Benn, Gottfried

Gottfried Benn (born in 1886 in Mansfeld, Brandenburg; died in 1956 in Berlin) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of literary Expressionism and, after 1945, of the so-called artistic modernism in Germany. In his work, he combined medical experience with poetic creation in a manner unprecedented at the time.

Born the son of a Protestant pastor and a mother from the Swiss Jura, Benn initially studied theology and philosophy at his father’s request before turning to medicine in 1905. He studied at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy for Military Medical Education in Berlin and received his medical doctorate there in 1912 with a dissertation entitled On the Frequency of Diabetes Mellitus in the Army.

In the same year, Benn published his first literary work, which made him famous almost overnight: „Morgue and Other Poems“, written directly out of his experiences as a junior physician in pathology. In sober, often drastic language, Benn addressed accidents, diseases, and physical decay as they appeared to him on the autopsy table. Here, the human being appears as a purely biological organism whose dignity and individuality disintegrate in the face of death. This radically demythologizing perspective caused a genuine scandal in Berlin’s literary circles.

During the First World War, Benn served as a military physician in Brussels, including in the medical care of prostitutes. This period intensified his skeptical view of the world, reflected in the increasingly existential and nihilistic outlook of his literary work. In the 1920s, Benn expanded his oeuvre to include essays that addressed the alienation of modern human beings, often against the backdrop of medical and psychological questions.

Alongside his literary work, Benn practiced as a specialist in dermatology and venereology in Berlin. His encounters with illness, extreme situations, and social deprivation reinforced his detached, often disillusioned and culturally pessimistic view of human existence. This attitude also shaped his later prose, in which he understood art as an autonomous realm radically devoted to inwardness and pure form.

Following a brief and politically problematic rapprochement with the National Socialist regime in 1933–34, Benn largely withdrew from public life as a writer. Increasing attacks by the political authorities led him to have himself reactivated as a military physician in 1935: initially in Hanover, later in Berlin, and finally in Landsberg an der Warthe. Immediately after the end of the war, he returned to Berlin, where he resumed his work as a dermatovenereologist. In 1948, Benn returned to the literary public sphere with the collection „Static Poems“ („Statische Gedichte“).

From the late 1940s onward, Benn’s standing in German literary life underwent a marked reassessment. The period leading up to his death was characterized by considerable productivity. In poetry collections such as „Drunken Flood“ („Trunkene Flut“, 1949), autobiographical writings such as „Double Life“ („Doppelleben“, 1950), and essays such as „Problems of Poetry“ („Probleme der Lyrik“, 1951), he reflected on his poetic and philosophical positions, characterized by the development of increasingly form-conscious, linguistically condensed poetry and prose. The award of the Georg Büchner Prize in 1951 documented this late recognition.

Probably as a result of bone metastases from an unidentified primary tumor, Benn died in Berlin on July 7, 1956 – „when all is light / and the earth is easy for spades,“ as he wrote in his poem „What Is Terrible“ („Was schlimm ist“), published in 1955.

The fusion of natural science and literature remains a central and characteristic structural feature of Benn’s work. His medical training gave him a sober, analytical perspective on human existence, which manifests itself in the thematic radicalism and formal rigor of his texts. His poetry oscillates between the unflinching recognition of death and transience and the aspiration to counter them with an autonomous, consummate aesthetic order grounded in form.

(Author: Dr. Christoph Bendick)

Bendick C (2017). Gottfried Benn as a Physician and Dermatologist.JDDG, Vol. 15, Issue S1 (Abstract volume published on the occasion of the 49th Annual Meeting of the German Dermatological Society in Berlin, April 26–29, 2017).