Walter Benjamin
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Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish
philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
,
cultural critic A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions o ...
, media theorist, and
essayist An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...
. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of
German idealism German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
,
Jewish mysticism Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), draws distinctions between different forms of mysticism which were practiced in different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbal ...
,
Western Marxism Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an i ...
, and post-Kantianism, he made contributions to the
philosophy of history Philosophy of history is the philosophy, philosophical study of history and its academic discipline, discipline. The term was coined by the French philosopher Voltaire. In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between the ''specul ...
,
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
,
historical materialism Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of Class society, class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. Karl Marx stated that Productive forces, techno ...
,
criticism Criticism is the construction of a judgement about the negative or positive qualities of someone or something. Criticism can range from impromptu comments to a written detailed response. , ''the act of giving your opinion or judgment about the ...
,
aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on the resurrection of the
Kabbalah Kabbalah or Qabalah ( ; , ; ) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of Mysticism, mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ...
by virtue of his life-long epistolary relationship with Gershom Scholem. Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be
theological Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of an ...
, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority. He was associated with the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
and also maintained formative relationships with thinkers and cultural figures such as the cabaret
playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
(friend),
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
(an early impresario in his career), Nazi constitutionalist
Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of ...
(a rival), and many others. He was related to German
political theorist A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars. Ancient * Aristotle * Chanakya * Cicero * Confucius * Mencius * ...
and philosopher
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis. Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
" (1935), and " Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a critic included essays on Baudelaire,
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov,
Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French language, French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Pas ...
, Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He translated the ''Tableaux Parisiens'' section of Baudelaire's ''
Les Fleurs du mal ''Les Fleurs du mal'' (; ) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. ''Les Fleurs du mal'' includes nearly all Baudelaire's poetry, written from 1840 until his death in August 1867. First published in 1857, it was important in the ...
'' and parts of Proust's '' À la recherche du temps perdu''. In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died during his flight into exile on the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the
Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
. Having remained in Europe until it was too late, as
Cynthia Ozick Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Biography Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City. The second of two children, Ozick was raised in the Bronx by her parents, Celia (née Regelson) and ...
puts it, Benjamin took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.


Life


Early life and education

Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and Dora (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated
Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language ...
in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, then the capital of the
German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...
. Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany, where he worked as an antiques trader; he later married Pauline Schönflies. He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks. Walter's uncle, William Stern, was a prominent German child psychologist who developed the concept of the
intelligence quotient An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence. Originally, IQ was a score obtained by dividing a person's mental age score, obtained by administering ...
(IQ). He also had a cousin, Günther Anders, a German philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under
Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...
and
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
. Through his mother, Walter's great-uncle was the classical archaeologist Gustav Hirschfeld. In 1901, eight-year-old Walter was enrolled at the Kaiser Friedrich School in
Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...
; he completed his secondary school studies ten years later. In his youth, Walter was of fragile health and so in 1905 the family sent him to Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, a
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
in the
Thuringia Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. Er ...
n countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School. In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the
University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially ), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1 ...
, but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the
University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to
Zionism Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of " cultural Zionism"an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values. In Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active ... For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual." This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong. It was as a speaker and debater in the milieu of the Gustav Wyneken's German Youth Movement that Benjamin was first encountered by Gershom Scholem and later
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
although he had parted ways with the youth group before they had become properly acquainted. Elected president of the ''Freie Studentenschaft'' (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change while working alongside Wyneken at the legendary and controversial youth magazine ''Der Anfang'' (The beginning), that was banned in all schools in Bavaria. Wyneken's thesis that a new youth must pave the way for revolutionary cultural change became the main theme of all of Benjamin's publications at that time. When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures of
Heinrich Rickert Heinrich John Rickert (; ; 25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936) was a German philosopher, one of the leading neo-Kantians. Life Rickert was born in Danzig, Prussia (now Gdańsk, Poland) to the journalist and later politician Heinrich Edwin Rickert a ...
; at that time he traveled to France and Italy. Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak of
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
in August 1914 was rejected by the army. Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription, allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poet
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...
. His conspicuous refuge in Switzerland on dubious medical grounds was a likely factor in his ongoing challenges in obtaining academic employment after the war. The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the
University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
, where he met
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as ...
and Scholem; the latter became a friend. Intensive discussions with Scholem about Judaism and Jewish mysticism gave the impetus for the 1916 text (surviving as a manuscript) ''Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen'' (" On Language as Such and on the Language of Man"), which, as Benjamin said to Scholem , "has an immanent relationship to Judaism and to the first chapter of the Genesis". In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. In 1917 Benjamin transferred to the
University of Bern The University of Bern (, , ) is a public university, public research university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern. It was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a br ...
; there he met Ernst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his
PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
''
summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...
'' with the dissertation ''Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik'' (''The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism''). For his
postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...
thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
in the latter's own postdoctoral project (''Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning''). Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin's plan was "to legitimize is theory of languagewith reference to a largely forgotten tradition ound in the archaic writings of Duns Scotus">Duns_Scotus.html" ;"title="ound in the archaic writings of Duns Scotus">ound in the archaic writings of Duns Scotus and to strike the sparks of systematization from the apparent disjunct among modern, logical, and analytical linguistic philosophy and medieval speculations on language that fell under the heading of theology". After Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication, Benjamin seemed to have derived a lifelong antagonism toward the rival philosopher whose major insights, over the course of both of their careers, sometimes overlapped and sometimes conflicted with Benjamin's. Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin and resided with his parents. In 1921 he published the essay " Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Toward the Critique of Violence"). At this time Benjamin first became socially acquainted with Leo Strauss">Critique of Violence">Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Toward the Critique of Violence"). At this time Benjamin first became socially acquainted with Leo Strauss, and he remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life.Scholem, Gershom. 1981. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn, page 201, page 79


