Walter Hasenclever

Writer, born in Aachen, W Germany. His play Der Sohn (1914), with its theme of the conflict between father and son, became a manifesto of Expressionist literature and a symbol for the young. His popular work was frequently performed during the 1920s and includes the anti-war plays Das Retter (1915) and Antigone (1917). He later wrote comedies such as Ein besserer Herr (1927), Ehen werden im Himmel geschlossen (1928), and Spiel vom Sterben des Lügenbarons Münchhausen (1934).

Walter Hasenclever (8 July 1890 in Aachen, Germany - 22 June 1940 in Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence (suicide), was a German Expressionist writer.

The son of the doctor Friedrich Hasenclever and his wife Emma, Walter Hasenclever began studying law at Oxford University in 1908 before changing to the University of Lausanne.

At first, Hasenclever was pro-war and volunteered for military service; He was a good friend of the artist Oskar Kokoschka who depicted him in his 1918 work "The Friends" with Käthe Richter in Dresden, where Hasenclever was recuperating from his "illness" in a sanatorium.

In 1924 Hasenclever met Kurt Tucholsky; at this time he worked as a French correspondent for the magazine ""8-Uhr-Abendblatt", spending a lot of time in Paris, where he also befriended the dramatist Jean Giraudoux. Hasenclever went into exile in Nice.

During the Second World War Hasenclever was imprisoned twice as a "foreign enemy" in France. In the early hours of 22 June 1940 he took his own life with an overdose of the barbiturate Veronal, so as not to fall into the hands of the Nazis.

Since 1996 the Walter Hasenclever Prize has been awarded to a German language writer every two years. Winners have included Peter Rühmkorf (1996), George Tabori (1998), Oskar Pastior (2000), Marlene Steerewitz (2002) and Friedrich Christian Delius (2004). The funds come from the Walter Hasenclever Society (Walter-Hasenclever-Gesellschaft) as well as the town of Aachen, the Schiller Society and Hasenclever's old school, the Einhard Gymnasium.