Editing Gottfried Benn (section)

==Biography and work==

===Family and beginnings===

Gottfried Benn was born in a [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]] country parsonage, a few hours from Berlin, the son and grandson of pastors in Mansfeld, now part of [[Putlitz]] in the district of [[Prignitz]], [[Province of Brandenburg|Brandenburg]].<ref>cf ''Primal Vision: Selected Poetry and Prose of Gottfried Benn'' edited by E. B. Ashton (NY: Bodley Head, 1961; Boyars, 1971; Marion Boyars, 1984, p. ix. {{ISBN|978-0-7145-2500-6}}</ref> He was educated in [[Zielin, Gryfino County|Sellin]] in the [[Neumark]] and [[Frankfurt an der Oder]]. To please his father, he studied [[theology]] at the [[University of Marburg]] and military medicine at the [[Kaiser Wilhelm Academy]] in Berlin.<ref>cf p. x.</ref> After being laid off as a military doctor in 1912, Benn turned to [[pathology]], 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 poet [[Else Lasker-Schüler]].

Gottfried Benn began his literary career as a poet when he published a booklet titled ''[[Morgue and Other Poems]]'' in 1912, containing [[Expressionism|expressionist]] poems dealing with physical decay of flesh, with blood, cancer, and death — for example No III — ''Cycle'':

{{Blockquote|''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.''|Gottfried Benn<ref>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.  {{ISBN|978-3-608-95313-8}}).</ref>}}

{{Blockquote|''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.''|[[Natias Neutert]] with David Paisey<ref>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.</ref><ref>Cf. Under the headline ''Latently existing words'' in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Anja Juhre-Wright talks with Natias Neutert about the difficulties of translating Benn. See external links</ref>}}

[[File:Berlin Gottfried Benn Bibliothek 2.jpg|thumb|Library in Berlin named after Gottfried Benn]]

Poems like this "were received by critics and public with shock, dismay, even revulsion."<ref>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*.</ref> In 1913 a second volume of poems came out, titled  ''Sons. New Poems''.<ref>Gottfried Benn: ''Söhne. Neue Gedichte.'' Berlin (n.d. [1913].</ref>

Benn's poetry projects an introverted [[nihilism]], that is, an [[existentialist]] 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.<ref>Cf. Twentieth-Century Culture: A Biographical Companion edited by Alan Bullock and R. B. Woodings Harpercollins, 1984, p.61. {{ISBN|978-0-06-015248-2}}</ref>

===World War I and Weimar Republic===

After the outbreak of [[World War I]] he enlisted in 1914, and spent a brief period on the Belgian front, then served as a military doctor in [[Brussels]]. Benn attended the [[court-martial]] and [[capital punishment|execution]] of Nurse and British spy [[Edith Cavell]]. He also worked as a physician in a hospital for prostitutes. After the war, he returned to Berlin and practiced as a [[dermatology|dermatologist]] and [[venereal disease]] specialist.<ref>cf E.B. Ashton (Ed.): ''Gottfried Benn Primal Vision.'' New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, p. xi–xii.</ref>

During the 1920s, he continued having a close relationship with Jewish poet [[Else Lasker-Schüler]] who addressed love poems to him. This bond to her is the subject of the film ''[[My Heart Is Mine Alone|Mein Herz-niemandem]]'' (1997) by [[Helma Sanders-Brahms]].

===During the Third Reich===

Hostile to the [[Weimar Republic]], and rejecting [[Marxism]] and [[Americanization|Americanism]], Benn was upset with ongoing economic and political instability, and sympathized for a short period with the [[Nazis]], whom he incorrectly saw as a [[Conservative Revolution]]ary force. He hoped that [[Nazism|National Socialism]] would exalt his aesthetics and that expressionism would become the official art of Germany, as [[Futurism]] had become in Italy. Benn was elected to the poetry section of the [[Prussian Academy of Arts|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."<ref name=letters>[https://books.google.com/books?id=7iC7BGIcvTQC&pg=PA367 88 "writers", from ''Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900–1949, Volume 12 of Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism'', University of California Press 1998] {{ISBN|978-0-520-07278-7}}, p.&nbsp;367-8</ref> He later signed the ''[[Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft]]'', that is, the "vow of most faithful allegiance" to [[Adolf Hitler]].<ref name="letters"/>

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 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".<ref>Cf. Gottfried-Benn-Gesellschaft e.V. Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: http://www.gottfriedbenn.de/lebenslauf.php {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170418081832/http://www.gottfriedbenn.de/lebenslauf.php |date=2017-04-18 }}</ref> 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.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}} In May 1936 the [[SS]] magazine ''[[Das Schwarze Korps]]'' attacked his expressionist and experimental poetry as [[degenerate art|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 [[Reichsschrifttumskammer]] (the National Socialist authors' association) [[censorship in Nazi Germany|banned]] Benn from further writing.

===After the war===

During World War II, Benn was posted to [[garrison]]s in eastern Germany where he wrote poems and essays. After the war, his work was banned by the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] because of his initial support for Hitler. In 1951 he was awarded the [[Georg Büchner Prize]]. In 1953 he released the poem ''[[Nur zwei Dinge]]'', which appeared in the  Benn's collection of poems ''Destillationen.'' He died of cancer in [[West Berlin]] in 1956, and was buried in [[Waldfriedhof Dahlem]], Berlin.
[[File:Benn-tomb.JPG|thumb|Benn's tomb in Berlin]]