Svendborger Gedichte

The collection is named after the town of Svendborg on the Danish island of Funen, where Brecht lived during his exile from Nazi Germany.

During this period, Hanns Eisler stayed several times to set a large group of the poems to music in collaboration with Brecht.

This compilation was preceded by earlier publications, and individual poems followed, such that one can assume a period of origin from 1926 to 1938.

But in the wake of the events surrounding the Munich Agreement and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Herzfelde had to flee from Prague; the finished set of Svendborg poems was lost.

The publication received significant support from Ruth Berlau, the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, and apparently the Diderot Society (the latter of which Brecht was working to found around 1936).

[7] The poems that comprised section 3, Chroniken ('chronicles'), were based on stories which Brecht encountered in his reading.

For example, "Abbau des Schiffes Oskawa durch die Mannschaft" ("How the Ship 'Oskawa' was Broken up by her own Crew") is a subversive rewriting of an account of life on the ship by Louis Adamic in his 1931 Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America, while "Kohlen für Mike" ("Coal for Mike") was based on an incident in Sherwood Anderson's novel Poor White.

Geflüchtet unter das dänische Strohdach, Freunde Verfolg ich euren Kampf.

An den Schwankenden; An die Gleichgeschalteten; Auf den Tod eines Kämpfers für den Frieden; Rat an die bildenden Künstler..; Ansprache des Bauern an seinen Ochsen; Bei der Geburt eines Sohnes; Rede eines Arbeiters an einen Arzt; Appell; Verhöhnung des Soldaten der Revolution; Kantate zu Lenins Todestag; Lob des Revolutionärs; Grabschrift für Gorki.

Seated up in the boat's bows, as you Notice the leak down at the other end Better not turn your eyes away, my friend For you are not outside Death's field of view.