Alfred Wolfenstein

Wolfenstein, Alfred (Halle/Saale, 1883-1945, Paris), became after the study of law in Berlin a full-time Expressionist writer, a noted translator, and a critic. He contributed to Die Aktion and to R. Schickele's Die weißen Blätter, and began to edit an annual, Die Erhebung. Jahrbuch für neue Dichtung und Wertung (1919-20), the title of which indicates his own striving for the renewal of humanity through art: ‘die Kunst gibt das Menschenbild der Welt! ’ Emerging from a nihilistic phase, he progressed towards ‘activism’ and emerged as ‘der liebende Kämpfer’ in the poetry of Die gottlosen Jahre (1914), Die Freundschaft (1917), and Menschlicher Kämpfer (1919), a selection, Der gute Kampf (1920), Der Flügelmann (1924), and Bewegungen (1928), another selection. These basic attitudes also underlie his plays, Die Nackten (1917), Sturm auf den Tod (1921), Der Mann (1922), Mörder und Träumer (1923), Der Narr der Insel (1925), Henkerdienst (1925), and Bäume in den Himmel (1926, written 1922), and the collections of stories, Der Lebendige (1918), the title-story of which was written in 1912, and Unter den Sternen (1924). His translations include poetry by Shelley, who influenced his own work, Emily Brontë, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Gérard de Nerval, and V. Hugo. In 1922 he published the essay Jüdisches Wesen und neue Dichtung.

A pacifist and opponent of the death penalty, the cause to which he devoted his play Die Nacht vor dem Beil (1929), Wolfenstein, having been warned that he was on the ‘black list’ of the National Socialists, emigrated to Prague in 1934 and to Paris in 1938. In 1940, when Paris, too, was occupied, he attempted to flee, was arrested, and for three months was imprisoned in La Santé. The cycle of poetry written during this grim period, Der Gefangene, appeared in 1972 (ed. W. Huder). He subsequently lived under false names in hiding in the south of France before returning to Paris suffering from a serious heart disease. He took his own life just after the city's liberation. Werke (5 vols.) appeared 1982 ff.