Gottfried BENN (Benn)

Benn, Gottfried (Benn), (1886-1956), a major German poet and essayist, physician education, a supporter of the Nazi regime. Born May 2, 1886 in Mansfeld. Another engaging in practice in Berlin, he turned to literary work and became one of the leading poets of the Expressionists of Germany. Being influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Spengler, combined in his work cold jargon the doctor with great ups the lyrical poetry. Troubled by the problem of national revival, Benn argued that the Germanic race to protect from degradation and emasculation of the dangerous mixing with other nations. Initially took the Nazi regime as a genuine revival of Germanic nation as a deliverance from the variety of rationalism, which, in his opinion, it paralyzed the Western civilization. He admired Hitler's concept of "mystical collectivism" and agree with the tenets of the Nazi philosophy, held, inter alia, that the individual "I" must give way to more powerful and viable "we".

Very soon Benn lost all illusions about the nature of the Nazi regime. His ethical and aesthetic concepts proved to be incompatible with the acts of the Nazis, and he accused the Nazi leaders in his own misunderstanding of the concept of "right to life during improved breed". He became convinced that the Nazi revolution did not bring anything new, and the heroic image of life filled with the spirit of sacrifice. For its part, the Nazi authorities were outraged by the fact that Benn has depicted the Germans as a people exhausted. In 1938 the Imperial Chamber of Culture Benn excluded from among its members. Since the beginning of 2 nd World War he was conscripted into military service as a doctor and sent to a remote garrison in eastern Germany, where the relative isolation poured his despair in poems and essays. In justifying the war after his initial support of Hitler, Benn said that in 1933 no one took the Nazi program of anti-Semitism and racism seriously. Only later, he said, the terrible truth came to light. Now he began to assert that the poet should not engage in politics, that he first needs solitude and asceticism, to create. Benn died in Berlin on July 7, 1956.