Werner Riegel (1925-1956)

Werner Riegel, around 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen der organisierten Barbarei halten wir eine kleine Zisterne offen für ein paar hundert Dürstende, mehr können wir nicht tun.

Between the wars of organized barbarianism we hold a small cistern open for a few hundred thirsty, we can't do anything more.

Werner Riegel was a writer, poet, and journalist from Hamburg who self-published a literary journal entitled Zwischen den Kriegen from the years of 1952-1956. Together with Peter Rühmkorf (his partner in publishing Zwischen den Kriegen) Riegel formulated a literary program called Finismus, which can be partly understood as an attempt to resuscitate the corpses of pre-WWII German Expressionism and Activism in post-WWII Germany. Riegel operated independently of the literary establishment which was quickly forming in these years, shunning the opportunity of being printed by a major publisher, preferring the DIY hectograph production with which he printed ZdK.

Zwischen den Kriegen 9, 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen 10, 1953.

In the following two excerpts (from “Vorwort zum Finismus”, Zwischen den Kriegen 9, September 1953) Riegel clarifies the origins of Finismus, and describes the program of aesthetic rapprochement which would be its intended goal:

[Finismus] handelt sich um den aktivistischen Tendenzexpressionismus deutscher und um den nihilistische-apokalyptischen Destruktionsformalismus französischer Provenienz. Es handelt sich um die Bemühung der Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller bis hin zu Brecht oder Kesten einerseits und um die aus prälogischen Schichten des Hirns steigende Verzweiflung der Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka und Benn anderseits.

Finismus deals with the activistic-tendential Expressionism of German provenance, and the nihilistic-apocalyptic destruction-Formalism of French provenance. It deals with the endeavor of Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller up to Brecht or Kesten on the one side, and on the other side the despair, rising from the pre-logical layers of the brain, of Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka and Benn.

[...] 

Zwiefach gespeist von den Elektroden des Expressionismus, von der Anode des Aktivismus, von der Kathode der Normenverneinung, beginnen [die Finisten] in der Nachfolge Tollers u n d Trakls, Brechts u n d Benns die Synthese von Kampf und Trauer, Ja und Verneinung, Bruch und Bindung, Tat und Trauma, Arche und Flut.

 Dually fed from the electrodes of Expressionism, from the anodes of Activism, from the cathodes of norm negation, [the Finisten], in the footsteps of Toller and Trakl, Brecht and Benn, begin the synthesis of battle and mourning, affirmation and negation, break and binding, action and trauma, ark and flood.

Riegel's campaign to renovate what he sees as the withered trails of the pre-war German avant-garde is thus set against the contemporary literary situation, which he sees as dominated by kitsch and low quality literary replicas. The political situation of post-war Germany inspired a kind of reactionary, restorative moralism in many parts of the field of literary production, something which upset writers like Riegel. In the following passage (excerpted from the same essay) Riegel paints a symbolic landscape to represent the ruins of the pre-war avant-garde as they existed in the cultural milieu of his time:

In der Mitte des Jahrhunderts stehen wir vor dem gigantischen Torso, vor dem unvollendeten Kolosseum einer mit ungeheurer Vehemenz begonnen ‘neuen’ Dichtung, vor einem Trümmertrakt, mit dem niemand etwas anfangen kann, nicht einmal seine Urheber, sofern sie überlebten. Eine allgemeine Lethargie, Müdigkeit, Lustlosigkeit, Verächtlichkeit senkt ihren Staub auf das Amphitheater, die Düne deckt den Marmor zu, die Distel krönt den Sarkophag. Die Pyramiden werden ausgemessen, beklopft, beschrieben, man trägt sie mit Sternchen in den Poesiebaedeker ein. Am Rand der Wüste hockt ein Volk von Fellachen und verscheuert den nach großem Vorbild geschusterten Abklatsch.

In the middle of the century we stand before the gigantic torso, before the unfinished colosseum of a "new", begun with tremendous vehemence, before a ruined apparatus, with which no one can do anything, not evening its progenitors, provided they survived. A general lethargy, tiredness, listlessness, contempt drops its dust upon the amphitheater, the dunes cover the marble, thistle crowns the sarcophagi. The pyramids are measured, tested, described, and are entered with star-ratings in the poetry-Baedeker [a travel guide]. At the edge of the desert squat a population of fellahin, who peddle imitations, based on the grand prototype.

Riegel died of cancer in 1956, at the age of 31. The volume shared with Rühmkorf below was the only proper book he published during his lifetime. The edition of selected works below that, edited by Rühmkorf, was published after his death, in 1961. There have been two four-volume editions of Riegel's selected works: one published by a Swiss press in 1988, and then a nice but strange edition put out by Stuttgart publisher Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez in 2006. His Nachlass, which I had the opportunity to peruse this summer, lies at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach.

Heisse Lyrik, Limes Verlag, 1956. (Cover design by Hans Arp)

Gedichte und Prosa, Limes Verlag, 1961.