I had a goosebump moment when I was working on my paper this morning.

The following is my translation of an excerpt from „The Flight of the Lindberghs“, a educational radio play by Bertolt Brecht, written in 1930. In this play, the Lindberghs are the audience, who are supposed to speak these lines to the radio, in an interactive experience to use the then new medium as an educational tool.

Part 8

Ideology

The Lindberghs:

I

Many say that this age is old

But I have always known that this is a new age.

I am telling you, not by themselves

Are houses growing like mountains of ore for 20 years

And many are moving to the city every year, as if they expect something.

And on the laughing continents

It’s making the rounds: the big scary sea

Is a small water.

Although I am the first to fly across the Atlantic

I am convinced: tomorrow already

You will laugh at my flight.

II

But it is a battle against the primitive

And a strife to improve the planet

Like the didactic economy

Which will change the world from the ground up.

For now

Let us fight nature

Until we ourselves become nature.

We and our technology are not nature yet

We and our technology are primitive.

The steamboats raced the sailboats

Which in turn left the rowboats behind

I

Am flying against the steamboats

In my battle against the primitive

My airplane, weak and shaky

My apparatus full of flaws

Are better than the ones that came before, but

By flying

I am fighting against my airplane and

Against the primitive.

III

So I am fighting against nature and

Against myself

Whatever I am and what foolishness I believe in

When I am flying, I am

A true Atheist.

For ten thousand years grew

Where the waters become dark at the sky

Between light and dawn unstoppable

God. And likewise

Above the mountains, where the ice came from

The ignorant spotted

Unconvincably a god. And likewise

Into the deserts came the sandstorms and

In the cities he was created by the chaos

Of the classes of people, because there are two kinds of people.

Exploitation and ignorance, though

The revolution liquidates him. But

Build roads across the mountains and he disappears

Rivers scare him out of the deserts. The light

Shows emptiness and

Chases him away at once.

So be a part

Of the battle against the primitive

Of the liquidation of the afterlife and

And driving out of god, wherever

He appears.

Under the sharper microscope

He falls.

He is scared away by

The improved apparatuses from the sky.

The cleansing of the cities

The crushing of suffering

Make him disappear and

Chase him away back to the first millennium.

IV

So still there is

The chaos in the improved cities

Which grows from ignorance that equals God

But the machines and the workers

Will fight them, so you, too

Be a part of

The fight against the primitive.