Friendships

Starting in adolescence, in a trend of episodic behavior that was to remain true throughout his life, Benjamin was a maven within an important community during a critically important historical period: the left-intelligentsia of Interwar period, interwar Berlin and Interwar France, Paris. Acquaintance with Walter Benjamin was a connecting thread for a variety of major figures in metaphysics, philosophy, theology, the visual arts, theater, literature, radio, politics and various other domains. Benjamin happened to be present on the outskirts of many of the most important events within the intellectual ferment of the interwar-period in Weimar Germany and interpreted those events in his writing. He was in the crowd at the conference where
Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( ; ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel profoundly ...
first described the
incompleteness theorem Complete may refer to: Logic * Completeness (logic) * Completeness of a theory, the property of a theory that every formula in the theory's language or its negation is provable Mathematics * The completeness of the real numbers, which implies ...
. He once took a class on the Ancient Mayans from
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as ...
. He attended the same seminar as Heidegger at Freiburg in the summer of 1913 when both men were still university students: concepts first encountered there influenced their thought for the remainder of their careers. He was an early draft script reader, comrade, favorable critic and promoter as well as a frequent house-guest of the Berlin cabaret theater scene writer and director
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
.
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
took an interest in Benjamin, but Benjamin declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too esoteric. Nevertheless, Buber financed Benjamin's trip to Moscow and promoted his career in other ways. Buber commissioned Benjamin to write an article Moscow for his ''Die Kreatur,'' though Benjamin missed his deadline for the delivery of this piece by several years. Benjamin was a close colleague of Ernst Bloch while Bloch was writing the ''Spirit of Utopia'' and maintained a relationship with him until the late 20's that Bloch later described as "almost too close." An untitled scrap omitted from Benjamin's book review of Bloch's ''Spirit of Utopia'' which remained unpublished during Benjamin's lifetime (later anthologized under the title "Theologico-Political Fragment") is now perhaps better remembered than the larger work it cites as an authority for its mystical reflections. It was Bloch's commission that inspired Benjamin's work on the theory of categories, according to Scholem. This was to be a consequential theme throughout his career. One of Benjamin's high-school best friends (also a German Jew) killed himself using gas at the outbreak of the first World War; another was one of the Jewish Liaisons who took Nazi diplomats on a tour of Palestine. This happened while the Third Reich was preparing the European Zionists to believe that Europe's Jews would be forcibly emigrated from the Reich, to deflect attention from the looming possibility of the strategy that was ultimately adopted: mass extermination in the death camps. Scholem, Benjamin's oldest friend, and the sole executor of his literary estate, would resurrect the canonical books of the Kabbalah from private libraries and ancient document dumps called Genizah. These were created when the books flooded into
Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...
during the period leading up to, coinciding with, and immediately following the
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
.


