15 Facts About Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was a German poet, essayist, and physician.

Gottfried Benn was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

Gottfried Benn was awarded the Georg Buchner Prize in 1951.

Gottfried Benn was born in a Lutheran country parsonage, a few hours from Berlin, the son and grandson of pastors in Mansfeld, now part of Putlitz in the district of Prignitz, Brandenburg.

Gottfried Benn was educated in Sellin in the Neumark and Frankfurt an der Oder.

Gottfried Benn's poetry projects an introverted nihilism, that is, an existentialist outlook that views artistic expression as the only purposeful action.

Gottfried Benn attended the court-martial and execution of Nurse and British spy Edith Cavell.

Gottfried Benn worked as a physician in a hospital for prostitutes.

Gottfried Benn hoped that National Socialism would exalt his aesthetics and that expressionism would become the official art of Germany, as Futurism had become in Italy.

Gottfried Benn was elected to the poetry section of the Prussian Academy in 1932 and appointed head of that section in February 1933.

Appalled by the Night of the Long Knives, Gottfried Benn turned away from the Nazis.

Gottfried Benn lived quietly, refraining from public criticism of the Nazi Party, but wrote that the bad conditions of the system "gave me the latter punch" and stated in a letter that the developments presented a "dreadful tragedy".

Gottfried Benn decided to perform "the aristocratic form of emigration" and joined the Wehrmacht in 1935, where he found many officers sympathetic to his disapproval of the regime.

Gottfried Benn died of cancer in West Berlin in 1956, and was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem, Berlin.

Gottfried Benn had a great influence on German poetry immediately before World War I, as well as after World War II.