Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, opened on 31 August 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. One of its songs is the Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Strebens, the song of the inadequacy of human striving. It is also listed under the title Ballade von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Planens, the ballad of the inadequacy of human planning.
literature
Mother Courage Haggles Too Long
Bertolt Brecht’s play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, Mother Courage and Her Children, had its first performance in Zurich on 19 April 1941. It is often read in German schools. It is set in the Thirty Years’ War. Anna Fierling, called Mother Courage, follows the armies with her wagon and sells goods to the soldiers. Her son Schweizerkas is arrested. She could buy him free. German Wikipedia sums up what happens next: Doch sie verhandelt zu lange um die Auslösesumme für ihren Sohn … But she negotiates too long over the ransom for her son. He is shot.
Goethe on Double-Entry Bookkeeping
In the first book of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, published in 1795 and 1796, the young merchant Werner praises the account book. Welche Vorteile gewährt die doppelte Buchhaltung dem Kaufmanne! Es ist eine der schönsten Erfindungen des menschlichen Geistes. What advantages double-entry bookkeeping gives the merchant! It is one of the finest inventions of the human mind. Werner adds that every good householder should use it in his own household. Wilhelm answers with irony. People busy with Addieren und Bilanzieren, adding and balancing, forget das eigentliche Fazit des Lebens, the real sum of life.
Whoever Binds Himself Forever
Drum prüfe, wer sich ewig bindet, / Ob sich das Herz zum Herzen findet! / Der Wahn ist kurz, die Reu ist lang. So whoever binds himself forever should test whether heart finds heart. The illusion is short, the regret is long. The lines come from Friedrich Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke, The Song of the Bell, first printed in the Musen-Almanach for the year 1800. In the poem they are about marriage. Germans quote the first line for any commitment that is meant to last, such as a partnership, a long contract or a large purchase.
The Wise Judge
Der kluge Richter, the wise judge, is one of Johann Peter Hebel’s calendar stories. It appears in his Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes of 1811, and it still appears in school materials. A rich man loses a cloth with money sewn into it. He promises the honest finder a reward of one hundred thalers. A good and honest man finds the money and brings it back. Now the rich man looks for a way to cheat the finder out of the reward. He claims that there were really eight hundred thalers in the cloth, so the finder must already have taken his hundred. The judge accepts the claim as stated. If eight hundred were lost, this cannot be the same money. The finder takes the money home and keeps it safe. The rich man must wait until someone finds his eight hundred thalers. So sprach der Richter, und dabei blieb es. So spoke the judge, and that is how it stayed.
Michael Kohlhaas Gets His Horses Back
Heinrich von Kleist published the full novella Michael Kohlhaas in 1810. A horse dealer leaves two horses as a pledge with the Junker von Tronka. When he returns, they are thin and ruined from hard field work. Ich will meine wohlgenährten und gesunden Pferde wieder haben! I want my well-fed and healthy horses back! He goes to court, fails, and turns to violence. At the end of the novella, the Junker is sentenced to two years in prison. Kohlhaas is sentenced to death. Before his execution, he is shown his two black horses, fattened by the Junker’s men and shining with health. Kohlhaas tells the archchancellor with joy that his highest wish on earth has been fulfilled. Then his head falls under the executioner’s axe.
Kleist calls him one of the most upright and at the same time most terrible men of his time. His sense of justice made him a robber and a murderer.
The Motto Over the Desk
Mein Sohn, sey mit Lust bey den Geschäften am Tage, aber mache nur solche, daß wir bey Nacht ruhig schlafen können. My son, take pleasure in business by day, but make only such deals that let us sleep peacefully at night. In Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901), the family gives Thomas Buddenbrook a large memorial tablet with this motto in Gothic letters. The occasion is the firm’s hundredth anniversary on 7 July 1868. Thomas has just bought the entire grain harvest of the estate Pöppenrade while it is still standing in the field. He paid half price to an owner who badly needed money. When he first thought about the deal, he described it in his own words: Unreinliche Manipulation … Im Trüben fischen … Brutale Ausbeutung … Einen Wehrlosen übers Ohr hauen … Wucherprofit. Unclean manipulation, fishing in muddy water, brutal exploitation, cheating a defenseless man, a usurer’s profit. During the anniversary celebration, a telegram arrives. Hail has destroyed the Pöppenrade harvest.
The motto is said to come from the author’s own family firm. The sources disagree on which Johann Siegmund Mann wrote it.
The Silesian Weavers
In June 1844, weavers in the Silesian villages of Peterswaldau and Langenbielau rose up after the merchants who bought their cloth had cut their pay again and again. The main target was the firm of Zwanziger & Söhne. Prussian troops fired into the crowd. Ten men and one woman were killed. In July 1844, Heinrich Heine published a poem about the weavers in Karl Marx’s paper Vorwärts!. In it, the weavers weave a threefold curse. In 1892, Gerhart Hauptmann published Die Weber, The Weavers, a play in five acts. In the play, the manufacturer Dreißiger cuts the piece rates by a fifth. The Berlin police banned performances. In 1894, after the play had opened at the Deutsches Theater, Kaiser Wilhelm II gave up his box at the theater in protest. Hauptmann received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912.
Work by Day, Guests in the Evening
Goethe wrote the ballad Der Schatzgräber, The Treasure Digger, in May 1797. A poor man tries to raise a treasure by magic at night. Instead, a boy appears and gives him other advice, and the poem ends with it: Tages Arbeit, abends Gäste! / Saure Wochen, frohe Feste! / Sei dein künftig / Zauberwort! Work by day, guests in the evening! Hard weeks, happy feasts! Let that be your magic word from now on.
Little Man, What Now?
Hans Fallada’s novel Kleiner Mann – was nun?, Little Man, What Now?, appeared in 1932. Its hero, the bookkeeper Johannes Pinneberg, loses his job. He finds work in a department store and loses that job too, after only a year. He is behind on his sales quota. Fallada described his hero as einer von sechs Millionen, ein Garnichts, one of six million, a nothing. The book became a bestseller and went through 45 editions. It was filmed in Germany in 1933 and in Hollywood in 1934.