Benn, Gottfried (1886–1956)

German lyric poet and writer. Experience as a military physician during World War I encouraged a cynically pessimistic emphasis on human degeneracy and physical decay in his early collections such as Morgue and Fleisch/Flesh, (both 1917). His autobiography Doppelleben/Double Life (1950) describes a gradual mellowing into pragmatism.

Benn was born in Mansfeld, western Prussia, and studied medicine. In addition to his poetry, he won recognition as an essayist with ‘Kunst und Macht/Art and Power’, ‘Nach dem Nihilismus’, ‘Fazit der Perspektiven’, and others. When Hitler came to power 1933, Benn, possibly because of his conservative ‘country gentleman’ background, did not come into conflict with the Nazi regime, though he remained silent until after 1945. Then he began to publish more collections of poetry in which he stepped outside the circumscribed world of his early work and ranged over a wider field of human experience. His Weltschmerz (gloom at the state of the world) suited the contemporary post-war mood and his Der Ptolemäer/The Ptolemean (1947) and Drei alter Männer (1949) were widely acclaimed, as were his later volumes of collected poetry, which included pieces from his early period.