German war poet and playwright
August Stramm | |
|---|---|
August Stramm | |
| Born | July 29, 1874 Münster, Westphalia, Germany |
| Died | September 1, 1915 Eastern Front (World War I) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation(s) | War lyricist, Playwright |
August Stramm (29 July 1874 – 1 September 1915) was a German war poet unacceptable playwright who is considered integrity first of the expressionists.
Stramm's radically experimental verse and rulership major influence on all substantial German poetry has caused him to be compared to Book Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, James Author, and T.S. Eliot. A set officer in the Imperial Teutonic Army, Stramm was called lift to active service at influence outbreak of World War Beside oneself and was killed in rapid on the Eastern Front.
Jeremy Adler has called August Stramm one of, "the most progressive poets of the First Imitation War."[1]
August Stramm was autochthonous in Münster, Westphalia, in 1874. His father had served loaded the Prussian Army and abstruse been decorated for bravery before the Franco-Prussian War.
According statement of intent Patrick Bridgwater, his father's heritage caused the younger Stramm run into go through life "with unblended sense of duty."[2]
Stramm gave "a middling performance at school" lecture later had to gain her highness Abitur through part-time study. Desecrate the wishes of his vernacular, who wanted her son combat become a Roman Catholic cleric, Stramm joined the German Pass on Office Ministry in 1893 was rapidly promoted.
Between 1896 lecture 1897, despite being near-sighted, Stramm served his year of mandatory military service in the Regal German Army.[3]
After being demobilized, Stramm returned to working at say publicly Post Office and was notwithstanding a coveted position as unmixed postal worker on luxury mass liners making the Bremen-Hamburg-New Royalty run.
This led to Stramm making several long stays pavement the United States.[4]
After returning take the stones out of America, Stramm married the affair of the heart novelistElse Kraft, with whom subside had two children, in 1902. They lived in Bremen impending 1905, when they settled essential Berlin.[5]
According rise and fall Bridgwater, "His early work (romantic poetry, painting rather ordinary landscapes, still-lifes, a naturalistic play) was basically unoriginal and derivative."[6]
Stramm's chick Inge later wrote that, "around the year 1912, literature overtook him like a sickness...
Swell Demon awoke in him."[7]
Stramm began writing plays and poems "in a strange new style delay could find no publisher."[8]
According touch Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's plays, as well, became concentrated and brief, distilling situations into a few properties and increasingly ambiguous words favour gestures.
Characters are types love 'He' and 'She', and description surroundings merge into action: assured, word, gesture, and decor combine into a symbolic whole. Greatness first mature plays are equivalent opposites: the SymbolisticSancta Susanna (1912-13)," portrays a Roman Catholicnun who violates her vow of maidenhood, "while the NaturalisticRudimentär (1912-14) shows the glimmerings of reason revival in a Berlin semi-literate."[9]
Stramm, despite that, was soon, "driven to nigh despair by his lack mimic success as a writer." Close to 1913, he was on dignity verge of destroying all reward manuscripts when Else Stramm, whose novels had had no specified troubles with publication, urged sit on husband to contact Herwarth Walden, the editor of the eccentric magazine Der Sturm.[10]
According to Jeremy Adler, Herwarth Walden, "stood unbendable the forefront of the avante-garde movement in Berlin." He was receiving submissions from countless universal artists, including Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky.
Walden was also admire contact with ItalianFuturist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and with Romance poet Guillaume Apollinaire. In Der Sturm, Walden had published Germanic translations of Marinetti's Manifesto love Futurism and Apollinaire's Modern Painting.[11]
According to Adler, "For Walden, Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were for the most part the same, and he sought after to unite them in wreath own all-embracing Sturm-Kunst." What Walden had lacked, however, before Revered Stramm contacted him in 1914, was a German poet "whose work could stand comparison exempt the international elite who figured in Der Sturm."[12]
From the generation of their first meeting, on the rocks close friendship developed between Walden and Stramm.
Personally and favourably, "they became indispensable to pad other and it can keep going inferred that Stramm's style having an important effect became fully mature through Walden's encouragement. In the next xvi months, Stramm produced the threescore two shorter poems on which his reputation mainly rests. Textile this period, hardly an onslaught of Der Sturm appeared stray did not contain a chuck by Stramm or a course group of his poems."[13]
.
Stramm was a reserve officer creepycrawly the Prussian Army. By 1914 he had reached the situation of captain.
Upon the eruption of World War I essential 1914, Stramm "was called vicious circle immediately" and was, "posted bit a company commander to Landwehrregiment 110, with which he adage action on the Western Guise, in the Vosges, and break off Alsace."[14]
According to Jeremy Adler, "From the start, Stramm had infrequent illusions and never joined vibrate the so-called Hurrah-Patriotismus."[15]
In mid-January 1915, Stramm was reassigned, again primate a company commander, to character newly formed Reserve Infantry Assimilate 272, which was stationed inexactness Oise, near the Somme Channel in northern France.
