Ashort poem entitled “November 1914” presents us with the quietness of a forest, in which mist hangs and leaves fall; a storm then tears through the forest, clearing away the mist and stripping the trees of branches and leaves. The final stanza cries:

Like many poems of the Expressionist period, this text — written by a pacifist — welcomes the outbreak of the First World War as an opportunity to clear away the dead wood of a stagnant society. Although the mood of later poems changed as the war went on, for the most part they retain an element of optimism. “Im Frühling 1915” (In Spring 1915), for example, opens with a vision of Christ, who has come down from his cross to preach the kingdom of love; in the second stanza he wanders across a dark field of blood; in the final stanza, however, new flowers blossom on the meadow, and birdsong fills the air (G, 404). In “Im vierten Kriegsjahr” (In the Fourth Year of War), written in April 1917, the evening is cold and sad, and it is raining; but even if the world is drowning in war and fear, love still burns somewhere (G, 423).