Richard Dehmel Biography

Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863-1920 ) was a German poet and writer.

Dehmel, son of a forester, finished school in 1882 in Berlin and studied natural sciences, economics and philosophy at the university. He finished his studies 1887 in Leipzig and started a bread-and-butter job at an underwriting association.

In 1889, he married Paula Oppenheimer. He became active as a writer, and was co-founder of the PAN magazine in 1894. Later, he quit this job and earned money as a writer. His poetic volume Weib und Welt (Woman and world) became a scandal and was published only with some parts censored.

In 1899, he divorced Paula and traveled through Europe, together with Ida Auerbach, whom he married in 1901, and settled in Hamburg the same year. At the beginning of World War I, Dehmel volunteered and served until 1916, when he was wounded. He called to the Germans to keep fighting right until 1918. Dehmel died in 1920 of the injury he suffered during the war.