Richard Dehmel

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Richard Dehmel in 1905.

Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (born November 18, 1863 in Wendisch-Hermsdorf, Mark Brandenburg; died February 8, 1920 in Blankenese, now part of Hamburg) was a German poet and writer.

1 Life
2 Literary work
3 Works
4 External links

[edit] Life

Dehmel, son of a forester, finished school in 1882 in Berlin and studied natural sciences, economy and philosophy at the university. He finished his studies 1887 in Leipzig and started a bread-and-butter job at an underwriting association.

In 1889, he married Paula Oppenheimer. He became active as a writer, and was co-founder of the PAN magazine in 1894. Later, he quit this job and earned money as a writer. His poetic volume Weib und Welt (Woman and world) became a scandal and was published only with some parts censored.

In 1899, he divorced Paula and traveled through Europe, together with Ida Auerbach, whom he married in 1901, and settled in Hamburg the same year. At the beginning of World War I, Dehmel volunteered and served until 1916, when he was wounded. He called to the Germans to keep fighting right until 1918. Dehmel died in 1920 of the injury he suffered during the war.

[edit] Literary work

Dehmel is considered one of the foremost German poets of the pre-World War I era. His poems were set to music by composers like Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill, or inspired them to write music. Dehmel's main theme was "love and sex (Eros)", which he conventionalized as a power to break free from middle class bounds.