Gerrit Engelke

Engelke, Gerrit (Hanover, 1890-1918, in a British military hospital in France), the son of poor parents, developed a passion for music and poetry, but was apprenticed to a house-painter. He began to write poetry, and in 1913 went to Blankenese in order to show his work to R. Dehmel, who furthered his ambition by sending him to the Werkleute auf Haus Nyland, where he was particularly befriended by J. Kneip. His Expressionistic hymnic verse is compounded of a positive feeling for spiritual values and of a sense of waste and oppression in an environment of increasing industrialization and imminent war. After four years' war service he was mortally wounded a few days before the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Das Gesamtwerk. Rhytmus des neuen Europa (1 vol.), ed. H. Blome, was published in 1960 (repr. 1979).