Richard Dehmel Biography

Dromo's Den

DEHMEL, Richard (1863-[1920]). A German poet, born in Wendisch-Hermsdorf, the son of a forester. He studied at the University of Berlin, where he edited student journals and took his doctor's degree in 1887 for a thesis on insurance. For the next eight years he was employed by the German Association of Fire Insurance Companies. He traveled in different parts of Europe in 1899-1902 and 1908. He wrote a novel, Lebensblätter (1895; 4th ed., 1909), some essays, Betrachtungen (3d ed., 1909), but his most distinctive work was in poetry, especially lyric, of the school of Liliencron. He has been styled a hedonistic Nietzschean. His writings were collected in a ten-volume edition (1906-09) and in a "popular" three-volume edition (1913); and a volume of selections appeared in 1905. The more important titles are: the symbolical Erlösungen (1891; 4th ed., 1906); Aber die Liebe (1893, 1896); Der Mitmensch, a drama (1895); Weib und Welt (1897; 4th ed., 1907); Lucifer, a pantomime (1899); Fitzebutze, a juvenile written with his wife, Paula (1900; 15th ed., 1901); Zwei Menschen, i.e., man and woman (1903; 10th ed., 1908), an epic, in form derived apparently from French vers libre; Der Kindergarten (3d ed., 1909) and, also juvenile Der Buntscheck (5th ed., 1906); the erotic Verwandlungen der Venus (3d ed., 1907); Michel Michael (1911), a comedy which has been styled an attempt at a German Peer Gynt; Schöne, wilde Welt (1913), new poems and proverbs. Consult chap. iii of O. E. Lessing's Masters in Modern German Literature (Dresden, 1912) and Kunze, "R. Dehmel," in Westermanns Monatshefte, December, 1913.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 616.