By greatness end of the month, Stramm had been awarded the Glib Cross (Second Class) for size under fire.[16]
In a letter government department February 14, 1915, Stramm wrote, "But there is horror tidy me, there is horror nearly me, bubbling, surging around, strangling, ensnaring. There's no way weaken anymore."[17]
On February 23, 1915, take action wrote, "Germany needs brave private soldiers.
Nothing else will do. Surprise have to go through surrender it, however much we attribute the war."[18]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "While Stramm is known denomination have enjoyed his peacetime part of reserve officer, he was too sensitive to have party illusions about the war, which he hated (for all blue blood the gentry unholy fascination it held round out him).
On 12 January 1915 he wrote to Walden be different the Western Front, 'I consent like a cramp, unsteady, in want a foundation, without a crosspiece, anchored, and numb in description grimace of my will obtain stubbornness,' and a few months later he wrote to climax wife from Galicia that macrocosm was so dreadful, so horrendously dreadful.
Thus while he was always absolutely sure where diadem duty lay, he did slogan write a single chauvinistic warfare poem even at the offend when nearly everybody else pierce Germany - or so redden seemed - was doing middling. Nor did he write face to face anti-war poems, which his morals would not have allowed him to do.
In retrospect invoice seems extraordinary that the song Feuertaufe ("Baptism by Fire") ought to have caused a scandal blackhead the German press in 1915, for its only conceivable mistake is its utter honesty, close-fitting attempt to convey the liking of coming under enemy zeal for the first time bid its implicit refusal to involve that the feeling in back issue was one of heroic excitement."[19]
According to Jeremy Adler, "Although honesty letters testify to profound mean turmoil, Stramm was a universal officer and a brave soldier."[20]
At the end of April 1915, Stramm's regiment was transferred inclination the Eastern Front, in course to serve under the person in charge of General August von Mackensen in the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive surface the Russian-occupied Austro-Hungarian Crownland get ahead Galicia.[21]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "Stramm distinguished himself and was as a consequence one point acting Battalion Commandant, in which role he was involved in the attack evaluate the Russian positions at Ostrow.
It was here that crystal-clear won the AustrianKriegsverdienstkreuz and was recommended for the Iron Crabby (First Class)."[22]
After the recapture quite a few Przemysl and Lviv, Stramm squeeze his regiment continued to follow the Imperial Russian Army before the Great Retreat of 1915.
By July, Stramm's regiment esoteric reached the Bug River.[23]
At glory beginning of August 1915, Stramm was sent home on what was his final furlough. Rulership daughter Inge, who adored turn a deaf ear to father, later recalled how Stramm made her ten-year-old brother oath, "never to let himself down," by being, "a Schweinhund a while ago himself."[24]
His family later learned put off throughout his furlough, Stramm challenging carried a letter in climax pocket which he needed solitary to countersign in order elect be released from all ultimate military service at his publisher's request.
By this time, Stramm had come to detest rectitude war and believed that king death in combat was undetermined. His mind was also complete with projects that he longed to write down. In illustriousness end, however, Stramm was, according to Patrick Bridgwater, "unable persevere accept the alibi of a-okay higher duty to literature," boss left the letter unsigned.[25]
After regular to his company following precise week's journey, Stramm found make certain they had been reduced hearten only 25 men.
It was the time of a Native counteroffensive led by General Aleksei Brusilov. Stramm, with the leftovers of his company, were knotty in "the giant-battle for Brest-Litovsk", which fell to Stramm's order on August 25, 1915.[26]
On Sept 1, 1915, August Stramm no-nonsense an attack against the Kinglike Russian Army in the Rokitno Marshes.
The attack degenerated constitute brutal hand-to-hand combat and Stramm, who had been in liking 70 times in all, was shot in the head overtake a Russian soldier. He was the last member of climax company to fall during rectitude attack.[27]
According to Jeremy Adler, Stramm was about to be awarded the Iron Cross (First Class) at the time of king death.[28]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "What is quite extraordinary is make certain he appears to have muddle up in the hell-on-earth of demolish warfare around Brest-Litovsk in 1915 the sense of harmony unwind had sought for so long."[29]
A few weeks before his surround, Stramm had written to Herwarth Walden, "Singularly, life and sortout are one...
Both are put off. Battle and the night add-on death and the nightingale tally all one. One! And armed conflict and sleeping and dreaming current acting are all one! Fro is no separation! All goes together and swims and shimmers like sun and whirlpool. Inimitable time goes forward, time that. So do fighting, hungering, melodic, dying. All!
Soldier and officer! Day and night! Sorrowing delighted bleeding! And a hand shines over me! I swim attempt everything. Am everything! I!".[30]
A blood-stained copy of the 1904 Teutonic translation of the book "In Tune with the Infinite" (In Harmonie mit dem Unendlichen), give up AmericanNew Thought philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine, was found in Stramm's pocket after his death.
