Royal Saxon Army
In 1913, Kästner entered a teacher training school in Dresden. However, he dropped out in 1916 shortly before completing the exams that would have qualified him to teach in state schools. He was drafted into the Royal Saxon Army in 1917 and was trained at a heavy artillery unit in Dresden. Kästner was not sent to the front, but the brutality of the military training he underwent and the death of contemporaries he experienced strongly influenced his later antimilitarism. The merciless drilling he was subjected to by his drill sergeant also caused a lifelong heart condition. Kästner portrays this in his poem "Sergeant Waurich".