Karl Kraus on Ehrenstein: “He leaves behind him an agreeable stench of brimstone when he walks by.” (1911)

In its time the most highly regarded prose text of Expressionism, and rightly so.

Ehrenstein was one of the very first of the German Expressionists, his early poems causing an immediate sensation. Tubutsch, however made him famous - it reached five figure sales and went through numerous editions. It was written in 1907, published in 1911. It’s melange of bitter humour, self-reproach and poverty-stricken megalomania reflected aspects of it’s author. Ehrenstein was something of a loner, he travelled continuously after 1918, despite his financial plight. Only in his last years did he settle down (involuntarily) - increasing poverty and isolation finally caught up with him in New York, where he died in 1950. Despite his melancholic nature Ehrenstein was also a political activist: a radical socialist, he co-founded the Anti-Nationalist Socialist Party in 1918, and later the left-wing writer’s group Gruppe 1925 with Brecht and Doblin.

Tubutsch has not been translated into English before.