About Gottfried Benn
Gottfried Benn, born May 2, 1886 in Mansfeld and died July 7, 1956 in Berlin, was a German writer. He is considered a figure of Expressionism and one of the greatest German-speaking writers of his generation, alongside Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Ernst Jünger and Bertolt Brecht.In 1912, upon his graduation from medical school Benn was called to active military duty, but fell ill from the strenuous training. During this period, in utter mental and physical exhaustion, he wrote the work Morgue und andere Gedichte (Morgue and Other Poems), which focuses on the kind of haunted visions and depersonalization of contempory man that characterized much of Expressionist writing. The reaction to his poems, filled with drug-addicts, prostitutes, alcoholics, and other low-life figures, was one of outrage from bourgeois readers. During this period he met and entered into an intimate relationship with the poet Else Lasker-Schuler, and dedicated his second book, Sohne (published in 1913) to her. Upon discharge from the military, Benn became employed as an assistant at the Pathological Institute of Westend Hospital, where he performed hundreds of autopsies. As a result of this employment and the mental anguish from which he suffered and expressed in his poetry, he left that position, becoming a ship’s physician in the spring of 1913. However, Benn suffered from sea-sickness, and, in New York, left the ship, attending a performance of Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera, and ultimately returning to Berlin. The ship to which he was to have been assigned sank with no survivors.
His third collection of poetry, Fleisch (Flesh), was published in 1917. This book carried further his prevailing sentiments of melancholy and cynicism. Over the next several years, his poetry continued to appear in expressionist journals, where he came to be recognized as a major avant-garde writer. But his work continued to move toward Nietzschean ideas that saw art as an escape from nihilism and sought, as solace to the suffering of mankind, beliefs underlying ancient mythologies and their primal urges. In 1916 Benn published a collection of short tales, Gehirne (Brains) which explored the psyche and its pulls between the Dionysian and Apollonian elements, ideas which he would further develop in his 1920 essay Das moderne Ich (The Modern Self).
Benn supported Hitler, and Mann and his brother Thomas were expelled and, ultimately, forced to leave the country. Klaus Mann and others now questioned Benn’s cooperation with Hitler’s regime. Benn fought back through radio speeches. But he soon was himself denounced as a Jew, and was forbidden a health certificate to practice medicine. When his new collection, Ausegwahlte Gedichte was published in 1936, in celebration of his fiftieth birthday, the book was denounced by the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps and was reprinted in Nazi journals. In 1938 he was officially ousted from his membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer and threatened with penalties if he continued writing.
After the War, Benn was further attacked by figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Alfred Doblin for his involvement with the Nazi regime. But he still had many friends, and with their support and the publication of his collection Statische Gedichte (Static Poems, 1948) and his lengthy autobiographical essay Doppelleben (Double Life) in 1950, he began to rehabilitate his career. In 1961 he won the Georg Buchner Prize of Poetry, upon which he delivered his famous essay, Probleme der Lyrik (Problems for Poetry). His final volumes, Destillationen (Distillations, 1953) and Apreslude (Afterlude, 1955) continued the expression of despair and disillusionment of his major poetry. Today Benn is recognized as one of the greatest of German poets, perhaps the best since Rilke.
In 1951 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize.
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Those who love strophe also love catastrophes; whoever is for statues must also be for ruins.
