While made famous by his many plays, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

 (1898-1956) also wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life. Brecht began writing poetry as a young boy, and his first poems were published in 1914. Brecht's most influential poetry is featured in his Manual of Piety (Devotions), establishing him as a great poet. His poetry was influenced by folk-ballads, French chansons, and the poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 of Rimbaud and Villon

Villon

Villon may refer to:* 10140 Villon, a main belt asteroid* Villon, Yonne, Burgundy, France* Villon , a French surname* François Villon, the 15th-century poet...

. Throughout his theatric production, poems are incorporated into the plays with music. In 1951, Brecht issued a recantation of his apparent suppression of poetry in his plays with a note titled On Poetry and Virtuosity. He writes:

"We shall not need to speak of a play's poetry... something that seemed relatively unimportant in the immediate past. It seemed not only unimportant, but misleading, and the reason was not that the poetic element had been sufficiently developed and observed, but that reality had been tampered with in its name...we had to speak of a truth as distinct from poetry...we have given up examining works of art from their poetic or artistic aspect, and got satisfaction from theatrical works that have no sort of poetic appeal...Such works and performances may have some effect, but it can hardly be a profound one, not even politically. For it is a peculiarity of the theatrical medium that it communicates awarenesses and impulses in the form of pleasure: the depth of the pleasure and the impulse will correspond to the depth of the pleasure."

Several of Brecht's poems were set by his collaborator Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

 in his Deutsche Sinfonie

Deutsche Sinfonie

Deutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50, is a composition for soloists, chorus and orchestra by Hanns Eisler. Despite the title, it is considered to be more in the style of a cantata than a symphony...

, begun in 1935 but not premiered until 1959, three years after Brecht's death.

Themes

Brecht used his poetry to criticize European culture, including Nazis, and the German bourgeois. Brecht's poetry is marked by the effects of the First and Second World Wars. Many of the poems take a Marxist outlook, celebrating the defeat of a capitalist system.

Abridged List of Brecht's Poems

• 1940
• A Bad Time for Poetry
• Alabama Song
• Children's Crusade
• Children's Hymn
  Children's Hymn
  Children's Hymn is the English name of a poem by Bertolt Brecht, Kinderhymne, written in 1950 and set to music by Hanns Eisler in the same year....
  
  
• Contemplating Hell
• From a German War Primer
• Germany
• Honored Murderer of the People
• How Fortunate the Man with None
• Hymn to Communism
• I Never Loved You More
• I want to Go with the One I Love
• I'm Not Saying Anything Against Alexander
• In Praise of Illegal Work
• In Praise of the Work of the Party
• Mack the Knife
• My Young Son Asks Me
• Not What Was Meant
• O Germany, Pale Mother!
• On Reading a Recent Greek Poet
• On the Critical Attitude
• Parting
• Questions from a Worker Who Reads
• Radio Poem
• Send Me a Leaf
• Solidarity Song
• The Book Burning (The Burning of the Books)
• The Exile of the Poets
• The Invincible Inscription
• The Mask of Evil
• The Sixteen-Year-Old Seamstress Emma Rises before the Magistrate
• The Solution
• To Be Read in the Morning and at Night
• To Posterity
• To the Students and Workers of the Peasants' Faculty
• To Those Born After
• United Front Song
• What Has Happened?