"Das Leben ist unter allen Umständen ein Fest“: Max Dauthendeys Java in seinen Reiseaufzeichnungen, Tagebüchern und Briefen

Max Dauthendey wrote these lines to his wife Annie on January 12, 1915, when he was suffering from malaria in Java and was looking forward to the end of his forced exile. In his satirical novel Wie Dauthendey died from 2017, the writer Friedrich Kröhnke made this Dauthendey “a beautiful story [...] full of poetry and Dauthendey colors”, 2 and the poet's forced stay in the Dutch colony during the The First World War, his suffering and writing are a “stroke of luck”, 3 at least for Kröhnke's protagonist Kröck, who, 150 years after Dauthendey's birth and 100 years after his death in Malang, recalls the poet's anguish in poetry.