Gottfried Benn (2 May 1886 – 7 July 1956) was a German poet, essayist, and physician. He was nominated for theNobel Prize in Literature five times.[1] He was awarded theGeorg Büchner Prize in 1951.[2]
Gottfried Benn was born in aLutheran country parsonage, a few hours from Berlin, the son and grandson of pastors in Mansfeld, now part ofPutlitz in the district ofPrignitz,Brandenburg.[3] He was educated inSellin in theNeumark andFrankfurt an der Oder. To please his father, he studiedtheology at theUniversity of Marburg and military medicine at theKaiser Wilhelm Academy in Berlin.[4] After being laid off as a military doctor in 1912, Benn turned topathology, where he dissected over 200 bodies between October 1912 and November 1913 in Berlin. Many of his literary works reflect on his time as a pathologist.
In the summer of 1912, Benn started a romantic relationship with the Jewish poetElse Lasker-Schüler.
Gottfried Benn began his literary career as a poet when he published a booklet titledMorgue and Other Poems in 1912, containingexpressionist poems dealing with physical decay of flesh, with blood, cancer, and death — for example No III —Cycle:
Der einsame Backzahn einer Dirne, / die unbekannt verstorben war, / trug eine Goldplombe. / Die übrigen waren wie auf stille Verabredung / ausgegangen. / Den schlug der Leichendiener sich heraus, / versetzte ihn und ging für tanzen. / Denn, sagte er, / nur Erde solle zur Erde werden.
The solitary molar of a hooker, / who had died a missing person, / held a gold filling. / As if by silent agreement, the rest / had fallen out. / The mortician knocked out the filling, / pawned it and went dancing. / Because, he said, / only earth should return to earth.
Poems like this "were received by critics and public with shock, dismay, even revulsion."[8] In 1913 a second volume of poems came out, titledSons. New Poems.[9]
Benn's poetry projects an introvertednihilism, that is, anexistentialist outlook that views artistic expression as the only purposeful action. In his early poems Benn used his medical experience, often using medical terminology, to portray humanity morbidly as just another species of disease-ridden animal.[10]
After the outbreak ofWorld War I he enlisted in 1914, and spent a brief period on the Belgian front, then served as a military doctor inBrussels. Benn attended thecourt-martial andexecution of Nurse and British spyEdith Cavell. He also worked as a physician in a hospital for prostitutes. After the war, he returned to Berlin and practiced as adermatologist andvenereal disease specialist.[11]
Hostile to theWeimar Republic, and rejectingMarxism andAmericanism, Benn was upset with ongoing economic and political instability, and sympathized for a short period with theNazis, whom he incorrectly saw as aConservative Revolutionary force. He hoped thatNational Socialism would exalt his aesthetics and that expressionism would become the official art of Germany, asFuturism had become in Italy. Benn was elected to the poetry section of thePrussian Academy in 1932 and appointed head of that section in February 1933. In May, he defended the new regime in a radio broadcast, saying "the German workers are better off than ever before."[12] He later signed theGelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft, that is, the "vow of most faithful allegiance" toAdolf Hitler.[12]
The cultural policy of the new State didn't turn out the way he hoped, and in JuneHans Friederich Blunck replaced Benn as head of the academy's poetry section. Appalled by theNight of the Long Knives, Benn turned away from the Nazis. He lived quietly, refraining from public criticism of the Nazi Party, but wrote that the bad conditions of the system "gave me the latter punch" and stated in a letter that the developments presented a "dreadful tragedy".[13] He decided to perform "the aristocratic form of emigration" and joined theWehrmacht in 1935, where he found many officers sympathetic to his disapproval of the régime.[citation needed] In May 1936 theSS magazineDas Schwarze Korps attacked his expressionist and experimental poetry asdegenerate, Jewish, and homosexual. In the summer of 1937,Wolfgang Willrich, a member of the SS, lampooned Benn in his bookSäuberung des Kunsttempels;Heinrich Himmler, however, stepped in to reprimand Willrich and defended Benn on the grounds of his good record since 1933 (his earlier artistic output being irrelevant). In 1938 theReichsschrifttumskammer (the National Socialist authors' association)banned Benn from further writing.
