Born on 25 February 1902 in Münsingen, Württemberg, Kommerell studied briefly at the University of Tübingen in 1919 before transferring to Heidelberg in 1920.

[2] There, Kommerell started a doctorate in German literature and attended lectures by Friedrich Gundolf, a close associate of the poet Stefan George.

The critical theorist Walter Benjamin reviewed the book in 1930 in an article titled "Wider ein Meisterwerk" ("Against a Masterpiece").

Though he described the work as "amazing" and betokening an "extraordinary precision and boldness of ... vision", Benjamin attacked Kommerell for what he saw as repetitive images of violence and service to a dangerous nationalist ideology.

[14] Kommerell failed to secure a chair at Frankfurt,[6] and returned to Marburg after he was offered a professorship there by the Reich Education Ministry in September 1941.

[15] Nevertheless, in 1943 the Nazi government banned an anti-Soviet drama by Kommerell, Die Gefangenen ("The Prisoners"), for its "depressive character", perceiving in the play a critique of the German system itself.

[22] He is remembered primarily through Benjamin's critique of his work and his engagement with Martin Heidegger,[23] whose analysis of Friedrich Hölderlin was once described by Kommerell to Hans-Georg Gadamer as a "productive train-wreck".