Kramer, Theodor - Poems

Theodor Kramer (1897–1958) was an Austrian poet born in Niederhollabrunn into the family of a physician. During World War I he served on the Eastern Front and was seriously wounded. After the publication of his debut collection Die Gaunerzinke (1929), he became one of Austria’s popular lyric poets; his work was highly valued by Stefan Zweig and Carl Zuckmayer. After a conflict with the Nazis, his writings were banned, and in 1939 he emigrated to England. Exhausted by the hardships of exile and illness, he long postponed returning to Vienna; when he finally did so in 1957, he bitterly remarked: “Only in my homeland am I truly a stranger.” Vienna of the 1950s was no longer his Vienna. He died in Vienna on April 3, 1958.