Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998), one of the most prominent and erudite intellectuals in modern China, quoted Franz Werfel’s (1890–1945) famous proclamation “Wir sind!” in his novel ‚Wei cheng‘ (‚Fortress Besieged‘, 1947). However, the intertextual link between Werfel’s Expressionist poetry and Qian’s ‚Fortress Besieged‘ has received scant attention. Following the analysis of the thematic features of Werfel’s poems and the history of Expressionism, this essay contends that by using “Wir sind!” as the ending of a sonnet written in Chinese in ‚Fortress Besieged‘, Qian criticizes modern Chinese society for lacking the fraternal love that Werfel emphasizes in his poetry while simultaneously highlighting the problem of Werfel’s messianic ecstasy. Although Qian acknowledges the necessity of learning from Western literature, he satirizes his contemporaries for blindly worshiping and unselectively imitating Western countries. These form the core of Qian’s parody of “Wir sind!.”