Gottfried Benn, the Jewry and the 'Constructive Spirit'

围绕表现主义艺术家戈特弗里德·本的谜团，他在 1933-34 年倡导国家社会主义，以及他在第三帝国谋求职业生涯的失败尝试，长期以来一直令人困惑，仍然需要一个连贯的解释。有充分的理由认为，对本恩参与国民服役的解释可能提供一把钥匙：一把通往他未来生活和工作、理解“内部移民”和战后时代的钥匙。拟议的研究旨在通过对本恩的直接来源进行语言学重建来解决本恩的国家社会主义参与和脱离之谜，涉及科学史、社会科学史和思想史领域。到目前为止，这些来源尚未被考虑或只是考虑不充分。因此，拟议的项目将对文学史做出非常重要的贡献，远远超出目前的研究水平。在对存档于德国马尔巴赫文学档案馆的本的参考图书馆进行系统分析之后，该研究提案首次概念化了作者对希特勒“总体”国家效忠的誓言，这是本恩“犹太化”和“去犹太化”投射过程的结果。这个术语指的是对某人或某物的“犹太”另一个自我或相应的认同。试图阻止这种识别。这些投影程序将在三个研究领域进行调查，涵盖 1930 年至 1956 年。目标首先是解释 1933-34 年发生的事件。但与此同时，该项目将有一个更大的目标，研究本对西德战后文学的中介作用。为此目的，有必要遵循“建设性精神”的主题。Benn 在 1930 年左右围绕犹太神秘主义和新物理和数学（第一个研究领域）的反犹太主义方法的话语混合的讨论中发展了这一不断变化的主题。此外，有必要研究现代文化的两个进一步的范式辩论：德国对“美国主义”的讨论（第二个研究领域）和理论家奥斯卡·戈德堡和朱利叶斯·埃沃拉的政治原始主义（第三个研究领域）。根据本恩的“建设性精神”所处的不同历史背景来阐明其含义，将有助于对所有三个研究领域进行综合。这种综合反过来将有助于对我们对本恩晚期作品的看法进行深远的修正，即德语古典现代性的典型主角的作品。

The enigma surrounding the expressionist Gottfried Benn, his advocacy of National Socialism in the years 1933–34 and consequentially his failed attempt to pursue a career in the Third Reich, has long been a source of bewilderment and is still in need of a coherent explanation. There is sufficient reason to assume that an explanation of Benn’s NS-engagement might provide a key: a key to his further life and works, for an understanding of ‘inner emigration’ and for the post-war era. The proposed research wants to solve the enigma of Benn’s National Socialist engagement and disengagement by means of a philological reconstruction of his direct sources, falling into the fields of history of science, the history of the social sciences and intellectual history. So far, these sources have not been considered or have been only insufficiently considered. The proposed project will therefore make a highly important contribution to literary history, going well beyond the current state of research. Following a systematic analysis of Benn’s reference library, archived in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, the research proposal conceptualizes, for the first time, the author’s pledge of allegiance to Hitler’s ‘total’ state as a result of Benn’s projective procedures of ‘judaization’ and ‘de-judaization.’ This terminology refers to an identification of someone or something with a ‘Jewish’ alter ego or resp. the attempt to fend of such an identification. These projective procedures will be investigated in three areas of research, covering the years from 1930 to 1956. The goal is first of all to explain the events of the years 1933–34. At the same time, however, the project will take a larger aim and research Benn’s mediating function for West German post-war literature. For this purpose it is necessary to follow the motif of the ‘constructive spirit.’ Benn develops this changing motif around 1930 in discussions surrounding the discursive mixture of Jewish esotericism and an anti-Semitically grounded approach to the new physics and mathematics (first area of research). Moreover, it is necessary to research two further paradigmatic debates of modern culture: the German discussion of ‘Americanism’ (second area of research) and the political primitivism of theorists Oskar Goldberg and Julius Evola (third area of research). The clarification of the meaning of Benn’s ‘constructive spirit’ according to the varying historical constellations in which it was situated will help to generate a synthesis of all three areas of research. This synthesis in turn will be instrumental for a far-reaching revision of our very idea of Benn’s late work, that is, the work of a paradigmatic protagonist of the German-language classical modernity.