Walter Rheiner (1895–1925), born Walter Schnorrenberg, was a German Expressionist poet and writer who left behind a small but striking body of work in prose and poetry — among it the blazing novella Cocaine. Published in 1918 by November Editions with illustrations by his friend Conrad Felixmüller, the book captures the hallucinatory highs and crushing paranoia of addiction in Berlin’s underworld. Part confession, part cultural document, it has since been recognized as a milestone of drug literature and a haunting echo of Weimar’s fevered nights.

Rheiner’s brilliance burned fast. Once at the center of avant-garde circles and editor of the journal Menschen, he soon succumbed to poverty, estrangement and dependency. On 12 June 1925, aged just 30, he died of a morphine overdose in a Berlin doss house.

Felixmüller later immortalized him in The Death of the Poet Walter Rheiner, sealing his legacy as Expressionism’s gifted, doomed voice — the last of its kind.