The sonnet Finnische Landschaft (Finnish Landscape) is included in the same collection. It was written at Marlebäck, the writer Hella Wuolijoki’s estate, where the Brecht group spent three summer months. The opening lines of the sonnet are taken almost word for word from Brecht’s journal entry of 8 July, 1940, showing that the poem deals with a landscape the writer actually experienced. As the result of a Finnish translation by Arvo Turtiainen, the poem became known in Finland before it did in Germany, and the closing line, “Volk, das in zwei Sprachen schweigt” (a people that is silent in two languages), was adopted as a saying. In his Flüchtlingsgesprächen (Refugee Conversations) Brecht explains that what has often been assumed to be a statement on national character actually refers to the “silence” of the Finnish workers’ movement following its defeat in the civil war of 1918.