Die Herz‐Turbine : Rhythm and Urban Experience in the Poetry of Gerrit Engelke (1890–1918)

Although once celebrated as a representative of “workers' poetry” ( Arbeiterdichtung ), the expressionist poet Gerrit Engelke (1890–1918) has, with the exception of a few canonical poems, largely been forgotten today. But Engelke's poetry merits a rereading on account of its early and sustained engagement with industrialization. More specifically, it offers an insightful case study into the cross‐currents linking expressionist aesthetics and industrial science on account of the author's efforts to imagine urban modernity and—the role of poetry in the modern world— through the lens of rhythm . Exploring the connections between Engelke's lyric and modern discourses on rhythm (work science, vitalist philosophy, dance and film), I argue that Engelke saw poetic rhythm as a means of overcoming, via aesthetics, what Georg Simmel had identified as the growing chasm between subjective and objective culture in the industrial world.