author
1888–1945
A German Expressionist poet and writer, his work moved between sharp urban imagery and the upheavals of exile. His life was marked by the literary ferment of early 20th-century Berlin and the dislocation of the Nazi era.
by Alfred Wolfenstein
Born in 1888 in Halle, Alfred Wolfenstein became part of the German Expressionist scene and is remembered chiefly as a poet, though he also wrote prose and worked as an editor. He lived and worked in Berlin during a period of intense artistic change, and his writing is often associated with the nervous energy and social tension of modern city life.
After the rise of National Socialism, he went into exile, living for periods in Prague and later in France. Like many German-language writers of Jewish background and anti-Nazi conviction, his career was deeply disrupted by displacement and persecution.
He died in 1945 in France. Today he is usually read as one of the notable voices connected with German Expressionism, with a body of work shaped by both the experimental culture of the 1910s and 1920s and the ruptures of exile.