"We Are the Expelled, the Banished" - Bertolt Brecht in Exile - and Before

Poems, texts, songs

"I always found the name they gave us wrong: emigrants.
But that means those who emigrate. Yet we
Did not emigrate, did not choose
In free decision another country. Nor did we enter
Some country to stay there, perhaps forever.
But we fled. We are the expelled, the banished."
(Svendborg Poems)

Driven from Germany by the Nazis in 1933, Brecht grappled with the "duration of exile," with estrangement in a foreign land, with writing against Hitler, and repeatedly with defending poetry in times of oppression. For fifteen years he "changed countries more often than shoes," driven around the entire globe.
But had exile not already begun before? Why had it been impossible to stop the rise of the Nazis? What did estrangement in one's own country look like even before 1933? Many texts written before the flight shape exile in one's own land - exile before exile.

Corinna Harfouch and Die Tentakel von Delphi - Paula Sell, Hannes Gwisdek, Boris Nielsen, Moritz Bossmann, and Johannes Döpping - interpret exile poems and texts from the 1920s, such as "From a Reader for City Dwellers."

Corinna Harfouch is among Germany's most renowned actresses in film, television, and theatre. She has performed at the Berliner Ensemble and worked with directors such as Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf, Jürgen Gosch, and Herbert Fritsch. Recently she has also appeared at Thalia Theater. Her theatrical and film work has been widely recognized with numerous awards, including the Gertrud Eysoldt Ring, the Grimme Prize, and twice the German Film Prize.