He continued his studies in 1901 at the Karlsruhe Art Academy with a focus on sculpting. The first commissions for gravestones came from Dortmund in 1903. They can still be seen today at the Ostenfriedhof. He lived and worked in Paris from 1906 to 1908, married the pianist and daughter of the Baden Chief Rabbi Hedwig Einstein in 1907, whom he met in Karlsruhe, and went with her to Rome in 1908 for three years as a scholarship holder of the Jewish Michael Beer Foundation. He experienced World War I in Poland, returned due to cholera and was responsible for post office surveillance in Frankfurt.

The new beginning in London in 1934 was not easy for him, his contacts from his time at boarding school in Switzerland probably helped him. After 1936, after a gallery exhibition in London, the commissions became more frequent again: medals, portrait busts and candlesticks for churches such as Westminster Abbey were in the focus of his work.

Until the end of the war Benno and his wife were not allowed to become British citizens, but they finally got their citizenship in August 1946. Like all Jews at that time, he was touched by the fate of Palestine. In these years he developed his idea to create a large seven-armed lampstand, a Menorah, the symbol of Judaism through the centuries. It will become his lifework.

With the help of a “Menorah Fund Committee”, founded in 1953 in the House of Lords, the financing of the lampstand is ensured, which was finally handed over to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, in 1956 as a gift from Great Britain on the eve of the 8th Israeli Independence Day. 4,5 metres high and over 3,5 metres wide it tells the story of the Jews up to the foundation of the State of Israel.