Career

In 1923, when the Institute for Social Research was founded, later to become home to the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
, Benjamin published ''Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens''. At this time he became acquainted with
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
and befriended Georg Lukács, whose ''The Theory of the Novel'' (1920) influenced him. Meanwhile, inflation in the Weimar Republic after the war made it difficult for Emil Benjamin to continue supporting his son's family. At the end of 1923 Scholem emigrated to Palestine, then under a British mandate; despite repeated invitations, he failed to persuade Benjamin (and family) to leave the continent for the Middle East. In 1924
Hugo von Hofmannsthal Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, libretto, librettist, Poetry, poet, Playwdramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, th ...
, in the ''Neue Deutsche Beiträge'' magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
's Elective Affinities"), about Goethe's third novel, '' Die Wahlverwandtschaften'' (1809). According to literary critic Burkhardt Lindner, the essay forms the "third major philosophical-aesthetic treatise of the early work" alongside the PhD dissertation and the
habilitation thesis Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...
. It has often been linked to the breakup of his marriage. The dedication to Julia Cohn, whom he had courted in vain at the time, suggests this. Likewise, according to
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
, it was his essay on Goethe that ruined Benjamin's only chance of a university career. Benjamin's Goethe monograph is partly a meditation on the form 'free-love' that the Benjamins were experimenting with in their marriage at this time, amongst other things. But this was only tangential to the issue that led to the controversy to which Arendt refers. His mistake (per Arendt) was killing a sacred cow from amongst the academic establishment. As so often in Benjamin's writings, his study of Goethe's ''Elective Affinities'' was marked by polemics and the theme of his assault in this work concerned Friedrich Gundolf's Goethe book. Gundolf was the most prominent and able academic member of the (Stefan) George-Kreis--a cult of post-symbolist, romantic nationalist poets with a mystically conservative, medievalist bent. Elsewhere, in the anonymity of his private epistolary writings, Benjamin explicitly points out how (regardless of the ultimate horror, withdrawal and rejection with which members of the circle greeted the Nazi regime) this group's commitment to particular archaic styles anticipated the aesthetics of
fascism Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...
. Later that year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island of
Capri Capri ( , ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. A popular resort destination since the time of the Roman Republic, its natural beauty ...
; Benjamin wrote ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' ('' The Origin of German Tragic Drama'') as a habilitation thesis meant to qualify him as a tenured university professor in Germany. At Bloch's suggestion, he read Lukács's '' History and Class Consciousness'' (1923). He also met the Latvian Bolshevik and actress
Asja Lācis Anna "Asja" Lācis (née Liepiņa; , ; ; October 19, 1891 – November 21, 1979) was a Latvian actress and theatre director. Biography She was born into the family of a factory worker. A Bolshevik, in the twenties she became famous for her p ...
, then residing in Moscow; he became her lover and she was a lasting intellectual influence on him. A year later, in 1925, Benjamin withdrew ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' as his possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at the University of Frankfurt am Main at Frankfurt am Main, fearing its possible rejection.Jane O. Newman, ''Benjamin's Library: Modernity, Nation, and the Baroque'', Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 28: "university officials in Frankfurt recommended that Benjamin withdraw the work from consideration as his Habilitation." The work was a study in which he sought to "save" the category of
allegory As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...
. It proved too unorthodox and abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of the humanities faculty, such as Hans Cornelius.
Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer ( ; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist best known for his role in developing critical theory as director of the Institute for Social Research, commonly associated with the Frankfurt Schoo ...
