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Reinhard Johannes Sorge (29 January 1892 – 20 July 1916) was a German people dramatist and poet. He is best known for writing the Expressionist and radically iconoclastic stage play The Beggar ( Der Bettler), which won the Kleist Prize in 1912. Even though the invention of both is often associated with East German playwright Berthold Brecht, Sorge almost singlehandedly created surrealist theatre and modern theatrical stagecraft. Tim Cross (1989), The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights, University of Iowa Press, 1989. Pages 144-148. After subsequently getting married and then received with his wife into the Catholic Church in Germany, Sorge began a widespread and influential effort to introduce the Catholic literary revival into the literature of the Germanosphere. Rev. B. O'Brien, S.J., "From Nietzsche to Christ: Reinhard Johannes Sorge," Irish Monthly, December 1932, pages 713-722. Reprinted by St Austin Review March/April 2014, pp. 9-13. In 1915, Sorge was conscripted into the Imperial German Army, promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal, and sent into combat duty in the trench warfare of World War I. He was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme on 20th July 1916. His wife, Susanne Sorge, learned of his death only after a telegram announcing her pregnancy with their second son was returned as undeliverable. Susanne Sorge (1927), Reinhard Johannes Sorge: Unser Weg, Mit einem Nachwort von Karl Muth. Verlag Josef Kosel & Friedrich Pustet, München. pp. 163-165. At the time of his death, Reinhard Sorge was only 24 years-old.
Sorge's Der Bettler, however, received a posthumous premiere in a groundbreaking production by legendary stage director and filmmaker Max Reinhardt in 1917. REINHARD SORGE’S THE BEGGAR (DER BETTLER), World War One: Plays, Playwrights & Productions, July 9, 2019. One Catholic New Zealander, who was living in the Weimar Republic, was to comment on the enormity of the fallen poet's influence over all recent Christian poetry composed in the German language and even compared the literary legacy of Reinhard Sorge to that of Francis Thompson. Rev. B. O'Brien, S.J., "From Nietzsche to Christ: Reinhard Johannes Sorge," Irish Monthly, December 1932, pages 713-722.
When he was nine years old, Sorge's father died and his family moved to Jena. There, Sorge befriended the poet Richard Dehmel and, "absorbed the neo-romantic influences of the day."Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 144. He was also inspired by the writings of Stefan George and August Strindberg.
Sorge began to write at the age of sixteen, but lost his faith in Christianity after reading Also Sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Rev. B. O'Brien, "The result was that he soon launched an attack on all that he conceived as a check on himself and his comrades. He caused common prayers and grace at table to be given up in his pious Lutheran home, and destroyed his young brother's belief in God and Heaven. In order to be free from the restrictions of school life, he left school a year before the end, with the resolution of studying for the abitur privately -- which he never did.""From Nietzsche to Christ," page 714.
The Beggar was written during the last three months of 1911.Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 144.
According to Michael Paterson, "The play opens with an ingenious inversion: the Poet and Friend converse in front of a closed curtain, behind which voices can be heard. It appears that we, the audience, are backstage and the voices are those of the imagined audience out front. It is a simple, but disorienting trick of stagecraft, whose imaginative spatial reversal is self-consciously theatrical. So the audience is alerted to the fact that they are about to see a play and not a 'slice of life.'"Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Pages 144-145.
According to Walter H. Sokel, "The lighting apparatus behaves like the mind. It drowns in darkness what it wishes to forget and bathes in light what it wishes to recall. Thus the entire stage becomes a universe of the mind, and the individual scenes are not replicas of three-densional physical reality, but visualizes stages of thought."Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 145. Walter H. Sokel (1959), The Writer in Extremis, Stanford University Press.
While he awaited its publication, Sorge first visited Denmark and then stayed at the North Sea resort of Norderney, where he had a mystical experience that changed both his beliefs and the course of his entire life.Tim Cross, "The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights," University of Iowa Press, 1989. Page 144.
According to his fiancee Susanne, Sorge attempted at Norderney to fulfill the doctrines of Nietzsche, who had argued that every pupil must surpass his teacher. Sorge struggled, amid the constantly overcast skies, to bring a new insight to mankind solely out of himself. Instead, Sorge drove himself on the edge of a mental breakdown and chose instead to accept the existence of the Christian God."From Nietzsche to Christ", .
