Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn (May 2, 1886 – July 7, 1956) was a German essayist and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution.

Biography

He was born in Mansfeld, Prignitz, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He was educated in Stellin (Neumark) and Frankfurt-am-Oder before studying theology at the University of Marburg and military medicine at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy in Berlin

Related Topics:
Mansfeld - Prignitz - Lutheran - Stellin - Neumark - Frankfurt-am-Oder - Theology - University of Marburg - Kaiser Wilhelm Academy - Berlin

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Benn started as an expressionist author before World War I when he published a small collection of poems (Morgue , 1912) concerned with the physical decay of the flesh.

Related Topics:
World War I - 1912

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His poetry offers an introverted nihilism: an existentialist philosophy which sees artistic expression as the only purposeful action. In his early poems Benn used his medical experience and terminology to portray a morbid conception of humanity as another species of disease-ridden animal. ?John Collins (Bullock & Woodings, 1984, p.61)

Related Topics:
Nihilism - Existentialist - John Collins

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Benn enlisted in 1914, spent a brief period on the Belgian front, and then served as a military doctor in Brussels. Benn attended the trial and execution of Nurse Edith Cavell. He worked as a physician in an army brothel. He then moved to Berlin and practiced as a dermatology and venereal disease specialist.

Related Topics:
Belgian front - Brussels - Execution - Edith Cavell - Brothel - Dermatology - Venereal disease

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Hostile to the Weimar Republic, and rejecting Marxism and Americanism, Benn began to sympathize with the Nazis as a revolutionary force. He hoped that National Socialism would exalt his aesthetics, that Expressionism would become the official art of Germany, as Futurism had in Italy. Benn was elected to the poetry section of the Prussian 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".

Related Topics:
Weimar Republic - Marxism - Americanism - Nazis - National Socialism - Aesthetics - Expressionism - Futurism - Italy - Prussian Academy - 1932 - 1933

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The cultural policy of the new State didn't turn out the way he hoped and, in June, Hans Friederich Blunck replaced Benn as head of the Academy's poetry section. Appalled by the Night of the Long Knives, Benn abandoned his support for the Nazi movement. He decided to perform "the aristocratic form of emigration" and joined the Wehrmacht in 1935 where he found many officers sympathetic to his disapproval of the régime. In May 1936 the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps attacked his expressionist and experimental work as degenerate, Jewish, and homosexual. In the summer of 1937, Wolfgang Willrich, a member of the SS, lampooned Benn in his book Säuberung 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 the Reichsschriftumskammer (the National Socialist authors' association) banned Benn from further writing.

Related Topics:
Hans Friederich Blunck - Night of the Long Knives - Wehrmacht - SS - Das Schwarze Korps - Degenerate - Jewish - Homosexual - Wolfgang Willrich - Säuberung des Kunsttempels - Heinrich Himmler - Reichsschriftumskammer

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During World War II, Benn was posted to garrisons in eastern Germany where he wrote poems and essays. After the war, his work was banned by the Allies because of his initial support for Hitler.

Related Topics:
World War II - Garrison - Allies - Hitler

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Benn favorably reviewed Julius Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World.

Related Topics:
Julius Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World

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He died in West Berlin in 1956, and was buried in Dahlem Waldfriedhof, Berlin.

Related Topics:
West Berlin - 1956 - Dahlem Waldfriedhof

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