Albert Ehrenstein - Biography

Albert Ehrenstein (1886, Ottakring, Vienna – 1950, New York) was an Austrian-born German Expressionist poet. His poetry exemplifies rejection of bourgeois values and fascination with the Orient, particularly with China. He spent most of his life in Berlin, but also travelled widely across Europe, Africa, and the Far East. In 1930, he travelled to Palestine, and published his impressions in a series of articles. Shortly before the Nazi take-over, Ehrenstein moved to Switzerland, and in 1941 to New York, where he died.

Selected works

Poetry

• Der Mensch Schreit (1916)
• Die rote Zeit (1917)
• Briefe an Gott (1922)
• Das gelbe Lied (1933) – adaptation of Chinese poetry

Fiction

• Tubutsch (1911)
• Der Selbstmord eines Katers (1912)
• Ritter des Todes (1926)
• Gedichte und Prosa (posthumous edition – Jerusalem: 1961)

• Ehrenstein, Albert, article in Encyclopaedia Judaica.
• Beigel, A. Erlebnis und Flucht im Werk Albert Ehrensteins (1966).