Stanzas in war

Cover of Bruno Frank's "Strophes in War", 1915.

The poetry collection Strophes in War includes seven war poems by Bruno Frank and a title poem. It was published in March 1915 as a twelve-page “ leaflet ” by Albert Langen Verlag in Munich.

The pacifist-minded humanist and global citizen Bruno Frank volunteered for military service in August 1914, but was dismissed in December for health reasons. From 1914 to 1916, in addition to the “Stanzas in War”, 25 other war poems appeared in magazines. From his poems "speaks the almost universally valid conviction in Germany to wage a just defensive war". At the beginning of the war he shared the general confidence in victory, but abstained from any bloodthirsty tirades of hate. From autumn 1916 until the end of the war, the poet Bruno Frank fell silent.

content

First advertisement for "Stanzas im Krieg" in " Simplicissimus " on April 13, 1915.

The "Stanzas im Krieg" was published by the Albert Langen publishing house in Munich as a twelve-page booklet in "large octaves in the most elegant furnishings". They were advertised several times up to the end of 1915 in the " Simplicissimus " published by the same publisher. The first two advertisements said:

“Bruno Frank, who, like several of our best, got the cross outside as a war volunteer, combines his poems of the times in a leaflet. What fills and inspires these splendid stanzas is not hate or bloodlust, but ardent patriotism and a feeling for the human that endures even in storms. "

motto

The collection of poems was preceded by a single-verse poem as the motto on the cover and title page:

We hated war,
it was the alp of the earth to us,
now we cheerfully bear the burden,
so that there may be eternal peace.

This title poem was to lead to further developments after the war. On December 10, 1918, Bruno Frank gave a speech at the invitation of the Munich Political Council of Intellectual Workers, the speech “About human love”. Afterwards, one of the participants in the meeting held against him that he had declared in a poem at the beginning of the war that "the war is a burden that one" carries with excitement "". Therefore he has no right “to testify for a human and free disposition”. A month later, Bruno Frank defended himself against these accusations in the essay "Conviction censorship":

"At least I don't see where contradictions worthy of punishment could be found in a German who might have hated and fought the war all his life, but who nonetheless stood with the weapon and with the word to his people in times of the supposed extreme threat."

Single poems

Proud time	"In eleven stanzas, Frank praised the chosen youth who were dipped" in the iron bath of the Battle of Nations ". ... He was convinced that peace could only be achieved through war. ... The Francophile poet was not afraid of adopting chauvinist stereotypes to brand France. ... It is true that there is no need to scorn or abuse enemies, but it is wonderful to be part of the "national community". The longing for peace that Frank concedes to the individual in this poem is outweighed by a higher goal: the hero's death appears as compensation for the life lost in peace. "
Certainty	“Paradoxically, the confidence in a German victory was fed by the fact that the German Reich was besieged from the west as from the east. ... Those who did not waver in such a situation had to be in harmony with the course of history. Frank saw the acts of war ... in analogy to the cultivation of the local field: Just like the grain, the time of victory is ripe. ... In such lines he elevated Germany to a kind of "vehicle" of historical justice. "
Singing from the depths	Those who died before the war, they are now "partying in the ground, which also burned our hearts. We dead, oh, we dead, what can we do for the fatherland. "
Michael	“In daring association with Christian rhetoric of redemption, he tried the Archangel Michael, the people's saint of the Germans, who helped the Wilhelmine“ world politics ”to its right. The struggle for Germany's right to exist is metaphysically legitimized. "
We will win	The Germans do not fight for fame or "world domination", they fight for their fatherland. "And because the law holds our ranks ... we will be winners."
To the slanderer	In four punching Bruno Frank sings of the harmonious disposition of all soldiers, regardless of their nation who hold their enemy with honor, because he is subjected to the same fate as herself: "A disgusting Schlingwerk entwines, dishonor born to the million army men tribe".
The new fame	“On the one hand, Frank relegated the 'romantic' idea of ​​the military campaign in the confrontation with the reality of the incipient material battles to the past - it is the rejection of 'colorful heroism' and 'lust for chivalry' - on the other hand, he stylized the modern soldier as a mythical warrior who, as a protective shield for home, had to satisfy the toll of blood demanded by "fate". ... The meaning of death on the battlefield lies not only in the present - the defense of the fatherland - but will only be revealed in the future, when peace is "harvested" as the reward of military bravery. "

Emergence

"Ostpreussen", one of the individually published war poems by Bruno Frank, " Simplicissimus " from September 15, 1915, illustration by Carl Olof Petersen .

A few weeks before the start of the war, Bruno Frank had conjured up a cool “early summer day” in Simplicissimus (“Sunlit morning cool, / dew and ray on bloom and berry”). After the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered for military service on August 4, 1914. Due to his language skills, he was deployed as an interpreter in the staff of a Württemberg infantry division, first in Flanders, then in Poland.

While Bruno Frank was in the field, he wrote the war poems that appeared in the collection "Strophes in War". On December 5, 1914, after only four months, he was released from military service for health reasons. Three days later, the Simplicissimus published Bruno Frank's first war poem “Der neue Ruhm”, which he had written in Ypres , the scene of the First Battle of Flanders , on November 15th: “No colorful heroism” in knightly individual combat leads to fame. The fighters in this war are "iron-gray nestled in fate and their eyes overflowing with death."

Two more of his war poems (“Certainty”, “Stolze Zeit”) he placed in advance in his hometown with the Stuttgarter Neue Tagblatt before the “Strophes in War” appeared in March 1915 by Albert Langen in Munich. The war poems can also be attributed to the pathetic 20-stanza poem "Bismarck", which Bruno Frank wrote on April 1, 1915 for Bismarck's hundredth birthday. In this poem he referred "not only to the fact that the work of the founding of the empire is being continued in this war, but also that the mission of Frederick the Great is being fulfilled."

