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This article demonstrates that Gottfried Benn’s critical reflections on physics and mathematics in his prose writings between 1927-1933 were substantially inspired by a 1926 book entitled Der Zusammenbruch der Wissenschaft und der Primat der Philosophie and authored by the philosopher of science Hugo Dingler, an ardent opponent of Albert Einstein’s relativity theory who came to play a leading role in the movement known as Deutsche Physik during the Third Reich. This underexplored dimension of Benn’s science critique attests to the depth of his involvement in the intellectual-ideological discourse accompanying the emergence of National Socialism. The historical unfolding of Benn’s relation to physics and mathematics after 1933, however, highlights the shared vulnerability of expressionism and these ›exact sciences‹ to being interchangeably denounced as ›abstract‹, ›degenerate‹ and ›Jewish‹ on the one hand and the divergent fates of art and natural science under National Socialism on the other. This is demonstrated by way of a new reading of the essay Bekenntnis zum Expressionismus, published in November 1933, where Benn surprisingly moved away from the critique of modern physics and mathematics and towards an identification of expressionism with these fields.

Expressionism and Deutsche Physik: Gottfried Benn, Hugo Dingler and »The Collapse of Science«, 1927–1933