Alfred Lichtenstein

Alfred Lichtenstein was a German poet and writer known for his expressionist works. Born on August 23, 1889, in Berlin, he studied law at the University of Berlin. His works often reflect the grim realities of early 20th-century Europe and the senseless horrors of World War I. He volunteered for military service at the outbreak of WWI and was subsequently killed in action on September 25, 1914. Lichtenstein's legacy lives on through his poignant and often haunting poetry.

August 23, 1889

September 25, 1914

German

Alfred Lichtenstein

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A Barkeeper's Coarse Complaint

It's enough to make me throw the chair through the panes of the
mirror Into the street -
There I sit with raised eyebrows:
All bars are full,
My bar is empty - isn't that terrific...
Isn't that strange... isn't that enough to make you puke,,,
The damned jerks - the miserable phonies -
Everyone goes right by me...
Bloody mess...
Here I am burning gas and electricity -
May God and the devil damn me to hell:
Damn It all... why is my bar the only empty one...
Grumpy, reproachful waiters standing around -
It is my fault -
Not one damned person comes to the door -
Cramped in a corner I sit with a hopeful face.
No customers come. -
The food rots, the wine and bread.
I might as well shut the joint.
And cry myself to death.

Alfred Lichtenstein

A Lieutenant General Sings

I am the Division Commander,
His Excellency.
I have attained what is humanly possible.
A lovely consciousness.
In front of me
Important people and chiefs of regiments
Bend their knees,
And my generals
Obey my commands.
God willing, my next command will be
An entire military corps.
Women, drama, music
Do not interest me much.
Compared to parades and battles,
That does not amount to much.
Would that there were an endless war
With bloody, howling winds.
Ordinary life
Has no charm for me.

Alfred Lichtenstein

A Poor Man Sings

Those were fine times, when I still
Walked in silk socks and wore underpants,
Sometimes had ten marks to spare, in order
To hire a woman, bored in the day
Night after night I sat in the coffeehouse.
Often I was so sated that I
Did not know what to order for myself.

Alfred Lichtenstein

A Trouble-making Girl

It's certainly late.    I must earn something.
But they're all going right by today with smug expressions on their faces.
They don't want to give me a single good-luck penny.
It's a miserable life.
If I come home without money
The old lady will throw me out.
There is hardly anyone on the street any more.
I am dead tired and freezing.
I was never so miserable in my life.
I move around here like a piece of meat.
Finally someone comes over:
An extremely well-dressed man -
But in this life one can't tell much
By appearances.
He's also quite older. (they have more money,
Young ones tend to cheat you.)
We are face-to-face.
I raise my clothes above the knee.
I can get away with that.
That's the big draw..
Like flies to the light
The guys are ...

Alfred Lichtenstein

After Combat

In the sky the howitzers no longer explode,
The cannoneers rest next to their guns.
The infantry pitch tents now,
And the pale moon slowly rises.
On yellow fields in red trousers, the French are ablaze,
Ashen pale from death and powder.
Among them German medics squat.
The day becomes grayer, its sun redder.
Field kitchens steam.    Towns are put to the torch.
Broken carts stand at roadsides.
Panting cyclists, hot and tanned, loiter
At a scorched wooden fence.
And orderlies are already moving
From regiment to division.

Alfred Lichtenstein

After the Ball

Night creeps into the cellars, musty and dull.
Tuxedos totter through the rubble of the street.
Faces are moldy and worn out.
The blue morning burns coolly in the city.
How quickly music and dance and greed melted...
It smells of the sun.    And day begins
With trolleys, horses, shouts and wind.
Dull daily labor cloaks the people in dust.
Families silently wolf down lunch.
At times a hall still vibrates through a skull,
Much dull desire and a silken leg.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Afternoon, Fields and Factory

I can no longer find a place for my eyes.
I cannot hold my legs together.
My heart is hollow.    My head is going to burst.
Mushiness all around.    Nothing wants to take shape.
My tongue breaks.    And my mouth twists.
In my skull there is neither pleasure nor goal.
The sun, a buttercup, rocks itself
On a chimney, its slender stalk.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Ash Wednesday

Yesterday I still went powdered and addicted
Into the many-colored sounding world.
Today everything has long since drowned.
Here is a thing.
There is a thing.
Something seems like this.
Something seems otherwise.
How easily someone blows out
The whole flowering earth.
The sky is cold and blue.
Or the moon is yellow and flat.
A forest has many individual trees.
There's nothing more to cry about.
There's nothing more to scream about.
Where am I -

Alfred Lichtenstein

Bad Weather

A frozen moon stands waxen,
White shadows,
Dead face,
Above me and the dull
Earth.
Throws green light
Like a garment,
A wrinkled one,
On bluish land.
But from the edge
Of the city,
Like a soft hand without fingers,
Gently rises
And fearfully threatening like death
Dark, nameless...
Rising
Without sound,
An empty slow sea swells towards us -
At first it was only like a weary
Moth, which crawled over the last houses.
Now it is a black bleeding hole.
It has already buried the city and half the sky.
Ah, had I flown -
Now it is too late.
My head falls into
Desolate hands.
On the horizon an apparition like a shriek
Announces
Terror and imminent end.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Capriccio

