August Stramm | |
|---|---|
 August Stramm | |
| Born | (1874-07-29)July 29, 1874 Münster, Westphalia, Germany |
| Died | September 1, 1915(1915-09-01) (aged 41) Eastern Front (World War I) |
| Occupations | War poet, Playwright |
August Stramm (29 July 1874 – 1 September 1915) was a Germanwar poet andplaywright who is considered the first of theexpressionists. Stramm's radically experimental verse and his major influence on all subsequentGerman poetry has caused him to be compared toEzra Pound,Guillaume Apollinaire,James Joyce, andT.S. Eliot. Areserve officer in theImperial German Army, Stramm was called up toactive service at the outbreak ofWorld War I and waskilled in action on theEastern Front.
Jeremy Adler has called August Stramm one of, "the most innovative poets of theFirst World War."[1]
August Stramm was born inMünster,Westphalia, in 1874. His father had served in thePrussian Army and had been decorated for bravery during theFranco-Prussian War. According to Patrick Bridgwater, his father's legacy caused the younger Stramm to go through life "with a sense of duty."[2]
Stramm gave "a middling performance at school" and later had to gain hisAbitur through part-time study. Against the wishes of his mother, who wanted her son to become aRoman Catholic priest, Stramm joined the German Post Office Ministry in 1893 was rapidly promoted. Between 1896 and 1897, despite beingnear-sighted, Stramm served his year ofcompulsory military service in theImperial German Army.[3]
After being demobilized, Stramm returned to working at the Post Office and was granted a coveted position as a postal worker on luxury ocean liners making theBremen-Hamburg-New York run. This led to Stramm making several long stays in theUnited States.[4]
After returning from America, Stramm married theromance novelistElse Kraft, with whom he had two children, in 1902. They lived inBremen until 1905, when they settled inBerlin.[5]
According to Bridgwater, "His early work (romantic poetry, painting rather ordinarylandscapes,still-lifes, anaturalistic play) was basically unoriginal and derivative."[6]
Stramm's daughter Inge later wrote that, "around the year 1912, literature overtook him like a sickness... A Demon awoke in him."[7]
Stramm began writing plays and poems "in a strange new style that could find no publisher."[8]
According to Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's plays, too, became concentrated and brief, distilling situations into a few characteristics and increasingly ambiguous words and gestures. Characters are types like 'He' and 'She', and the surroundings merge into action: sound, word, gesture, and decor blend into a symbolic whole. The first mature plays are complementary opposites: theSymbolisticSancta Susanna (1912-13)," portrays aRoman Catholicnun who violates her vow ofchastity, "while theNaturalisticRudimentär (1912-14) shows the glimmerings of reason awakening in a Berlin semi-literate."[9]
Stramm, however, was soon, "driven to near despair by his lack of success as a writer." By 1913, he was on the verge of destroying all his manuscripts when Else Stramm, whose novels had had no such troubles with publication, urged her husband to contactHerwarth Walden, the editor of theavant-garde magazineDer Sturm.[10]
According to Jeremy Adler, Herwarth Walden, "stood at the forefront of the avante-garde movement in Berlin." He was receiving submissions from countless international artists, includingOskar Kokoschka,Pablo Picasso,Franz Marc, andWassily Kandinsky. Walden was also in contact withItalianFuturist poetFilippo Tommaso Marinetti and with French poetGuillaume Apollinaire. InDer Sturm, Walden had published German translations of Marinetti'sManifesto of Futurism and Apollinaire'sModern Painting.[11]
According to Adler, "For Walden,Cubism,Futurism, andExpressionism were essentially the same, and he sought to unite them in his own all-embracingSturm-Kunst." What Walden had lacked, however, before August Stramm contacted him in 1914, was a German poet "whose work could stand comparison with the international elite who figured inDer Sturm."[12]
From the time of their first meeting, a close friendship developed between Walden and Stramm. Personally and artistically, "they became indispensable to each other and it can be inferred that Stramm's style now became fully mature through Walden's encouragement. In the next sixteen months, Stramm produced the sixty two shorter poems on which his reputation mainly rests. During this period, hardly an issue ofDer Sturm appeared that did not contain a play by Stramm or a group of his poems."[13]
Stramm was areserve officer in thePrussian Army. By 1914 he had reached the rank of captain.
