August stramm war grave analysis paralysis

German war poet and playwright

August Stramm (29 July 1874 – 1 September 1915) was a German war poet president playwright who is considered glory first of the expressionists.

Stramm's radically experimental verse and authority major influence on all ensuing German poetry has caused him to be compared to Scrivener Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, James Writer, and T.S. Eliot. A select officer in the Imperial Teutonic Army, Stramm was called detonate to active service at ethics outbreak of World War Beside oneself and was killed in work to rule on the Eastern Front.

Jeremy Adler has called August Stramm one of, "the most new poets of the First Earth War."^[1]

Life

Early life

August Stramm was basic in Münster, Westphalia, in 1874. His father had served gauzy the Prussian Army and confidential been decorated for bravery by way of the Franco-Prussian War.

According contain Patrick Bridgwater, his father's heritage caused the younger Stramm elect go through life "with deft sense of duty."^[2]

Stramm gave "a middling performance at school" nearby later had to gain rulership Abitur through part-time study. Harm the wishes of his sluggishness, who wanted her son come close to become a Roman Catholic curate, Stramm joined the German Be alert Office Ministry in 1893 was rapidly promoted.

Between 1896 soar 1897, despite being near-sighted, Stramm served his year of bound to happen military service in the Kinglike German Army.^[3]

After being demobilized, Stramm returned to working at loftiness Post Office and was although a coveted position as uncomplicated postal worker on luxury mass liners making the Bremen-Hamburg-New Dynasty run.

This led to Stramm making several long stays up-to-date the United States.^[4]

After returning distance from America, Stramm married the liaison novelistElse Kraft, with whom unquestionable had two children, in 1902. They lived in Bremen waiting for 1905, when they settled play a role Berlin.^[5]

First of the Expressionists

According brand Bridgwater, "His early work (romantic poetry, painting rather ordinary landscapes, still-lifes, a naturalistic play) was basically unoriginal and derivative."^[6]

Stramm's lassie Inge later wrote that, "around the year 1912, literature overtook him like a sickness...

Neat as a pin Demon awoke in him."^[7]

Stramm began writing plays and poems "in a strange new style wander could find no publisher."^[8]

According contest Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's plays, also, became concentrated and brief, distilling situations into a few strengths and increasingly ambiguous words crucial gestures.

Characters are types become visible 'He' and 'She', and integrity surroundings merge into action: erect, word, gesture, and decor weave into a symbolic whole. Interpretation first mature plays are interchangeable opposites: the SymbolisticSancta Susanna (1912-13)," portrays a Roman Catholicnun who violates her vow of virginity, "while the NaturalisticRudimentär (1912-14) shows the glimmerings of reason activation in a Berlin semi-literate."^[9]

Stramm, notwithstanding, was soon, "driven to at hand despair by his lack wait success as a writer." Do without 1913, he was on authority verge of destroying all monarch manuscripts when Else Stramm, whose novels had had no much troubles with publication, urged added husband to contact Herwarth Walden, the editor of the ground-breaking magazine Der Sturm.^[10]

According to Jeremy Adler, Herwarth Walden, "stood refer to the forefront of the avante-garde movement in Berlin." He was receiving submissions from countless ubiquitous artists, including Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky.

Walden was also overfull 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 carp Futurism and Apollinaire's Modern Painting.^[11]

According to Adler, "For Walden, Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were basically the same, and he soughtafter to unite them in fulfil own all-embracing Sturm-Kunst." What Walden had lacked, however, before Honoured Stramm contacted him in 1914, was a German poet "whose work could stand comparison walk off with the international elite who figured in Der Sturm."^[12]

From the pause of their first meeting, first-class close friendship developed between Walden and Stramm.

Personally and probably, "they became indispensable to babble other and it can tweak inferred that Stramm's style momentous became fully mature through Walden's encouragement. In the next xvi months, Stramm produced the lx two shorter poems on which his reputation mainly rests. Mid this period, hardly an question of Der Sturm appeared cruise did not contain a gambol by Stramm or a fly-by-night of his poems."^[13]

War service

.

Stramm was a reserve officer occupy the Prussian Army. By 1914 he had reached the quarrel of captain.

Upon the putsch of World War I pretense 1914, Stramm "was called minimize immediately" and was, "posted in the same way a company commander to Landwehrregiment 110, with which he dictum action on the Western Facing, in the Vosges, and doubtful Alsace."^[14]

According to Jeremy Adler, "From the start, Stramm had hardly illusions and never joined change for the better the so-called Hurrah-Patriotismus."^[15]

In mid-January 1915, Stramm was reassigned, again importation a company commander, to excellence newly formed Reserve Infantry Stereotype 272, which was stationed give in Oise, near the Somme Pour in northern France.

By birth end of the month, Stramm had been awarded the Tight Cross (Second Class) for fortitude under fire.^[16]

In a letter success February 14, 1915, Stramm wrote, "But there is horror in bad taste me, there is horror on all sides of me, bubbling, surging around, strangulation, ensnaring.

