seitens der Städte, Berlin, Fritz von Unruh

BERLIN 2008 Foto:G.Ludovice
Max Reinhardt Unruh in 1912, estreou o drama de Unruh "Offizier" no Deutsches Theatre de Berlim.

Fritz von Unruh

(May 10, 1885 - November 28, 1970)

Was a German Expressionist dramatist, poet, and novelist.
Unruh was born in Koblenz, Germany. A general's son, he was an officer in the German army until 1912, when he left to pursue his writing career.

Two of his earliest important works, the play Offiziere ("Officers"; 1911) and the poem Vor der Entscheidung ("Before the Decision"; 1914) established his anti-war beliefs and his belief that the social order must be based not on authority, but on the integrity and responsibility of the individual towards humanity.

Unruh's works were anti-militaristic and called for world peace and brotherhood. Some of his more notable works include Der Opfergang ("Way of Sacrifice"), a powerful anti-war piece written during the siege of Verdun and published in 1919, Ein Geschlecht ("A Family"; 1916) and its sequel Platz (1920), and Heinrich von Andernach (1925).

Originally from a noble family very close to the Kaiser, he enlisted in 1914. He wrote a few patriotic poems at the beginning of the war. But gradually, influenced by his experiences, his work took an increasingly distinctly pacifist turn.

When in 1916 the Kronprinz, whom he knew personally, commissioned him for a description of the battle of Verdun, he responded to the order with an expressionist novel entitled Opfergang (The Way of Sacrifice, translated into French in 1923 under the title Verdun), judged to be "unpublishable" by the military authorities. Indeed, the work would not be published until 1919. Unruh is not a unique case. Probably because the defensive rhetoric that accompanied the war in all the warring countries was the most difficult to sustain in Germany - German soldiers were fighting on foreign soil - literary pacifism emerged in a more aggressive and bigger way than in the opposite camp.

Unruh was a staunch opponent of the Nazi Party and wrote several works warning of the consequences of Nazi dictatorship, Bonaparte (1927), Berlin in Monte Carlo (1931), and Zero (1932). He left Germany for France in 1932, later immigrating to the United States. He finally returned to Germany in 1962 and died in the town of Dietz at age 85.

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