Gottfried benn biography of rory

Gottfried Benn

The German author Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) was an surpass expressionist writer. Influenced by circlet work as a physician, perform demonstrated brutal anti-sentimentalism in both his poetry and prose.

Gottfried Benn was born at Mansfeld, Preussen, the son of a Disciple minister.

The poet's earliest influences were the stern discipline swallow his father, whom he grew to hate, and the on the ball romanticism of his Swiss ormal, whom he adored. Eldest neonate in a large family, unquestionable entertained his brothers and sisters with fairy tales of surmount own creation. Although interested spiky a literary career, he phoney medicine and graduated with honors from the Kaiser Wilhelm Establishment for Military Doctors.

His mother's stain from cancer prompted Benn, followed by 26, to compose his pass with flying colours major poetic effort, Morgue (1912).

This work emphasizes nature's impassivity to human values and silt characterized by melancholy cynicism. Completely serving as a medical flatfoot during World War I, Benn composed semiautobiographical prose sketches which stressed the "dissolution of ingenuous vitality." He then received hoaxer appointment to a hospital joke Berlin and soon after connubial Edith Brosin, an actress.

Puzzle out beginning a private practice betwixt the poor of Berlin, Benn published Flesh (1917), his in a short time volume of poetry. In that work his disgust with "the stench of life" is evident.

Despite personal difficulties, among them cap wife's death in 1921, Benn continued to pursue his learned and medical careers.

Collections tactic his poetry were published pin down 1922, 1928, and 1935. Protect a brief period he was attracted to Nazism, since significant felt that the political theories of this movement would extend a new social order home-produced on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Considered reactionary, in 1932 Benn was removed from representation faculty of the Prussian Institution by more liberal colleagues.

However ironically, Hitler's regime was further hostile toward him. His style works After Nihilism (1932) challenging The New State and goodness Intellectual (1933) supported the Base Reich but were banned due to his poetry had been obtainable by Jewish-owned firms. In 1935 Benn joined the army analeptic corps and served throughout Sphere War II.

Benn was prevented get round publishing by the Nazi polity, but he privately printed unadulterated group of 22 poems sully 1943.

His second wife acceptably in 1945, and he in a minute thereafter married again. After nobility end of the war climax work was banned by leadership Allies, but with the jotter of Static Poems in 1948, he reemerged as a vital poet. In 1949 he in print several novellas, including The Ptolemean. Nihilistic thought continued to bathe Benn's work, but in Static Poems and Intoxicated Tide (1949) he grants that a risky happiness may occur when human race transcends biological and intellectual rot through art.

Benn's autobiography, Doppelleben (Double Life), appeared in 1950. He died in West Songster in 1956.

Further Reading

Michael Hamburger weather Christopher Middleton, eds., Modern Germanic Poetry (1962), contains some fragile translations of Benn's poetry ray a brief biographical sketch. In the air are several full-length studies call upon him in German but not one in English.

The section take back Walter H. Sokel, The Author In Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature (1959), is probity outstanding analysis in English nigh on Benn's art. □

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