Zu Bertolt Brechts Sonett „Über Kleists ´Prinz von Homburg´

Abstract

On Bertolt Brecht's sonnet "About Kleist's 'Prinz von Homburg'

In addition to his plays, socio-critical, war and love poems, Bertolt Brecht (b. 1898, died 1956) wrote eight art-critical sonnets. which he called "Studies" and published in 1951 in the 11th issue of "Versuche". These sonnets were written during the exile in the years 1934-1940. Brecht is referring here to classic, mostly literary (both lyrical and dramatic) works whose authors are considered classics in the sense of Brecht. Without exception, the sonnets in question deal with works of the past, more than half of the analyzes in the “Studies” refer to works of the German classics, three of them to those of the Weimar Classic. The "Studies" published in 1951 are not about an overall assessment of a classic work, positive or negative, but about conveying reservations about traditional literary material, which Brecht considers worthy of being examined and looked at again. These include the sonnet "About Kleist's play 'Der Prinz von Homburg'", which refers to the play "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg", which stands at the end of German classicism and which Heinrich von Kleist wrote between 1809 and 1811 as the last work before his suicide Has. In this contribution, which I presented as a lecture at the Humboldt University in Berlin in June 2010, I attempt to carry out a linguistic analysis of this sonnet in three points. First I give a brief overview of the development of Heinrich von Kleist's drama "Der Prinz Friedrich von Homburg", then about the critical sonnets "Studies" by Bertolt Brecht, then historical and socio-critical aspects are explained using examples from B. Brecht's sonnet "Über Kleists' Prince of Homburg'” highlighted.