also sat on the panel of examiners who rejected Benjamin's thesis. Horkheimer later serves as both patron and promoter of Benjamin's work at the Institute for Social Research and is best remembered as the co-author of Benjamin's closest disciple
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
's magnum opus, the '' Dialectic of the Enlightenment'' (a book which cribs heavily from Benjamin's unpublished, esoteric writings in many of its most important passages). In the case of Benjamin's habilitation, however, Horkheimer presents a united front with Cornelius and Professor Schultz in asking Benjamin to withdraw his application for the habilitation to avoid disgrace on the occasion of the examination. That is to say: His committee informed him that he will not be accepted as an academic instructor in the German university system. A diagram of the internecine dynamics of Benjamin's ''habilitation'' committee's rejection of his work bear recollection here, as they determine something of the character of his later career and ultimate legacy. Hans Cornelius had been Adorno's mentor in the institutional context of the university, whereas once Adorno started actually teaching as a professor at the University of Frankfurt, he devoted his seminars to Benjamin's rejected work. Adorno's 1931 and 1932 seminars, delivered at Frankfurt University, devoted themselves to a close reading of the '' Origins of German Tragic Drama''. Adorno was still teaching this class on the '' Origins of German Tragic Drama'' during the winter semester that
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
came to power, although at that time it was not listed in the course catalog--whereas Adorno's academic mentor Cornelius, who had rejected this thesis, is today remembered primarily because of his rejection of Benjamin's habilitation. Horkheimer becomes a footnote to the career of Benjamin's apprentice. Schultz--the other member of Benjamin's committee who seems to have directed him to the subject of Baroque drama in the first place, only to reject the thesis that derived from this recommendation--is virtually altogether forgotten. The episode in the history of the German academy is immortalized in the ''bon mot'', "One cannot habilitate intellect." This failure resulted in his father's refusal to continue to support him financially, so that Benjamin was forced to make ends meet as a professional critic and occasional translator. Working with Franz Hessel he translated the first volumes of
Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...
's ''À la Recherche du Temps Perdu'' (''In Search of Lost Time''). The next year, 1926, he began writing for the German newspapers '' Frankfurter Zeitung'' and ''Die Literarische Welt'' (The Literary World); that paid enough for him to reside in Paris for some months. In December 1926, the year his father died, Benjamin went to Moscow to meet Lācis and found her ill in a sanatorium. During his stay in Moscow, he was asked by the editorial board of the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...
to write an article on Goethe for the first edition of the encyclopedia. Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, with reviewer
Anatoly Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (, born ''Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov''; – 26 December 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissariat for Education, People's Commissar (minister) of Education, as well ...
(then the People's Commissar of Education) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic", and only a small part of the text prepared by Benjamin was included in the encyclopedia. During Benjamin's lifetime, the article was not published in its entirety. A Russian translation of the article was published in the Russian edition of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in 1996. In 1927, he began '' Das Passagen-Werk'' (''The Arcades Project''), his uncompleted ''magnum opus'', a study of 19th-century Parisian life. The same year, he saw Scholem in Berlin, for the last time, and considered emigrating from Germany to Palestine. In 1928, he and Dora separated (they divorced two years later, in 1930); in the same year he published ''Einbahnstraße'' (''One-Way Street''), and a revision of his habilitation thesis ''Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels'' (''The Origin of German Tragic Drama''). In 1929 Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant to
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
, socially presented the intellectuals to each other. In that time, Benjamin also briefly embarked upon an academic career, as an instructor at the
University of Heidelberg Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is List ...
.


