He studied composition and piano at the music academies of Berlin and Florence. However, his interest embraced all arts. So he became a musician, composer, writer, critic, and gallery owner. He was best known as the founder of the expressionist magazine
Der Sturm (The Storm) and its offshoots. These consisted of a publishing house and journal, founded in 1910, to which he added an art gallery two years later. , 1917 He discovered, sponsored and promoted many young, still unknown artists of different styles and trends, such as the
Blaue Reiter and Italian
Futurism. Later some of them became very famous, among others:
Oskar Kokoschka,
Maria Uhden,
Georg Schrimpf. He also discovered and promoted several poets, notably
August Stramm,
Otto Nebel, and
Franz Richard Behrens. The literary style he espoused became known as 'Wort-Kunst' (Word-Art). From 1901 to 1911, Walden was married to
Else Lasker-Schüler, the leading female representative of German expressionist poetry. She invented for him the pseudonym "Herwarth Walden", inspired by
Henry Thoreau's book
Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In 1912 he married Swedish painter
Nell Roslund. His sympathies for the avant-garde soon aroused the suspicion of the Soviet government, and he had to repeatedly defend against the equation of avant-garde and fascism. Walden was imprisoned and died in October 1941 in a Soviet prison in Saratov. His death was established by the
International Tracing Service. == Works ==