are complementary opposites: the Symbolistic Sancta Susanna (1912-13)," portrays a Roman Catholic nun who violates her vow of chastity, "while the Naturalistic Rudimentär (1912-14) shows the glimmerings of reason awakening in a Berlin semi-literate." Stramm, however, was soon, "driven to near despair by his lack of success as a writer." By 1913, he was on the verge of destroying all his manuscripts when Else Stramm, whose novels had had no such troubles with publication, urged her husband to contact Herwarth Walden, the editor of the avant-garde magazine Der Sturm. According to Jeremy Adler, Herwarth Walden, "stood at the forefront of the avante-garde movement in Berlin." He was receiving submissions from countless international artists, including Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky. Walden was also in contact with Italian Futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and with French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. In Der Sturm, Walden had published German translations of Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism and Apollinaire's Modern Painting. According to Adler, "For Walden, Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism were essentially the same, and he sought to unite them in his own all-embracing Sturm-Kunst." What Walden had lacked, however, before August Stramm contacted him in 1914, was a German poet "whose work could stand comparison with the international elite who figured in Der Sturm." From the time of their first meeting, a close friendship developed between Walden and Stramm. Personally and artistically, "they became indispensable to each other and it can be inferred that Stramm's style now became fully mature through Walden's encouragement. In the next sixteen months, Stramm produced the sixty two shorter poems on which his reputation mainly rests. During this period, hardly an issue of Der Sturm appeared that did not contain a play by Stramm or a group of his poems." War service . Stramm was a reserve officer in the Prussian Army. By 1914 he had reached the rank of captain. Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Stramm "was called up immediately" and was, "posted as a company commander to Landwehrregiment 110, with which he saw action on the Western Front, in the Vosges, and in Alsace." According to Jeremy Adler, "From the start, Stramm had few illusions and never joined in the so-called Hurrah-Patriotismus." In mid-January 1915, Stramm was reassigned, again as a company commander, to the newly formed Reserve Infantry Regiment 272, which was stationed at Oise, near the Somme River in