Exile and death

In 1932, during the turmoil preceding
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
's assumption of the office of
Chancellor of Germany The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal Cabinet of Germany, government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Government of Germany, ...
, Benjamin left Germany temporarily for the Spanish island of
Ibiza Ibiza (; ; ; #Names and pronunciation, see below) or Iviza is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the city of Valencia. It is the third largest of th ...
where he stayed for some months; he then moved to
Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionReichstag fire The Reichstag fire (, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, ...
(27 February 1933) as the ''de facto'' Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequent persecution of the Jews, he left Berlin and Germany for good in September. He moved to Paris, but before doing so he sought shelter in Svendborg, at Bertolt Brecht's house, and at Sanremo, where his ex-wife Dora lived. As he ran out of money, Benjamin collaborated with
Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer ( ; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist best known for his role in developing critical theory as director of the Institute for Social Research, commonly associated with the Frankfurt Schoo ...
, and received funds from the Institute for Social Research, later going permanently into exile. In Paris, he met other refugee German artists and intellectuals; he befriended
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
, novelist
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
, and composer
Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (; ; March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for hi ...
. In 1936, a first version of "
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
" (originally written in German in 1935) was published in French ("L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée") by Max Horkheimer in the ''Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung'' journal of the Institute for Social Research. It was a critique of the authenticity of mass-produced art; he wrote that a mechanically produced copy of an artwork can be taken somewhere the original could never have gone, arguing that the presence of the original is "prerequisite to the concept of authenticity". In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), met
Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 8 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...
(to whom he later entrusted the ''Arcades Project'' manuscript), and joined the College of Sociology (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.") In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark. Meanwhile, the Nazi régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; now a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French government and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp near
Nevers Nevers ( , ; , later ''Nevirnum'' and ''Nebirnum'') is a city and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Nièvre Departments of France, department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in central France. It was the pr ...
, in central
Burgundy Burgundy ( ; ; Burgundian: ''Bregogne'') is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. ...
. Returning to Paris in January 1940, he drafted "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("On the Concept of History", later published as " Theses on the Philosophy of History"). While the
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...
was pushing back the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...
, on 13 June Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town of
Lourdes Lourdes (, also , ; ) is a market town situated in the Pyrenees. It is part of the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region in southwestern France. Prior to the mid-19th century, the town was best known for its Château fort, a ...
, just a day before the Germans entered the capital with orders to arrest him at his flat. In August, he obtained a travel visa to the U.S. that Horkheimer had negotiated for him. In eluding the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, Benjamin planned to travel to the U.S. from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach via
Francoist Spain Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...
, then ostensibly a neutral country. The historical record indicates that he safely crossed the French–Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of Portbou, in
Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...
on 25 September 1940. The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined. They were told by the Spanish police that they would be deported back to France the next day, which would have thwarted Benjamin's plans to travel to the United States. Expecting repatriation to Nazi hands, Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of
morphine Morphine, formerly also called morphia, is an opiate that is found naturally in opium, a dark brown resin produced by drying the latex of opium poppies (''Papaver somniferum''). It is mainly used as an analgesic (pain medication). There are ...
tablets that night, while staying at the ''Hotel de Francia''; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the date of death. Benjamin's colleague
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler (, ; ; ; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest, and was educated in Austria, apart from his early school years. In 1931, Koestler j ...
, also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but survived. Benjamin's brother Georg was killed at the
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 f ...
in 1942. The others in his party were allowed passage the next day (maybe because Benjamin's suicide shocked Spanish officials), and safely reached
Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...
on 30 September. Arendt, who crossed the French-Spanish border at Portbou a few months later, passed the manuscript of ''Theses'' to Adorno. Another completed manuscript, which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered.


Thought

In addition to his lifelong dialogue in letters with Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin maintained an intense correspondence with
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
and
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
, and was occasionally funded by the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
under the direction of Adorno and Horkheimer, even from their New York City residence. At other times he received funding from Hebrew University or from funds made available by
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
and his publishing associates including Salman Schocken. The dynamism or conflict between these competing influences—Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's
critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...
, Scholem's Jewish mysticism—were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved. Moreover, the critic Paul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin's writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition; the exemplary synthesis is "Theses on the Philosophy of History". At least one scholar, historian of religion Jason Josephson-Storm, has argued that Benjamin's diverse interests may be understood in part by understanding the influence of
Western Esotericism Western esotericism, also known as the Western mystery tradition, is a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthod ...
on Benjamin. Some of Benjamin's key ideas were adapted from occultists and
New Age New Age is a range of Spirituality, spiritual or Religion, religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western world, Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclecticism, eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise d ...
figures including Eric Gutkind and Ludwig Klages, and his interest in esotericism is known to have extended far beyond the Jewish
Kabbalah Kabbalah or Qabalah ( ; , ; ) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of Mysticism, mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ...
. In addition to Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's critical theory, and Scholem's Jewish mysticism, Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have underscored the importance of Karl Korsch's interpretation of '' Capital'' to understanding Benjamin's engagement with
Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
in later works like the '' Arcades''. Karl Korsch's ''Karl Marx'', which was "one of Benjamin's main sources n.. Marxism," introduced him "to an advanced understanding of Marxism."


"Theses on the Philosophy of History"

"Theses on the Philosophy of History" is often cited as Benjamin's last complete work, having been completed, according to Adorno, in the spring of 1940. The Institute for Social Research, which had relocated to New York, published ''Theses'' in Benjamin's memory in 1942. Margaret Cohen writes in the ''Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin'': In the essay, Benjamin's famed ninth thesis struggles to reconcile the
Idea of Progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...
in the present with the apparent chaos of the past: The final paragraph about the Jewish quest for the
Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...
provides a final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, of attempts to determine the year when the Messiah would come into the world, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter".