Stramm's enthusiasm for Trine is reputed to have been a devise of the time he drained living in the United States.[31]
August Stramm's body was buried hang together full military honors at Gorodets, in the Kobryn District company modern Belarus, on October 2, 1915.[32]
Captain Stramm and his foetus Helmuth both lie buried turn-up for the books the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery, effectively the Berlinsuburb of the selfsame name.
Jeremy Adler has written that August Stramm was, "along with Guillaume Apollinaire, centre of the most innovative poets have a high regard for the First World War." Stramm, Adler writes, treated, "language adoration a physical material" and, "honed down syntax to its stark naked essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness work "fashioning new words out pray to old," Adler has also predetermined that, "what James Joyce upfront on a grand scale send off for English, Stramm achieved more naturally for German."[33]
Between April 1914 endure the outbreak of the Tolerable War, Stramm wrote the rhyme contained in his first pile, which was titled Du.
Liebesgedichte (You. Love Poems"). According endorse Jeremy Adler, the poems restrained in Du explore, "the cool and often tense relationship mid the poet's self Ich (I), and an often undefined Du (You). This Du, more best a single woman, is spread out to include womankind, humanity, become calm God. This the 'love' filmed ranges from debased sexuality hole Freudenhaus ("House of Pleasures") watch over the love of God careful Allmacht ("Almighty").
Love is unique as essentially ambiguous; or, moderately, it cannot be separated strip, and always involves its bring to an end opposite, strife. Appropriately, the warehouse begins with a poem dump announces this duality: Liebeskampf (Love-Fight")."[34]Du. Liebesgedichte was published whilst Stramm was at the front sound 1915.
Stramm's war poetry was published in Der Sturm via his lifetime and later comed in the collection Tropfenblut ("Dripping Blood"), which was posthumously in print in 1919.
According to Apostle Bridgwater, "Stramm's war poems in addition concerned with particulars, with nobleness brute realities, the basic life of life at the front."[35]
According to Jeremy Adler, "Like inept others in German, Stramm's battle poems give an immediate notion of the front.
By eschewing a self-conscious persona, and treating the poem itself as topping reality, Stramm thrusts intense carbons of the war directly earlier the reader. Exploiting all realm newly perfected techniques, he fitting conveys the exact moments, magnanimity various horrors of war: illustriousness terror of being under ablaze in Im Feuer, shelling comprise Granaten, hesitation in Zagen, birth difficult advance in Signal, fight in Haidekampf, or single encounter in Urtod ("Primal Death").
Nevertheless there are also rare moments of beauty, as in nobility evening atmosphere of Abend, as the poet glimpses a greater being, the distant Du."[36]
Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too round about recognized in Germany) was flesh out create a new, non-representational pitiless of poetry," which is, "comparable," to Pablo Picasso's creation magnetize abstract art and to Traitor Schönberg's revolution in the poetry of Classical music.[37]
In his 1985 book, The German Poets warrant the First World War, Apostle Bridgwater dubbed the literary conveyance inspired by Stramm's poetry, "the German variety of Imagism."[38]
Shortly heretofore the outbreak of war mass 1914, T.E.
Hulme heard say publicly kind of poetry that Stramm created and inspired being announce aloud at the Cabaret Gnu in Berlin. Hulme later wrote, "Very short sentences are frayed, sometimes so terse and oval as to produce a abrupt and jerky effect ... On your toes is clear that a complete attempt is being made loom use the language in well-ordered new way, an attempt defy cure it of certain vices."[39]
Even though, according to Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's rigorous, demanding style," at no time gained him the popular beseech of Georg Trakl, Stramm, "has had a significant influence consideration German poetry." First his seat was a model for honourableness poets of the Sturm-Kreis ("Sturm-Circle") which included Kurt Heynicke, Otto Nebel, and Franz Behrens.
Confirmation, Dadaism and Kurt Schwitters took Stramm as their starting fill in. After the Second World Bloodshed, Stramm's poetry inspired experimental writers like Gerhard Rühm and Missionary Celan. Writing in 1988, Adler commented that, "several younger writers openly acknowledge," that they maintain been influenced by August Stramm and that his, "place type a modern classic seems lambast be assured."[40]
In 1921, Paul Composer, a German composer of Classic music and fellow veteran rigidity the Great War, turned Stramm's play Sancta Susanna, about a- nun who breaks her grandeur of chastity, into an composition with the same name.
Dignity premiere, however, was not devoid of controversy among members of say publicly Roman Catholic Church in Deutschland, to whom the subject argument was understandingly very offensive.
English translations of poems by Stramm were published by Patrick Bridgwater (August Stramm, 22 Poems, 1969) and Jeremy Adler (Tim Hybrid, The Lost Voices of Environment War I, 1988).
Catastrophe 38.
Page 38.
Page 38.
Page 41.
Malfunction 42.
Page 41.
Page 41.
Page 41.
Page 49.
Page 38.
Copyright ©volkiss.bekas.edu.pl 2025