15 Facts About Richard Dehmel

Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel was a German poet and writer.

Richard Dehmel got his first impressions of nature wandering the oak forests tended by his father, and first attended school in his hometown.

Richard Dehmel then attended the Sophiengymnasium yet was expelled after clashing with the headteacher.

Richard Dehmel finished his school days in Danzig and subsequently studied the natural sciences, economics, literature, and philosophy, first at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and then at Leipzig University, where he obtained a doctorate in economics with a thesis on the insurance industry.

Richard Dehmel then worked as a secretary at a fire insurance association, and remained in this position until, after the publication of his second volume of poetry, he turned full-time writer.

In 1889, Dehmel married Paula Oppenheimer, sister of Franz Oppenheimer.

Richard Dehmel became active as a writer and co-founded Pan magazine in 1894.

Richard Dehmel divorced Paula in 1899 and traveled Europe with Ida Auerbach, who had formerly been engaged to Richard Dehmel's rival Stefan George.

Richard Dehmel married Ida in 1901, and that same year they settled in Hamburg.

However, despite his record of fighting conservatives, Richard Dehmel joined the many patriotic and pro-war German intellectuals who inveighed the masses to support the German Empire after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Fifty-one at the time, Richard Dehmel volunteered in 1914 and served until 1916, when he was wounded.

Richard Dehmel called on the Germans to keep fighting right until 1918.

Richard Dehmel died in 1920 in Blankenese from the after-effects of an injury sustained during the war.

Richard Dehmel is considered one of the foremost German poets of the pre-World War I era.

Richard Dehmel's poems are finished in form and use numerous metrical patterns.