BENN, GOTTFRIED
Publié le 22/02/2012
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BENN, GOTTFRIED (1886–1956), writer; his work combined elements of
Expressionism* with a disturbing realism. Born in the West Prussian town of
Mansfeld, he studied language and philosophy. On military scholarship, he took
a medical doctorate in 1912 from the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy in Berlin* and
then served briefly at the front as a medical officer. Through ties with Berlin's
Expressionists he became the lover of Else Lasker-Schu¨ler.* His medical practice,
specializing in venereal and skin diseases, lasted from 1917 until 1935; yet
he sustained contact with the Republic's intellectual community, which led in
1932 to his induction into the Prussian Academy of Arts. His collaboration in
the 1920s with Paul Hindemith* resulted in the oratorio Das Unaufho¨rliche
(Change and Permanence), first performed in 1931.
Benn's writing was inseparable from his medical training. His poetry exhibited
an aggressive and cynical Naturalism, inconceivable without his profession
and most strikingly represented in Morgue (1912). He once claimed that art
should be concerned exclusively with ‘‘style, not truth,'' an assertion troublesome
to many admirers. Relativism was also central to his prose and essays,
genres he favored in the 1920s (see Gesammelte Prosa [Collected Prose] and
Ko¨nnen Dichter die Welt a¨ndern? [Can poets change the world?]). While he
alleged that his work was morally indifferent, he expressed contempt for the
Republic's social structure and politics.
Since Hitler* infatuated Benn, the early years of the Third Reich are a sordid
period in his biography. In 1933 he was the leading German writer to commend
Nazism as the fulfillment of a valid artistic ideology. But by 1935, when he
reenlisted and coined the term innere Emigration, he had broken intellectually
with the regime. His mature poetry, appearing after 1945, reflected a despondency
associated with Germany's defeat.
Liens utiles
- PTOLÉMÉEN (Le) (résumé) Gottfried Benn
- LETTRES CHOISIES Gottfried Benn (résumé)
- VOIX DERRIÈRE LE RIDEAU (La) Gottfried Benn (résumé)
- POÈMES STATIQUES Gottfried Benn
- PROSE DU DÉBUT ET DISCOURS (résumé) Gottfried Benn