Ernst Wilhelm Lotz

Born on February 6, 1890, in Culm on the Vistula in West Prussia, he grew up in several places and began writing while training in the cadet system. He served as an officer for a time, including in Strasbourg, before moving more fully toward a literary life in Berlin.

Lotz became part of the young Expressionist scene and was associated with writers including Richard Dehmel, Kurt Hiller, and Ernst Stadler. His poetry is known for its intensity and movement, bringing together sensuality, visionary feeling, and the charged atmosphere of the years just before the First World War.

He married Henny Romeycke in 1914, the same year he was killed in action near Bouconville, France, on August 26, 1914, at just 24 years old. Because his career was so brief, his reputation rests on a small body of work, but he remains a striking voice of early German Expressionism.