take up too much of his time.
Index
Index of Titles in German
(including alternative titles)
Barbara 140
Bargan lässt es sein 7
Betrachtungen bei Regen 83
Brief über eine Dogge 87
Das Experiment 211
Der Arbeitsplatz 156
Der Augsburger Kreidekreis 261
Der Blinde 33
Der dicke Ham 84
Der feige Vize 56
Der Feigling 163
Der Javameier 44
Der Kinnhaken 95
Der Lebenslauf des Boxers Samson-Körner 283
Der Mantel des Ketzers (des Nolaners) 225
Der Schweinigel 64
Der Soldat von La Ciotat 178
Der Stalljunge 211
Der Tod des Cesare Malatesta 72
Der verwundete Sokrates 191
Der Vizewachtmeister 56
Die Antwort 79
Die Bestie 149
Die dumme Frau 30
Die Erleuchtung 28
Die Flaschenpost 62
Die Hilfe 38
Die moderne Bauhauswohnung 107
Die unwürdige Greisin 247
Die zwei Söhne 279
Ein gemeiner Kerl 64
Ein Irrtum 181
Eine kleine Versicherungsgeschichte 125
Eine Pleite-Idee 125
Erlebnis mit einer Dogge 87
Gaumer und Irk 187
Geschichte auf einem Schiff 25
Gespräch über die Südsee 85
L’homme statue 178
Müllers natürliche Haltung 100
Nordseekrabben 107
Safety First 163
Schlechtes Wasser 118
Vier Männer und ein Pokerspiel 131
Vor der Sintflut 83
Zuviel Glück ist kein Glück 131
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Original work entitled Geschichten, being Volume II of Gesammelte Werke of Bertolt Brecht, published by Suhrkamp Verlag. English-language translation first published in the UK in 1983 by Methuen London, first published in the USA in 1998 by Arcade Publishing
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