'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

(albeit the fictional, allegorized mother) of the war generation about her silent complicity
in the crimes of the Nazi regime. This interrogation prefaces and parallels Sander-
Brahms‟ questioning of her mother‟s actions during the Hitler regimes, actions that are
depicted in a fictionalized form in the film narrative. The intergenerational dimension of
the prologue is further emphasized by the fact that Brecht, a “son” of Germany “the pale
mother,” penned the poem now being read by his daughter. However, Brecht was a
“German son” who was fortunate enough to leave Germany before the full extent of Nazi
brutality had manifested itself.
In the poem, Brecht uses a mother figure as a metaphor for Germany:
O Deutschland, bleiche Mutter!
Wie sitzest du besudelt
Unter den Völkern.
Unter den Befleckten
Fällst du auf. (Brecht, Werke 253) 54
The first stanzas of the poem set up a fictional scenario in which the sons,
representing the National Socialists, shame „mother Germany‟ through their crimes. As
Kaes suggests, Brecht makes a distinction between the National Socialists and the
German people, along gender-specific lines (Kaes 148). The German mother, Germania,
is presented as an ambivalent figure who is simultaneously victimized by her sons and
passively complicit in their misdeeds. The sons have shamed their mother by killing their
brother, a sibling who represents the victims of Nazism. In doing so, they have stained
and defiled her: “Von deinen Söhnen der ärmste / Liegt erschlagen. / Als sein Hunger
groß war / Haben deine anderen Söhne / Die Hand gegen ihn erhoben. / Das ist ruchbar
54 “O Germany, pale mother / How you sit defiled among the peoples! / Among the besmirched, / You
stand out” (Brecht, Poems 218).
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