“By September 1916 he published his war poems in Simplicissimus; after that he refused to comment on contemporary history. ”In 1917 he wrote a single, his last poem during the war. The spring month of May inspired him to write the poem "New Hope": "Even the disappointed heart begins to beat ... A hoping heart can only bear the heaviness."

In 1916 Albert Langen published the volume of poems “Requiem. Poems ”, which in addition to the“ Requiem ” cycle of poems contained two dozen other poems, including 15 war poems, two of which had already appeared in the“ Stanzas im Krieg ”. In his last volume of poetry "Die Kelter" from 1919 he brought a dozen new poems and a selection from the previous volumes of poetry, including the 15 war poems from "Requiem. Poems ”.

reception

The philosopher Martin Havenstein (1871–1945) found in 1915, shortly after the publication of the "Stanzas im Krieg":

“As in all of his verses, there is something in these stanzas that lifts them high above the lyrical tide of time. They have a rare integrity and dignity, a nobility of the form only found in high art. ... He does not write down everything that goes through his mind and flows into the pen. He brought home only seven poems from the eventful months of the war. But these seven poems all deserve to be kept. "

In 1917, Theodor Heuss , who later became President of the Federal Republic, complained in the weekly magazine “ März ”, which he published , that the “vast amount” of war poems can almost without exception be attributed to the “desk poetry” that “sings about” war:

“The stanzas in the war … are touched by the seriousness of those who are in combat themselves, but mood and feeling are still permeated with reflection, calls, justification. It is a brilliant intellectual confrontation with the war, sometimes not free from the polemical pathos of the leading article and witty intention, but at best liberated to a hymn-like impulse. Frank stands in the middle between singing about and experiencing the war ... "

In his review of Bruno Frank's volume of poems “ Requiem . Poems ”from 1916, the theater critic Julius Bab paid tribute to in 1918“ the wonderful deep and clear funeral mass which forms the main lyrical value of the volume ”. About the "very beautiful war poems" contained in the volume (two of them from the "Stanzas im Krieg"), he judges:

“But the same noble and true humanity and the same not really creative but clear and refined sense of form speaks also from the war poems. Only now, as his key changes from major to minor, does Frank's verse find its peculiarity and strength. In ever deeper reflection, his song goes from purely patriotic defiance to human suffering. "

In a collection of short portraits of German writers in the first half of the twentieth century, the American Germanist Richard Erich Schade also touches on Bruno Frank's poetry in 1984:

“His simple and sensitive verse art evokes a calm confidence“ Go on, go on, and approach tomorrow ”; even the rather pathetic "stanzas in war" seriously celebrate the coming peace. "

In his biography from 2009, Sascha Kirchner goes into detail on the war poetry of Bruno Frank (see also #Content ):

“However, his war poems, which have been published continuously since 1915, speak of the conviction, which is almost universally valid in Germany, that a just defensive war is to be waged that will enable a new and more peaceful state order. ... The fact that he understood his war poetry, with all its unambiguous patriotism, as the poet's tribute to the demands of the day and not stylized himself as an "artist-warrior" in person - as many other writers in the home hermitage did - is supported by a short letter to his publisher. ... Although he did not boast of heroic deeds, his poetry nevertheless coincided in its formulas with contemporary enemy propaganda. "

expenditure

First edition

• Stanzas in war. A leaflet. Munich: Albert Langen , 1915, online: .

Other issues

• Requiem. Poems. Berlin: Reiss , 1916. - Reprint of Bruno Frank # Frank 1913.1 and 25 mostly new poems, including 15 war poems (two from “Stanzas in War”).
• The wine press. Selected poems. Munich: Musarion, 1919. - Contains a dozen new poems and a selection from previous volumes of poetry, including the 15 war poems from Bruno Frank # Frank 1916.3 .

literature

• Bruno Frank. Stanzas in war. [Display]. In: Simplicissimus , Volume 20, Number 2, April 13, 1915, page 20.
• Julius Bab : German War Poetry of Today IX. In: Das literäre Echo , 20th year, 1918, issue 8, January 15, 1918, column 450, 459.
• Martin Havenstein: War poetry. [Review by Bruno Frank: Stanzas in War]. In: Prussian year books , volume 161, July to September 1915, pages 491–502, here: 498–499.
• Theodor Heuss : The war poems by Wilhelm Klemm . In: March . Eine Wochenschrift , 9th year, Volume 3, 1917, pages 62–63, here 63.
• Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , pages 67-74.

Web links

• Bruno Frank, digital works, poems
• Simplicissimus online .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , page 70.
2. ↑ Large octave: about DIN A 5.
3. ↑ About love for people. Spoken in the Munich Political Council of Intellectual Workers on December 10, 1918. Munich: Musarion, 1919 ( Bruno Frank # Frank 1919.3 ).
4. ↑ Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt , volume 76, number 24, January 15, 1919, evening edition, page 2 ( Bruno Frank # Frank 1919.4 ).
5. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , pp. 70–71.
6. ^ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , page 71.
7. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , page 72.
8. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , page 69.
9. ↑ Simplicissimus , Volume 19, Issue 14, July 6, 1914, page 218.
10. ↑ Simplicissimus , Volume 19, Issue 36, December 8, 1914, page 476.
11. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , page 72.
12. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , page 73.
13. ↑ Simplicissimus , Volume 22, Issue 8, May 22, 1917, page 101.
14. ↑ #Havenstein 1915 .
15. ↑ # Heuss 1917 .
16. ↑ #Bab 1918.2 .
17. ^ Bruno Frank # Schade 1984 .
18. ↑ Bruno Frank # Kirchner 2009 , pp. 67–74.
19. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , page 70, 71.