SOURCE: “The Unfinished Legacy of Early Expressionist Poetry: Benn, Heym, Van Hoddis and Lichtenstein,” in Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas Kellner, J. F. Bergin Publishers, Inc., 1983, pp. 151-56.

In the following excerpt, Ritter discusses the influence of Benn's expressionist poetry on later poets.

“The heritage of Expressionism is not yet over, for it has not yet even been started.”¹ With these typically cryptic words, Ernst Bloch attempted to put an end to the famous “expressionism debate” in 1938.² There is one group of Expressionists for whom the term “unfinished legacy” is especially apt: the lyric poets of early Expressionism. A number of these poets (Trakl, Benn, Heym and Stadler) are among the handful of Expressionists still known to other than specialist readers today. Benn was controversial his whole life, but the others tended to be eclipsed with the movement's demise around...