Mother Courage and Her Children Lesson Plan

Mother Courage and Her Children is arguably Bertolt Brecht's most enduring masterpiece. It was written over the course of five months in 1939 following the invasion of Poland by German troops. As a left-wing intellectual and artist, Brecht fled Nazi Germany to exile in Sweden; however, the play was too critical for production or publication there. The play was first published in 1941 in English translation by the publishing house New Directions in the United States, and was first produced at Schauspielhaus Zürich in 1941, in a German-language production was possible only because of Switzerland's "neutral" status during World War II. Written, produced, and published in a world coming...