Here is the way I shall die:
It's dark.    And it has rained.
But you can no longer detect the imprint of the clouds
Which up there cover the sky in soft silk.
All streets are flowing, black mirrors,
Over the piled up houses, where streetlights,
Strings of pearls, hang shining.
And high above thousands of stars are flying,
Silver insects, around the world -
I am among them.    Somewhere.
And sunken, I watch very seriously, somewhat pale,
But rather thoughtful about the refined, heavenly blue legs of a
lady,
While an auto cuts me to pieces, so that my head rolls like a red
marble
At her feet...
She is surprised.    And swears like a lady.    And kicks it
Haughtily with the dainty heel
Of her little shoe
Into the gutter.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Cloud

A fog has destroyed the world so gently.
Bloodless trees dissolve in smoke.
And shadows hover where shrieks are heard.
Burning beasts evaporate like breath.

Captured flies are the gas lanterns.
And each flickers, still attempting to escape.
But to one side, high in the distance, the poisonous moon,
The fat fog-spider, lies in wait, smoldering.

We, however, loathsome, suited for death,
Trample along, crunching this desert splendor.
And silently stab the white eyes of misery
Like spears into the swollen night.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Cloudy Evening

The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down.    The houses,
Gray grimaces, are fiendishly bloated with mist.

Yellowish lights are beginning to gleam.
A stout father with wife and children dozes.
Painted women are practicing their dances.
Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater.

Jokers shriek, foul connoisseurs of men:
The day is dead... and a name remains!
Powerful men gleam in girls' eyes.
A woman yearns for her beloved woman.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Dreaming

Paul said:

Ah, but who wouldn't want to drive a car forever -
We burrow our way through high-stemmed woods,
We pass by spaces that seem endless.
We pass through the wind and attack the towns, which speed up.
But the odors of the sluggish cities are hateful to us -
Ah, we are flying!    Always alongside death...
How we despise and scorn him who sits on our lives!
Who lays out graves for us and makes all streets crooked - ha, we
laugh at him,
and the roads, overcome, die with us -
Thus we shall auto our way through the whole world...
Until, on some clear evening
We find a violent ending against a sturdy tree.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Elegant Morning

The street looks like eternal Sunday.
Lightly summerhouse rests against summerhouse.
Chauffeurs wheel by grandly.
Three fine citizens glide by quietly.
A song flies coolly out a window.
From a distance the wind carries a child's shout.
And in front of the villa of a duke stands,
All dressed up, like a stiff doll,
In a brightly colored scarf, red as a poppy,
The royal Bavarian legal apprentice,
Doctor of Jurisprudence Kuno Kohn.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Evening

Houses stand stiffly next to their fences.
Let your eyes, last sparrows, flutter.
Bluebottles alight on your face.
Don't you, Kuno, feel the eternal mills -
The unfeeling one bores holes in your head.
Look once more at the moon, the mustard-pot murderer.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Falling in the River

Drunk, Lene Levi walked
In the neighboring streets nightly
Back and forth, screaming, "auto."
Her blouse was opened,
So that one saw her fine, fascinating
Underclothing and skin.
Seven horny little men ran
After Lene.

Seven horny little men chased
Lene Levi for her body,
Thinking about what it costs.
Seven men, otherwise very respectable,
Forgot their children and art,
Science and factory.
And they ran as though possessed
After Lene Levi.
Lene Levi stopped
On a bridge, catching her breath,
And she lifted her blurred blue
Drunken glances in the wide
Sweet darkness above
The street lamps and the houses.
Seven randy little men though
Caught Lene's eye.

Seven randy little men tried
To touch Lene Levi's heart...

Alfred Lichtenstein

Farewell

It sure was fine to be a soldier for a year.
But it is finer to feel free again.
There was enough of depravity and pain
In these merciless human mills.
Sergeants, Barrack walls, farewell.
Farewell canteens, marching songs.
Lighthearted, I leave the city and capitol.
Kuno is leaving, Kuno is never coming back.
Now, fate, drive me where you will.
I am not tugging on my jacket from now on.
I lift my eyes into the world.
A wind is starting up.    Locomotives roar.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Farewell

(Shortly before departing for the theater of war)

for Peter Scher

Before dying I am making my poem.
Quiet, comrades, don't disturb me.
We are going off to war.    Death is our cement.
If only my beloved did not shed these tears for me.
What am I doing.    I go gladly.
Mother is crying.    One must be made of iron.
The sun sinks to the horizon.
Soon I shall be tossed into a gentle mass grave.
In the sky the fine red of evening is burning.
Perhaps in thrirteen days I'll be dead.

Alfred Lichtenstein

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