Reinhard Sorge

Reinhard Johannes Sorge (29 January 1892 – 20 July 1916) was a German 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. 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. 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. At the time of his death, Reinhard Sorge was only 24 years-old. Sorge's Der Bettler, however, received a posthumous premiere in a production by Austrian Jewish stage director and filmmaker Max Reinhardt in 1917. 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.