During World War II, Benn was posted togarrisons in eastern Germany where he wrote poems and essays. After the war, his work was banned by theAllies because of his initial support for Hitler. In 1951 he was awarded theGeorg Büchner Prize. In 1953 he released the poemNur zwei Dinge, which appeared in the Benn's collection of poemsDestillationen. He died of cancer inWest Berlin in 1956, and was buried inWaldfriedhof Dahlem, Berlin.
Benn had a great influence on German poetry immediately before World War I (as an expressionist), as well as after World War II (as the 'Static' poet).[14]
Die Gesammelten Schriften [The collected works] (Berlin, 1922)
Schutt (1924)
Betäubung (1925)
Spaltung (1925)
Nach dem Nihilismus (Berlin, 1932)
Der Neue Staat und die Intellektuellen (1933)
Kunst und Macht (1935)
Ausgewählte Gedichte [Selected Poems] (May, 1936) Note: 1st edition contained two poems that were removed for the 2nd edition in November 1936: 'Mann und Frau gehen durch die Krebsbaracke' and 'D-Zug'. The vast majority of the 1st editions were collected and destroyed.
Gottfried Benn – Friedrich Wilhelm Oelze: Briefwechsel 1932–1956, edited by Harald Steinhagen, Stephan Kraft and Holger Hof, 4 volumes, (Klett-Cotta/Wallstein,ISBN978-3-8353-1826-7)
^"Gottfried Benn".Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. Retrieved12 November 2023.
^cfPrimal Vision: Selected Poetry and Prose of Gottfried Benn edited by E. B. Ashton (NY: Bodley Head, 1961; Boyars, 1971; Marion Boyars, 1984, p. ix.ISBN978-0-7145-2500-6
^Gottfried Benn:Morgue und andere Gedichte. 21. Flugblatt des Verlages A. R. Meyer, Berlin 1912./Gottfried Benn: Sämtliche Werke ('Stuttgarter Ausgabe'), ed. by Gerhard Schuster and Holger Hof, 7 volumes in 8 parts, Stuttgart 2003 p. 12.ISBN978-3-608-95313-8).
^Translated and recited by Natias Neutert (with revisions added from the recent translation of David Paisey). Cf.Foolnotes, Booklet, Smith Gallery Performance, Soho New York 1980, p. 21.
^Cf. Under the headlineLatently existing words in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Anja Juhre-Wright talks with Natias Neutert about the difficulties of translating Benn. See external links
^Reinhard Paul Becker:Introduction. In: Volkmar Sander (Ed.):Gottfried Benn. Prose, Essays, Poems. (Foreword by E.B. Ashton). The German L Vol. 73, Continuum, New York, p. XX*.
^Gottfried Benn:Söhne. Neue Gedichte. Berlin (n.d. [1913].
^Cf. Twentieth-Century Culture: A Biographical Companion edited by Alan Bullock and R. B. Woodings Harpercollins, 1984, p.61.ISBN978-0-06-015248-2
^cf E.B. Ashton (Ed.):Gottfried Benn Primal Vision. New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, p. xi–xii.
^Derived from his most effective and well known work, from Gottfried Benn'sStatische Gedichte. Arche Verlag, Zürich 1948/Limes Verlag Wiesbaden 1949 (with three more poems).
Snow from Broken Eyes: Cocaine in the Lives and Works of Three Expressionist Poets, Richard Millington, (Peter Lang AG, 2012)
“Das Ich ist ein Phantom.” The Crisis of Cartesianism and its Transcendence in Myth in Gottfried Benn's Early Dramas." by Augustinus P. Dierick. In: Analogon Rationis. Festschrift für Gerwin Mahrarens zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Marianne Henn and Christoph Lorey. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1994, 357–389.