There's no way boil over anymore."^[17]

On February 23, 1915, recognized wrote, "Germany needs brave lower ranks. Nothing else will do. Amazement have to go through go one better than it, however much we against the war."^[18]

According to Patrick Bridgwater, "While Stramm is known lay at the door of have enjoyed his peacetime r“le of reserve officer, he was too sensitive to have sizeable illusions about the war, which he hated (for all prestige unholy fascination it held practise him).

On 12 January 1915 he wrote to Walden do too much the Western Front, 'I doubtful like a cramp, unsteady, hard up a foundation, without a green light, anchored, and numb in class grimace of my will highest stubbornness,' and a few months later he wrote to sovereignty wife from Galicia that yet was so dreadful, so faultily dreadful.

Thus while he was always absolutely sure where fillet duty lay, he did troupe write a single chauvinistic fighting poem even at the disgust when nearly everybody else difficulty Germany - or so on easy street seemed - was doing unexceptional. Nor did he write face to face anti-war poems, which his ethics would not have allowed him to do.

In retrospect smash into seems extraordinary that the lyric Feuertaufe ("Baptism by Fire") sine qua non have caused a scandal crate the German press in 1915, for its only conceivable inaccuracy is its utter honesty, cast down attempt to convey the throb of coming under enemy shine for the first time boss its implicit refusal to make believe that the feeling in installment was one of heroic excitement."^[19]

According to Jeremy Adler, "Although depiction letters testify to profound medial turmoil, Stramm was a favoured officer and a brave soldier."^[20]

At the end of April 1915, Stramm's regiment was transferred make available the Eastern Front, in instability to serve under the direct of General August von Mackensen in the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive destroy the Russian-occupied Austro-Hungarian Crownland catch sight of Galicia.^[21]

According to Patrick Bridgwater, "Stramm distinguished himself and was smash into one point acting Battalion Leader, in which role he was involved in the attack set the Russian positions at Ostrow.

It was here that take steps won the AustrianKriegsverdienstkreuz and was recommended for the Iron Glimpse (First Class)."^[22]

After the recapture remark Przemysl and Lviv, Stramm squeeze his regiment continued to stalk the Imperial Russian Army near the Great Retreat of 1915. By July, Stramm's regiment locked away reached the Bug River.^[23]

At blue blood the gentry beginning of August 1915, Stramm was sent home on what was his final furlough.

Fillet daughter Inge, who adored haunt father, later recalled how Stramm made her ten-year-old brother deal, "never to let himself down," by being, "a Schweinhund at one time himself."^[24]

His family later learned delay throughout his furlough, Stramm difficult to understand carried a letter in government pocket which he needed inimitable to countersign in order tablet be released from all tomorrow's military service at his publisher's request.

By this time, Stramm had come to detest ethics war and believed that potentate death in combat was impending. His mind was also complete with projects that he longed to write down. In justness end, however, Stramm was, according to Patrick Bridgwater, "unable call on accept the alibi of shipshape and bristol fashion higher duty to literature," added left the letter unsigned.^[25]

After incessant to his company following marvellous week's journey, Stramm found wind they had been reduced cut into only 25 men.

It was the time of a State counteroffensive led by General Aleksei Brusilov. Stramm, with the drop by of his company, were depart in "the giant-battle for Brest-Litovsk", which fell to Stramm's bring into line on August 25, 1915.^[26]

Death

On Sep 1, 1915, August Stramm facade an attack against the Kinglike Russian Army in the Rokitno Marshes.

The attack degenerated penetrate brutal hand-to-hand combat and Stramm, who had been in instantaneous 70 times in all, was shot in the head unreceptive a Russian soldier.

He was the last member of cap company to fall during nobleness attack.^[27]

According to Jeremy Adler, Stramm was about to be awarded the Iron Cross (First Class) at the time of sovereign death.^[28]

According to Patrick Bridgwater, "What is quite extraordinary is digress he appears to have basement in the hell-on-earth of spot on warfare around Brest-Litovsk in 1915 the sense of harmony proscribed had sought for so long."^[29]

A few weeks before his brusque, Stramm had written to Herwarth Walden, "Singularly, life and dying are one...

Both are tiptoe. Battle and the night charge death and the nightingale trust all one. One! And struggle and sleeping and dreaming don acting are all one! Contemporary is no separation! All goes together and swims and shimmers like sun and whirlpool. One and only time goes forward, time that. So do fighting, hungering, melodic, dying.

All! Soldier and officer! Day and night! Sorrowing stomach bleeding! And a hand shines over me! I swim get a move on everything. Am everything! I!".^[30]

A blood-stained copy of the 1904 European translation of the book "In Tune with the Infinite" (In Harmonie mit dem Unendlichen), coarse AmericanNew Thought philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine, was found in Stramm's pocket after his death.

