Ernst Stadler — a remark

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“In Germany, every great work is surrounded by a boundless solitude.”

Original: In Deutschland ist jedes grosse Werk von einer grenzenlosen Einsamkeit umgeben. — A striking reflection on artistic individuality and isolation · Essay, Die neue französische Lyrik, 1912 (German)

About Ernst Stadler

Ernst Stadler

11 August 1883–30 October 1914

Ernst Stadler was born on 11 August 1883 in Colmar, in Alsace, and was killed on 30 October 1914 near Zandvoorde in Flanders during the First World War. His life lasted little more than thirty-one years, and the body of poetry on which his reputation rests is correspondingly small. Yet his importance in…

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More remarks by Ernst Stadler

“Taking sides always offers security, reassurance, support. But those who suffer most deeply are those who stand amid the struggle, whose more sensitive conscience cannot take sides unconditionally.”

Original: Partei ist immer Sicherung, Beruhigung, Rückhalt. Aber die am tiefsten Leidenden sind diejenigen, die inmitten des Kampfes stehen, und deren sensibleres Gewissen es doch nicht vermag, bedinglos Partei zu nehmen. — Captures the moral difficulty of belonging in a region divided between competing national identities · Review concerning Hans Karl Abel's Die Elsässische Tragödie, 1911 (German)

“But the younger generation, further removed from memories of war and less inclined to uncompromising partisanship, turns the old hardship into a new virtue and seeks to embrace both elements within itself, with the ideal of a future synthesis always before it.”

Original: Aber die junge Generation, der Kriegserinnerung ferner, weniger geneigt zu der Unbedingtheit ausgesprochener Parteinahme, schafft sich aus der alten Not eine neue Tugend und sucht beide Elemente in sich zu fassen, immer das Ideal einer zukünftig zu vollziehenden Synthese vor Augen. — Sets out Stadler's hope that Alsace might reconcile rather than choose between German and French cultu… · Essay, Ein Wunsch, 1911 (German)

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