Gottfried Benn, the German poet and critic, was born in Mansfeld in Westprignitz, of mixed Prussian and Swiss-French parentage. After studying philosophy and philology at the universities of Marburg and Berlin, he received a military scholarship to the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy of Berlin, from which he was graduated as doctor of medicine in 1912. Commissioned as a medical officer in the German Imperial Army, he served briefly in 1912 and then again after the outbreak of the war in 1914. A close friendship with the poet Else Lasker-Schüler ended in 1913, and in July 1914 he married the actress Eva Brandt. From 1917 to 1935 he practiced in Berlin as a specialist in venereal and skin diseases. After his wife's sudden death in 1922, he befriended Ellen Overgaard, a Danish woman, who adopted his daughter.

Benn collaborated with Paul Hindemith on the oratorio Das Unaufhörliche, which was performed in 1931. Extensive...