Walter Flex

Walter Flex (6 July 1887 – 16 October 1917) was a German author of The Wanderer between the Two Worlds: An Experience of War (Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten) of 1916, a war novel dealing with themes of humanity, friendship, and suffering during World War I. Due to his idealism about Prussian virtues and the Great War, as well as the posthumous popularity of his writings, Walter Flex is sometimes compared to Allied war poets Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger.

Biography

Walter Flex was born at Eisenach, in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, on July 6, 1887. The second of four sons, Walter's father, a secondary school teacher, was a fervent admirer of Otto von Bismarck, and all four of his sons were brought up to revere the former German Chancellor.

Flex had a happy childhood and showed no interest in the world until the Second Anglo-Boer War began in 1898. Due to his sympathy for "the underdog", Flex, like many other Germans of his time, sympathised with the Boer Republics in their battle against the British Empire.

Flex went to the University of Erlangen where he studied German, thanks to the award of a bursary.

According to Tim Cross, "Walter Flex's first attempt at drama was the tragedy Demetrius, about the Tsarist Pretender. In his following works for the stage, social problems form the core, as in Lothar, Die Bauernführer, Das heilige Blut, and Der Kanzler Klaus von Bismarck. These revolve around the premise that society is necessary. Each individual is like a thread, insignificant, disposable, and only makes sense if he is a thread woven into the fabric of the carpet. Interesting as these plays are in the context in which they were written, it cannot be claimed that Flex was an original writer as a dramatist, as he laboured much under the influence of Hebbel. His poetry is the least distinguished of his output, and appears more as an exercise towards the prose works such as Wallenstein and Der Wanderer."