1925. Klabund is the pseudonym of Alfred Henschke, German poet, novelist and dramatist. His novel Peter the Czar begins: Peter is born. The Don, The Dneiper, the Volga, the Oka leave their banks. Mud goes wallowing over the fields of wheat and many people are drowned. Winter flowers are broken in the stems and hang their heads. The dormice pipe with fear. The wind gathers their pipings and blows them with bursting cheeks into trumpet-tones until these too burst with a screech.