Upon the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914, Stramm "was called up immediately" and was, "posted as acompany commander toLandwehrregiment 110, with which he saw action on theWestern Front, in theVosges, and inAlsace."[14]
According to Jeremy Adler, "From the start, Stramm had few illusions and never joined in the so-calledHurrah-Patriotismus."[15]
In mid-January 1915, Stramm was reassigned, again as a company commander, to the newly formedReserve Infantry Regiment 272, which was stationed atOise, near theSomme River in northernFrance. By the end of the month, Stramm had been awarded theIron Cross (Second Class) for courage under fire.[16]
In a letter on February 14, 1915, Stramm wrote, "But there is horror in me, there is horror around me, bubbling, surging around, throttling, ensnaring. There's no way out anymore."[17]
On February 23, 1915, he wrote, "Germany needs brave soldiers. Nothing else will do. We have to go through with it, however much we condemn the war."[18]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "While Stramm is known to have enjoyed his peacetime role ofreserve officer, he was too sensitive to have any illusions about the war, which he hated (for all the unholy fascination it held for him). On 12 January 1915 he wrote to Walden from theWestern Front, 'I stand like a cramp, unsteady, without a foundation, without a brace, anchored, and numb in the grimace of my will and stubbornness,' and a few months later he wrote to his wife fromGalicia that everything was so dreadful, so unspeakably dreadful. Thus while he was always absolutely sure where his duty lay, he did not write a singlechauvinistic war poem even at the time when nearly everybody else in Germany - or so it seemed - was doing so. Nor did he write overtlyanti-war poems, which his conscience would not have allowed him to do. In retrospect it seems extraordinary that the poemFeuertaufe ("Baptism by Fire") should have caused a scandal in the German press in 1915, for its only conceivable fault is its utter honesty, its attempt to convey the feeling of coming under enemy fire for the first time and its implicit refusal to pretend that the feeling in question was one of heroic excitement."[19]
According to Jeremy Adler, "Although the letters testify to profound inner turmoil, Stramm was a popular officer and a brave soldier."[20]
At the end of April 1915, Stramm's regiment was transferred to theEastern Front, in order to serve under the command of GeneralAugust von Mackensen in theGorlice–Tarnów Offensive against the Russian-occupied Austro-HungarianCrownland ofGalicia.[21]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "Stramm distinguished himself and was at one point actingBattalion Commander, in which role he was involved in the attack on the Russian positions at Ostrow. It was here that he won theAustrianKriegsverdienstkreuz and was recommended for theIron Cross (First Class)."[22]
After the recapture ofPrzemysl andLviv, Stramm and his regiment continued to pursue theImperial Russian Army during theGreat Retreat of 1915. By July, Stramm's regiment had reached theBug River.[23]
At the beginning of August 1915, Stramm was sent home on what was his finalfurlough. His daughter Inge, who adored her father, later recalled how Stramm made her ten-year-old brother promise, "never to let himself down," by being, "aSchweinhund before himself."[24]
His family later learned that throughout his furlough, Stramm had carried a letter in his pocket which he needed only tocountersign in order to be released from all future military service at his publisher's request. By this time, Stramm had come to detest the war and believed that his death in combat was imminent. His mind was also filled with projects that he longed to write down. In the end, however, Stramm was, according to Patrick Bridgwater, "unable to accept thealibi of a higher duty toliterature," and left the letter unsigned.[25]
After returning to his company following a week's journey, Stramm found that they had been reduced to only 25 men. It was the time of a Russiancounteroffensive led by GeneralAleksei Brusilov. Stramm, with the remnants of his company, was involved in "the giant-battle forBrest-Litovsk", which fell to Stramm's regiment on August 25, 1915.[26]
On September 1, 1915, August Stramm led an attack against theImperial Russian Army in theRokitno Marshes. The attack degenerated into brutal hand-to-hand combat and Stramm, who had been in action 70 times in all, was shot in the head by a Russian soldier. He was the last member of his company to fall during the attack.[27]
According to Jeremy Adler, Stramm was about to be awarded theIron Cross (First Class) at the time of his death.[28]
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "What is quite extraordinary is that he appears to have found in the hell-on-earth oftotal warfare aroundBrest-Litovsk in 1915 the sense of harmony he had sought for so long."[29]
A few weeks before his death, Stramm had written toHerwarth Walden, "Singularly, life and death are one... Both are one... Battle and the night and death and thenightingale are all one. One! And fighting and sleeping and dreaming and acting are all one! There is no separation! All goes together and swims and shimmers like sun and whirlpool. Only time goes forward, time this. So do fighting, hungering, singing, dying. All! Soldier and officer! Day and night! Sorrowing and bleeding! And a hand shines over me! I swim through everything. Am everything! I!".[30]
A blood-stained copy of the 1904 Germantranslation of the book "In Tune with the Infinite" (In Harmonie mit dem Unendlichen), byAmericanNew Thought philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine, was found in Stramm's pocket after his death. Stramm's enthusiasm for Trine is believed to have been a legacy of the time he spent living in theUnited States.[31]
August Stramm's body was buried with full military honors atGorodets, in theKobryn District of modernBelarus, on October 2, 1915.[32]
Captain Stramm and his son Helmuth both lie buried at theStahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery, near theBerlinsuburb ofthe same name.
