Paul
Raabe
Literary expressionism and its publications
Expressionism
is the name given to the artistic movement that swept through the
German-speaking countries almost 100 years ago between 1910 and 1920, and which
involved painters and sculptors, poets and writers, musicians and stage artists.
This last, large avant-garde movement sought to establish a new kind of art, a
new kind of individual, and a new kind of world, and emerged as a backlash to
the Wilhelmian empire, the comfortable middle classes and the art of the 19th
century. It revolted against the prevailing traditions and yearned for a new
society and more just social order. This intellectual movement emerged at the
end of a long era of peace under the influence of French modernism in art and
poetry. In Germany it blossomed for only a few years before 1914, after which it
was overshadowed by the murderous First World War - an event foreseen by many of
the artists and which they were then forced to endure. Their hopes were high
when the German Revolution took place in 1918, writing manifestos and
proclamations and using the theatre as their political stage, but they then made
the sobering discovery that: "Expressionism was a beautiful, good and large
thing. The solidarity of the intellectuals, the march of the true. But the
result unfortunately, and without the expressionists being to blame, was the
German Republic of 1920" (Iwan Goll).
Literary
expressionism emerged in Berlin five years after the "Brücke", the
group of modern painters formed in Dresden in 1905. The famous poem by Jakob van
Hoddis "Weltende" (The End of the World) ("Dem Bürger fliegt vom
spitzen Kopf der Hut ...") and the Berlin poems of Georg Heym, recited at
the Neuer Club and the Neopathetisches Cabarett, founded by Kurt Hiller and his
friends in 1909/10, mark the literary awakening of a new generation. "Die Jüngst-Berliner",
as this group called itself in 1912 - "We are expressionists. Our focus is
once again on will and ethos" - stood at the centre of a literary movement
that, prior to the war, swept through Munich, Prague and Vienna, and was also in
the process of conquering the provinces. The young authors, who were soon joined
by older members of their profession, wrote poetry. "Poets sing into the
typesetting machines", ran one slogan, and "They hate everything that
isn't poetry" another. The first theatre plays to focus on the
relationships between the poets and their fathers also began to appear around
this time.
New publishing houses were founded by previously unknown booklovers: Ernst Rowohlt, Paul Cassirer, Alfred Richard Meyer in Berlin and Kurt Wolff in Leipzig. Older, established publishing houses decided to join in: S. Fischer and Axel Juncker in Berlin, later on even the Insel-Verlag in Leipzig, and soon new companies started shooting up from the ground. The reason for this was the abolition of censorship after the war, leading to the emergence of hundreds of new poets, writers, and critics.
These
young authors, mostly born between 1884 and 1894, were promoted by established
literary figures, men and women from the generation of Thomas Mann and Hermann
Hesse, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke. Many belonged to the circle
called the "Neue Gemeinschaft", centred on the Hart brothers at
Schlachtensee near Berlin, including Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam, and
future exponents of expressionism such as Ferdinand Hardekopf and Ludwig
Rubiner. The most decisive contribution to the cultural discourse at the time,
however, was made by two gifted and daring editors who stood on the fringes of
the circle around 1900: Herwarth Walden and Franz Pfemfert. One was married to
the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, who gave her artistically-gifted husband his
poetic-sounding name, and the other with a Jewish immigrant from Russia, who
moulded her husband into a political fighter. Both men founded journals that
were later to become famous and which provided expressionist writers with a
platform. They served as models for future publications and helped the movement
secure lasting fame.
The
first edition of Der Sturm appeared on
1 March 1910 as a folio, with articles by Else Lasker-Schüler and René
Schickele, and by Karl Kraus und Adolf Loos from Vienna. Soon drawings and
woodcuts by Oskar Kokoschka and artists belonging to the "Brücke" and
the “Blaue Reiter” were being reproduced, alongside poetry by Alfred
Lichtenstein, Albert Ehrenstein and Ernst Wilhelm Lotz, and later on by August
Stramm, Lothar Schreyer and many others. Also published were articles by Paul
Scheerbart and Alfred Döblin, and the journal became an illustrative mirror of
artistic and literary expressionism that was also controversial and critical.
This
also applied to Franz Pfemfert's literary-political magazine, published one year
later and called Die Aktion, in which
the poetry of young poets such as Georg Heym and Jakob van Hoddis, Ernst Blass
and Franz Werfel were published, and whose expressionist graphics gradually came
to symbolize the publication. The two leading journals of this artistic and
literary movement were quite different to each other in terms of their profile.
