The lyric poetry of German Expressionism opens a new era in the German literary language. The core topics of the Expressionist epoch from 1910 to 1920 include the fields of the modern city, the premonition and experience of a First World War, the world of industrial labour- but also encompass the search for new directions in politics and religion and for emotional sanctuary through poetry and in it. The often apocalyptic violence of the Expressionist lyric is a touchstone for the literary experience of crisis in modernism. Short compact introductions lead into the thematic fields. Texts by Georg Simmel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Landauer, Kurt Pinthus provide an introductory entrée to the range of problems confronted by this epoch.