The poet Benn linked autonomous poetry to slave-owning states in 1933

Evidence

In 1933 Benn welcomed the totalitarian state as being the type of state that corresponded to the autonomous poem, and in a speech broadcast on 24 April 1933 he stated, moreover, that `everything that has made the West famous, which has marked out its development, which is at work within it even today, was createdlet us be perfectly clear about itin slave-owning states … History is rich in examples of the pharaonic exercise of power being linked with culture; and the song of this revolves like the starry vault.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2233

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: the aesthetic autonomy / political authoritarianism nexus, from Benn’s slave-state praise to Adorno’s counterintuitive defense of him.
• SHARE: Send to someone interested in poets and fascism — Benn’s justification of the German state via slave-owning civilizations is a striking archival find.
• XREF: connects to: Gottfried Benn openly linked high culture to slave-owning states and never retracted this view — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2233; Adorno ranked conservative anti-modernists as worse enemies than fascist modernists like Benn — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2235

Broader Connections

• Gottfried Benn openly linked high culture to slave-owning states and never retracted this view #corroborates (1.00) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2233
• Adorno ranked conservative anti-modernists as worse enemies than fascist modernists like Benn #responds-to (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2235