In 1912, "The Beggar" was published to rapt reviews and subsequently awarded that year's Kleist Prize due to the influence of Richard Dehmel.
Sorge used his winnings to marry his fiancée, Susanne Maria Handewerk. Together, they took a honeymoon cruise via North German Lloyd to Italy. While on tour in Naples and Rome, the Sorges were deeply moved by the pious Catholicism of the Italian people.
In a letter to his mother, Sorge wrote,
"In the Revelation of St. John the heavenly visions are so depicted -- golden censers are swung; people kneel and worship in solemn vesture, with crowns on their heads, a woman clothed with the sun appears (Blessed Virgin). See, all quite Catholic, and that from St. John, a favorite disciple of the Lord. Our earthly Church must be a copy of the heavenly.""From Nietzsche to Christ", page 719.
"My soul was always inherently Christian, but I was misled by Nietzsche, entangled in suns and stars. In Der Bettler, I invoked the Name of God many a time quite unconsciously, and yet thought myself a fervent disciple of Nietzsche, who denies God's very existence.""The Lost Voices of World War I," page 144.
To the distress of Germany's Expressionist Art movement, Sorge vowed, "Thenceforth my pen has been and forever will be Christ's stylus—until my death.""The Lost Voices of World War I," page 144. As a result, his subsequent writings were all centered on fervently religious themes. Admirers of avant garde theater, however, were disappointed by the more traditional stagecraft of Sorge's subsequent plays."The Lost Voices of World War I," page 144.
Sorge also succeeded in winning over many of his friends and relatives to Catholicism. Sorge had less success in his evangelizing letters to Ranier Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and his former mentor, Richard Dehmel.
According to his letters to Susanne and a subsequent letter she received from his battalion's Jesuit military chaplain, Sorge used his devout Catholic beliefs in order to deal with the horrors of trench warfare. He also spent much of his free time trying to win his fellow soldiers over to Roman Catholicism. While serving at the Somme, Sorge's thighs were shattered by an exploding grenade."The Lost Voices of World War I," page 144. He died the same day, 20 July 1916, at a field dressing station in the ruins of Ablaincourt.Gefreiter, Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 69, 6. Kompagnie; Preußische Verlustliste Nr. 607 vom 15. August 1916, S. 14057/Deutsche Verlustliste. (Pussian R.I.R. 69/15th Reserve Division/German casualty roll entry) A short time before, he had written to Susanne,
"I suppose it is the imperfection of it all that I feel, and then the longing for our life together breaks through; but soon my soul is soothed and consoled by the conviction that this period has to be, that without it there can be no perfection.""The Lost Voices of World War I," page 144.
According to Michael Paterson, "The genius of the 20-year old Sorge already showed the possibilities of abstract staging, and Reinhardt in 1917, simply by following Sorge's stage directions, was to become the first director to present a play in wholly Expressionist style.""The Lost Voices of World War I," page 145.
Reinhardt's production of the play, which he had meticulously planned ever since he had purchased the rights from Sorge in 1913, proved enormously popular and productions immediately began to be staged in other German cities, such as Cologne. After the 1918 Armistice, newspapers in the German language in the United States also published articles highly praising Reinhardt's production of the play, which singlehandedly gave birth to Expressionism in the theatre. REINHARD SORGE’S THE BEGGAR (DER BETTLER), World War One: Plays, Playwrights & Productions, July 9, 2019.
Furthermore, the subsequent influence of Reinhard Sorge upon Christian poetry in the Germanosphere was so overwhelming during the Interwar Period, that Rev. B. O'Brien compared Sorge to Francis Thompson.
The centenary of Lance Corporal Reinhard Sorge's death was commemorated, alongside those of Allied Alan Seeger and Camil Campanyà, who fell serving with the French Foreign Legion during the same battle, during a multinational ceremony at Belloy-en-Santerre on 04 July 2016. The Catalan Government pays homage to the Catalan volunteers of the First World War at Belloy en Santerre 4 July 2016.
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