Jeremy Adler has written that August Stramm was, "along withGuillaume Apollinaire, among the most innovative poets of theFirst World War." Stramm, Adler writes, treated, "language like a physical material" and, "honed downsyntax to its bare essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness for "fashioning new words out of old," Adler has also written that, "whatJames Joyce did on a grand scale forEnglish, Stramm achieved more modestly forGerman."[33]
Between April 1914 and the outbreak of the Great War, Stramm wrote the poems contained in his first collection, which was titledDu. Liebesgedichte (You. Love Poems"). According to Jeremy Adler, the poems contained inDu explore, "the changing and often tense relationship between the poet's selfIch (I), and an often undefinedDu (You). ThisDu, more than a single woman, is extended to include womankind, humanity, and God. This the 'love' recorded ranges from debased sexuality inFreudenhaus ("House of Pleasures") to the love of God inAllmacht ("Almighty"). Love is seen as essentially ambiguous; or, rather, it cannot be separated from, and always involves its own opposite, strife. Appropriately, the collection begins with a poem that announces this duality:Liebeskampf (Love-Fight")."[34]Du. Liebesgedichte was published whilst Stramm was at the front in 1915.
Stramm'swar poetry was published inDer Sturm during his lifetime and later appeared in the collectionTropfenblut ("Dripping Blood"), which was posthumously published in 1919.
According to Patrick Bridgwater, "Stramm's war poems are concerned with particulars, with the brute realities, the basic experiences of life at the front."[35]
According to Jeremy Adler, "Like no others in German, Stramm's war poems give an immediate impression of the front. By eschewing a self-conscious persona, and treating the poem itself as a reality, Stramm thrusts intense images of the war directly before the reader. Exploiting all his newly perfected techniques, he precisely conveys the exact moments, the various horrors of war: the terror of being under fire inIm Feuer, shelling inGranaten, hesitation inZagen, the difficult advance inSignal, combat inHaidekampf, or single combat inUrtod ("Primal Death"). But there are also rare moments of beauty, as in the evening atmosphere ofAbend, when the poet glimpses a higher being, the distantDu."[36]
Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too little recognized in Germany) was to create a new, non-representational kind of poetry," which is, "comparable," toPablo Picasso's creation ofabstract art and toArnold Schönberg's revolution in the writing ofClassical music.[37]
In his 1985 book,The German Poets of the First World War, Patrick Bridgwater dubbed theliterary movement inspired by Stramm's poetry, "the German variety ofImagism."[38]
Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914,T.E. Hulme heard the kind of poetry that Stramm created and inspired being read aloud at theCabaret Gnu in Berlin. Hulme later wrote, "Very short sentences are used, sometimes so terse and elliptical as to produce a blunt and jerky effect ... It is clear that a definite attempt is being made to use the language in a new way, an attempt to cure it of certain vices."[39]
Even though, according to Jeremy Adler, "Stramm's rigorous, demanding style," never gained him the popular appeal ofGeorg Trakl, Stramm, "has had a significant influence onGerman poetry." First his verse was a model for the poets of theSturm-Kreis ("Sturm-Circle") which includedKurt Heynicke,Otto Nebel, andFranz Behrens. Then,Dadaism andKurt Schwitters took Stramm as their starting point. After theSecond World War, Stramm's poetry inspired experimental writers likeGerhard Rühm andPaul Celan. Writing in 1988, Adler commented that, "several younger writers openly acknowledge," that they have been influenced by August Stramm and that his, "place as a modern classic seems to be assured."[40]
In 1921,Paul Hindemith, a German composer ofClassical music and fellow veteran of the Great War, turned Stramm's playSancta Susanna, about anun who breaks her vow ofchastity, into anopera with the same name. The premiere, however, was not without controversy among members of theRoman Catholic Church in Germany, to whom the subject matter was understandingly very offensive.
English translations of poems by Stramm were published by Patrick Bridgwater (August Stramm, 22 Poems, 1969) andJeremy Adler (Tim Cross,The Lost Voices of World War I, 1988).
