No survey of German expressionist literature fails to mention Albert Ehrenstein, the sharp-tongued yet sensitive author of the lapidary prose sketch Tubutsch (1911; translated, 1946) and of some of the most outspoken political and sexual lyrics in German; yet the worthwhile works from his pen are few, and his stature as a writer is doubtful. As a person, though he had some celebrated quarrels, he liked nothing better than to help others: rescuing his friend Oskar Kokoschka from military service on the eastern front, making propaganda for the unknown actress Elisabeth Bergner (the great unhappy love of his life, who inspired many of his poems), and trying to run a writers' cooperative publishing house. In exile in Switzerland and America, often in desperate straits himself, cynical and bitter, he still advised and aided other refugees and writers.

Ehrenstein was born in Vienna on 22 December 1886 to Alexander Ehrenstein, a poor Jewish...