Editing Gottfried Benn (section)

===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]].