Ernst Blass (17 October 17, 1890, (

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

) – 23 January 23, 1939 (Berlin), (pseudonyms: Daniel Stabler and Erich Sternow) was an important

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

poet, critic and writer. Blass was a close friend of

Kurt Hiller Kurt Hiller (17 August 1885, Berlin – 1 October 1972, Hamburg) was a German essayist, lawyer, and expressionist poet. He was also a political (namely pacifist) journalist. Hiller came from a middle-class Jewish background. A communist, he ...

and joined him at

Der Neue Club ''Der Neue Club'' was an Expressionist club founded in the Hackesche Höfe courtyards, Berlin by Kurt Hiller and Jakob van Hoddis. The Neopathetic Cabaret The Neopathetic Cabaret was a short-lived by influential event held at ''Der Neue Club'' wi ...

, alongside other writers of early Expressionism,

Georg Heym Georg Theodor Franz Artur Heym (30 October 1887 – 16 January 1912) was a German writer. He is particularly known for his poetry, representative of early Expressionism. Biography Heym was born in Hirschberg, Lower Silesia, in 1887 to He ...

and

Jakob van Hoddis Jakob van Hoddis (16 May 1887 – May/June 1942) was the pen name of the Jewish German expressionist poet Hans Davidsohn, of which "Van Hoddis" is an anagram. His most famous poem ''Weltende'' (''End of the world''), published on 11 January 1911 ...

. From 1911, he collaborated with the magazine

Die Aktion ''Die Aktion'' ("The Action") was a German literary and political magazine, edited by Franz Pfemfert and published between 1911 and 1932 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf; it promoted literary Expressionism and stood for left-wing politics. To begin with, ''D ...

, before distancing himself from

Franz Pfemfert Franz Pfemfert (20 November 1879, Lötzen, East Prussia (now Giżycko, Poland) – 26 May 1954, Mexico City) was a German journalist, editor of ''Die Aktion'', literary critic, politician and portrait photographer. Pfemfert occasionally wrote u ...

in 1914.Heinz Schöffler, ''Der jüngste Tag. Die Bücherei einer Epoche'', Frankfort, Verlag Heinrich Scheffler, 1970 In ''Das Wesen der neuen Tanzkunst'' (The essence of the new dance art) Blass set out to identify abstract categories whereby "a new dance art" could be outlined. He described how the

anthroposophical Anthroposophy is a spiritualist movement founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers ...

breathing methods taught at Loheland could transform the "marionette" into an animal form which could then leap in an ecstatic manner. In this he was responding to previous theories of dance, such as produced by

Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays ''Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'', ''The Broken Jug'', ''Amphit ...

who had written in 1807 a short text "Über dem Marionette Theater" according to which the dancer became a marionnette without either will or consciousness. In 1980 Thomas B. Schumann published a three volume collection of Blass' poetry (Volume 1), short stories (Volume 2) and various essays (Volume 3).

Works

* 1912 ''Die Straßen komme ich entlang geweht'' * 1915 ''Die Gedichte von Trennung und Licht'' * 1918 ''Die Gedichte von Sommer und Tod'' * 1920 ''Über den Stil Stefan Georges'' * 1921 ''Das Wesen der neuen Tanzkunst'' * 1930 ''Der paradiesische Augenblick''

Works

References

Further reading