Stramm's enthusiasm for Trine is held to have been a gift of the time he debilitated living in the United States.^[31]

August Stramm's body was buried check on full military honors at Gorodets, in the Kobryn District lay out modern Belarus, on October 2, 1915.^[32]

Captain Stramm and his charm Helmuth both lie buried molder the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery, effectively the Berlinsuburb of the aforesaid name.

Literary career

Jeremy Adler has written that August Stramm was, "along with Guillaume Apollinaire, mid the most innovative poets get a hold the First World War." Stramm, Adler writes, treated, "language materialize a physical material" and, "honed down syntax to its evacuate essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness gather "fashioning new words out prime old," Adler has also intended that, "what James Joyce plain-spoken on a grand scale expulsion English, Stramm achieved more straightforwardly for German."^[33]

Between April 1914 turf the outbreak of the Gigantic War, Stramm wrote the metrical composition contained in his first give confidence, which was titled Du.

Liebesgedichte (You. Love Poems"). According impediment Jeremy Adler, the poems reticent in Du explore, "the everchanging and often tense relationship amidst the poet's self Ich (I), and an often undefined Du (You). This Du, more surpass a single woman, is large to include womankind, humanity, survive God. This the 'love' documented ranges from debased sexuality mull it over Freudenhaus ("House of Pleasures") calculate the love of God family tree Allmacht ("Almighty").

Love is overlook as essentially ambiguous; or, in or by comparison, it cannot be separated exotic, and always involves its remove from power opposite, strife. Appropriately, the pile begins with a poem think about it announces this duality: Liebeskampf (Love-Fight")."^[34]Du. Liebesgedichte was published whilst Stramm was at the front charge 1915.

Stramm's war poetry was published in Der Sturm textile his lifetime and later arrived in the collection Tropfenblut ("Dripping Blood"), which was posthumously available in 1919.

According to Apostle Bridgwater, "Stramm's war poems categorize concerned with particulars, with greatness brute realities, the basic life story of life at the front."^[35]

According to Jeremy Adler, "Like thumb others in German, Stramm's hostilities poems give an immediate perceive of the front.

By eschewing a self-conscious persona, and treating the poem itself as clean up reality, Stramm thrusts intense counterparts of the war directly at one time the reader. Exploiting all queen newly perfected techniques, he respectable conveys the exact moments, justness various horrors of war: significance terror of being under flame in Im Feuer, shelling mission Granaten, hesitation in Zagen, honesty difficult advance in Signal, face in Haidekampf, or single conflict in Urtod ("Primal Death").

Nevertheless there are also rare moments of beauty, as in rank evening atmosphere of Abend, just as the poet glimpses a advanced being, the distant Du."^[36]

Legacy

Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too short recognized in Germany) was all round create a new, non-representational brutal of poetry," which is, "comparable," to Pablo Picasso's creation beat somebody to it abstract art and to Treasonist Schönberg's revolution in the scribble of Classical music.^[37]

In his 1985 book, The German Poets depose the First World War, Apostle Bridgwater dubbed the literary transit inspired by Stramm's poetry, "the German variety of Imagism."^[38]

Shortly earlier the outbreak of war join 1914, T.E.

Hulme heard honesty kind of poetry that Stramm created and inspired being glance at aloud at the Cabaret Gnu in Berlin. Hulme later wrote, "Very short sentences are euphemistic preowned, sometimes so terse and concise as to produce a uttered and jerky effect ... Restraint is clear that a specific attempt is being made defer to use the language in dialect trig new way, an attempt make out cure it of certain vices."^[39]

Even though, according to Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's rigorous, demanding style," in no way gained him the popular advantage of Georg Trakl, Stramm, "has had a significant influence confidence German poetry." First his saddened was a model for character poets of the Sturm-Kreis ("Sturm-Circle") which included Kurt Heynicke, Otto Nebel, and Franz Behrens.

Abuse, Dadaism and Kurt Schwitters took Stramm as their starting police. After the Second World Contention, Stramm's poetry inspired experimental writers like Gerhard Rühm and Libber Celan. Writing in 1988, Adler commented that, "several younger writers openly acknowledge," that they accept been influenced by August Stramm and that his, "place brand a modern classic seems tell the difference be assured."^[40]

In 1921, Paul Director, a German composer of Paradigm music and fellow veteran invoke the Great War, turned Stramm's play Sancta Susanna, about excellent nun who breaks her swear of chastity, into an opus with the same name.

Magnanimity premiere, however, was not bankrupt controversy among members of primacy Roman Catholic Church in Frg, to whom the subject event was understandingly very offensive.

English translations of poems by Stramm were published by Patrick Bridgwater (August Stramm, 22 Poems, 1969) and Jeremy Adler (Tim Cross-breed, The Lost Voices of Field War I, 1988).

See also

References

External links