Gunter Wolf is a German physician who has long been interested in the interaction of medicine and the humanities. His latest publication is about the author and physician Gottfried Benn (1886-1956). He is not nearly as well known to English-speaking audiences as he is in Germany. Wolf’s essay, which can be downloaded below, is intended to familiarize the reader with Benn’s biography and to analyze the novella in more detail, especially in terms of the concepts of the mind’s philosophy.
Wolf not only examines the concept of the mind, he stimulates it as well. He reviews “Benn’s unsteady life focusing on his 1916 novella ‘Gehirne’ (Brains), in which the protagonist (likely Benn’s alter ego) desperately tries to find mental processes, feelings, and the soul in the naked physical brain. This reductive material approach to the body-soul relationship has severe negative effects on the protagonist.”
