biography
pronunciation:
[baw(r)khert]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1921–47)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Hamburg, N Germany. Wounded and interned for careless remarks in World War 1, he served on the Russian front (a death sentence having been commuted) and was released on grounds of ill-health in 1943. He later worked in cabaret and theatre, but his health never recovered. Perhaps the most important of the immediate post-war writers - capturing the misery and hopelessness of the times - he found great resonance with his powerful 1947 radio (later stage) play, Draußen vor der Tür, expressing the psychological plight of a homecoming soldier. A melancholic tone characterizes his poetry, such as Laterne, Nacht und Sterne (1946), while the influential stories of An diesem Dienstag (1947), Die Hundeblume (1947), and Die traurigen Geranien (published 1962) are dynamic and exciting. |
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