Walter Rheiner

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Walter Rheinermark , actually Walter Heinrich Schnorrenberg (* 18th March 1895 in Cologne , † 12. June 1925 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ) was a German writer of Expressionism .

Life

Early years

Walter Rheiner attended the municipal secondary school in his hometown of Cologne. He then began training as a businessman, which he continued in Liège , Paris and London . However, he was not very successful as an employee. Therefore, at the age of sixteen, he started writing.

When he was called up for military service in 1914, Rheiner took intoxicants for the first time - he pretended to be a drug addict in order to evade conscription . Despite this, he was drafted and sent to the Russian front at the beginning of the First World War . A rehab failed, his attempt at deception came to light in 1917, whereupon he was suspended from duty and moved to Berlin. In 1918 he married Friederike Amalie Olle (called "Fo"), the daughter of a poor Jewish woman, but was rejected by his mother.

At the height of my work

In Berlin, Rheiner, who was always troubled by money, became a literary nomad and mostly found shelter with friends or in cheap accommodation. He spent a lot of time begging in the Romanisches Café , where he socialized with famous authors such as Däubler , Friedlaender , Claire and Iwan Goll , Hasenclever , Lasker-Schüler , Loerke , Meidner and Schickele . He had a particularly close friendship with the painter Conrad Felixmüller , who illustrated some of his works, and wrote several articles for Franz Pfemfert's magazine Die Aktion .

Between 1918 and 1921 he lived mainly in Dresden . There Rheiner became one of the leading figures of the late Expressionist artists' association Gruppe in 1917 . He worked as an editor for the magazine Menschen and found in the publisher Heinar Schilling someone who agreed to publish his works. Seven books were published within those three years.

Decay and death

Grave of Walter Rheiner in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery

From his initially moderate drug consumption, however, he developed more and more an addiction to cocaine and morphine , which ultimately became his undoing. He was incapacitated and in the meantime even admitted to a closed institution in Bonn . His wife and their child, whom he had long since been unable to support, left him, his artistic creativity dwindled, drug-addicted, impoverished and lonely, he led an unsteady existence in the last years of his life. Aware of his illness and the approaching end, he wrote the following poem, which marked the end of his literary work:

“Come on, sweet snow! Spill this heavy heart!
With your grace conjure up the tear stiff,
as it flows from the eternal source,
born daily, still loved.

O grant that this lost torment,
which is bitter, will
turn into the great, grave grave in which I find myself to rest:
weeping, lovingly redeemed soul. "

The drug had completely ruined the artist. On June 12, 1925, at the age of 30, he put an end to his life himself in a poor accommodation on Charlottenburger Kantstrasse with an overdose of morphine . He was buried in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery in Charlottenburg (today's district of Berlin-Westend ). The grave is preserved.

His friend Conrad Felixmüller later dedicated the painting "The Death of the Poet Walter Rheiner" to him.

plant

Rheiner's oeuvre consists of around 80 poems, the novella Kokain and some prose sketches. The spectrum of his poetry includes topics such as city life, night, loneliness, alienation, fear of life and salvation through intoxication, the portrayal of which oscillates between melancholy and ecstasy.

His novella Kokain , written in 1918, was the only work that was reprinted. In this sensitive study of cocaine psychosis, Rheiner described the misery of a drug addict whose life was marked by hallucinations , an ever increasing urge for injections and the fear that those around him would expose him. In the end, the protagonist saw no way out of his misery and committed suicide.

Publications:

  • Cocaine (novella, 1918)
  • The sounding heart (lyric, 1918)
  • Island of the Blessed. An evening song (poetry, 1918)
  • The Sorrowful Sea (lyric, 1918)
  • The fervent musician (poetry, 1918)
  • The colorful day (poems, sketches, fragments; 1919)
  • The Fo Book (Poetry, 1921)

literature

  • Michael Grimm (Ed.): Walter Rheiner: KOKAIN. Tatto Verlag / TAIPAN CLASSIC, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502549-0-7 (work edition)
  • Thomas B. Schumann: One of the literary nomads of Berlin . In: Ders .: Asphalt literature . Berlin 1983, pp. 167-168, ISBN 3882201525
  • Hans J. Schütz: Walter Rheiner. In: Ders .: I was once a German poet . April 1997, pp. 227-231, ISBN 3406333087
  • Edition Apollon (Ed.): Walter Rheiner - cocaine, biography, poetry, prose, letters (audio book), Königs Wusterhausen 2010, ISBN 978-3-941940-03-1
  • Bo Osdrowski / Tom Riebe (eds.): Walter Rheiner. Versensporn - Booklet for lyrical charms No. 1, Edition POESIE SCHMECKT GUT, Jena 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See notes in "Walther Rheiner Kokain" Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig, 1985, page 300
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 479.
personal data
SURNAME Rheiner, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schnorrenberg, Walter Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1925
Place of death Berlin-Charlottenburg