Pfemfert pursued radical political aims. During the war he published
"Verses from the Battlefield" ("Verse vom Schlachtfeld") and
criticized the prevailing military fervour in a column entitled "I am
cutting out the time" ("Ich schneide die Zeit aus"). Walden, on
the other hand, represented a radical, artistic expressionism, as symbolized by
August Stramm and his followers. Both journals lasted until 1932, but after 1920
no longer led the way in art and literature as they had done previously. Both
editors emigrated: Walden died in Soviet Russia and Pfermfert died in Mexico.
Der
Sturm and Die
Aktion served as blueprints for the more than 100 new journals published
before and after the war. To understand the nature of expressionism in art and
literature, one needs to read the poems, stories, reviews, manifestos, articles,
and glossaries contained in these publications, which illustrate the spirit of
the time. By examining them, it becomes evident how important they were as
organs and rallying points for the expressionist movement. The most renowned
journals were: Pan, Die weißen Blätter, Das neue Pathos, Der Brenner. During and
after the war, as expressionism also took a hold in the provinces, drawings and
woodcuts also became an integral part of the movement. They illustrate not only
the time, but also reveal the hopes and desires of an entire generation.
Journals were published in Kiel and Dresden, Hanover and Hamburg, Darmstadt and
Konstanz, as well as naturally in Berlin, Munich, Prague and Vienna. Their names
said it all: Neue Jugend (New Youth),
Menschen (People), Revolution, Die neue Erde (The New Earth), Das hohe Ufer (The
High Bank), Der Friede (Peace), Die Rettung (The Rescue), Das Tribunal (The
Tribunal), Kündung, Die rote Erde (The Red Earth), Die Pleite (The Failure),
Der blutige Ernst (Deadly Serious), etc.
The
first anthologies of expressionist poetry were published as early as 1912 as
special issues in printed form, such as Der
Kondor, edited by Kurt Hiller. In the
collections that were published during and after the war, the editors took stock
of the latest developments, including in Franz Pfemfert's Aktionsbuch
(1917) and Kurt Pinthus' Menschheitsdämmerung
(1919), which he called a "symphony of the latest poetry". It has
remained the most renowned anthology of expressionism to this day. At the same
time, other yearbooks, anthologies, compendiums and text collections were also
being published: for example, Kurt Hiller's Ziel-Jahrbucher,
the first volume of which (1916) contains "Calls for an Active Mind"
(Aufrufe zu tätigem Geist); Alfred Wolfenstein's "Yearbook for New Poetry
and Appraisal" (Jahrbuch für neue Dichtung und Wertung) Die
Erhebung (1919); Herwarth Walden's collection Expressionismus.
Die Kunstwende (1918); Ludwig Rubiner's anthology Kameraden der Menschheit. Dichtungen zur Weltrevolution (1919); Verkündigung.
Anthologie junger Lyrik, published by Rudolf Kayser (1921); Verse
der Lebenden. Deutsche Lyrik seit 1910 by Heinrich Eduard Jacob (1924) and
many more.
Literary
expressionism was a poetic movement, as described by Alfred Döblin in 1918 in
his essay Von der Freiheit eines
Dichtermenschen. It can even be expressed in figures: In the short period of
time between 1910 and 1922/23, around 2,000 books were published by more than
300 authors, poets, writers and hangers-on. They published around 36,000
articles in the journals and anthologies dedicated to the movement. The actual
number of expressionist authors was naturally considerably higher than this.
The
era of literary expressionism has been well researched since the 1960 exhibition
on the movement at the Schiller National Museum in Marbach am Neckar, which
caused quite a stir at the time. The authors and their books are listed in a
bio-bibliographic manual, a large number of editions have been published, and
long-lost journals and collections have been acquired and commented upon. The
current database is the result of the rediscovery of literary expressionism.
Of
the poets involved in expressionism, Gottfried Benn wrote the most moving
obituary to the era, which he believed deserved to be remembered and of which he
himself was a part: "Expressionism and the expressionist decade: a number
of heads strewn across the continent with a new reality and new neuroses. It
arose, fought its battles on all Catalaunian Fields and fell into decline. It
carried its flag across the Bastille, the Kremlin and Golgotha, but failed to
reach Mount Olympus or any other classic terrain. What should we write as its
epitaph? What we generally write about when writing about art and artists - the
pain. Let us write on the grave a sentence of mine, one that I use to honour all
those involved for the last time: 'You stand for incomprehensible empires in
which there are no victories'".