Even today, thirty years after his death, Gottfried Benn is one of the most controversial figures of modern German literature. Arguments over his literary and political positions continue to spark debate. As Benn himself stated in 1948, he was denounced in the course of the previous fifteen years by all factions of the political and ideological spectrum: by the Nazis, the Communists, and the Democrats, as well as by various proponents of religion and humanism. Opposing evaluations of Benn's person and work extend also into the realm of literary criticism. Walter Muschg accused Benn of frivolously destroying the essence of the German literary tradition, while Ernst Robert Curtius claimed that all of German literature since George and Hofmannsthal sinks into oblivion in the face of Benn's prose. Reinhold Grimm ranked Benn among the foremost European lyric poets. Edgar Lohner considered Benn an equal of T. S. Eliot in scrupulousness...