"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Perhaps Walter Benjamin's best-known essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," identifies the perceptual shift that takes place when technological advancements emphasize speed and reproducibility. Benjamin argues that the aura is found in a work of art that contains presence. The aura is precisely what cannot be reproduced in a work of art: its original presence in time and space. He suggests a work of art's aura is in a state of decay because it is becoming more and more difficult to apprehend the time and space in which a piece of art is created. This essay also introduces the concept of the optical unconscious, a concept that identifies the subject's ability to identify desire in visual objects. This also leads to the ability to perceive information by habit instead of rapt attention.


''The Origin of German Tragic Drama''

''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' ('' The Origin of German Tragic Drama'', 1928), is a critical study of German baroque drama, as well as the political and cultural climate of Germany during the
Counter-Reformation The Counter-Reformation (), also sometimes called the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to, and as an alternative to or from similar insights as, the Protestant Reformations at the time. It w ...
(1545–1648). Benjamin presented the work to the University of Frankfurt in 1925 as the
postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...
dissertation meant to earn him the habilitation (qualification) to become a university instructor in Germany. Professor Schultz of the University of Frankfurt found ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' inappropriate for his ''Germanistik'' department (Department of German Language and Literature), and passed it to the Department of
Aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
, the readers of which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work. The university officials recommended that Benjamin withdraw ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' as a habilitation thesis to avoid formal rejection and public embarrassment. He heeded the advice, and three years later, in 1928, he published ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' as a book.


''One Way Street''

'' Einbahnstraße'' (''One Way Street'', 1928) is a series of meditations written primarily during the same phase as '' The Origin of German Tragic Drama'', after Benjamin had met
Asja Lācis Anna "Asja" Lācis (née Liepiņa; , ; ; October 19, 1891 – November 21, 1979) was a Latvian actress and theatre director. Biography She was born into the family of a factory worker. A Bolshevik, in the twenties she became famous for her p ...
on the beach at Capri in 1924. He finished the cycle in 1926, and put it out the same year that his failed thesis was published. ''One Way Street'' is a collage work.
Greil Marcus Greil Marcus (né Gerstley; born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. Biogra ...
compares certain formal qualities of the book to the graphic novel ''Hundred Headless Women'' by
Max Ernst Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...
, or to Walter Ruttman's ''The Weekend'' (an early sound collage film)''.'' The book avoids "all semblance of linear-narrative... fferinga jumble of sixty apparently autonomous short prose pieces: aphorisms, jokes, dream protocols, cityscapes, landscapes, and mindscapes; portions of writing manuals, trenchant contemporary political analysis; prescient appreciations of the child's psychology, behavior, and moods; decodings of bourgeois fashion, living arrangements and courtship patterns; and time and again, remarkable penetrations into the heart of every day things, what Benjamin would later call a mode of empathy with 'the soul of the commodity'" according to Michael Jennings in his introduction to the work. He continues: "Many of the pieces...first appeared in the
feuilleton A ''feuilleton'' (; a diminutive of , the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle ...
section," of newspapers and magazines which was "not a separate section but rather an area at the bottom of every page...and the spatial restrictions of the feuilleton played a decisive role in shaping the prose form on which the book is based." Written contemporaneously with Martin Heidegger's '' Being & Time'', Benjamin's work from this period explores much of the same territory: formally in his "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" to ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'', and as sketches, allusions and asides in ''One Way Street.''


''The Arcades Project''

The '' Passagenwerk'' (''Arcades Project'', 1927–40) was Benjamin's final, incomplete book about Parisian city life in the 19th century, especially about the '' Passages couverts de Paris''—the covered passages that extended the culture of ''flânerie'' (idling and people-watching) when inclement weather made ''flânerie'' infeasible in the boulevards and streets proper. In this work Benjamin uses his fragmentary style to write about the rise of modern European
urban culture Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. The defining theme is the presence of a large population in a limited space that follows social norms. This makes it possible for many subcultures close to each other, exposed to social influence ...
. Several of the major published works that appeared in his lifetime—"
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
", " Paris, The Capital of the 19th Century", and his late essays and monograph on Baudelaire—are fragments of the book that he developed as standalone pieces for publication. The ''Arcades Project'', in its current form, brings together a massive collection of notes Benjamin filed together from 1927 to 1940. The ''Arcades Project'' was published for the first time in 1982, and is over a thousand pages long.


Writing style

Scholem said of Benjamin's prose: "Among the peculiarities of Benjamin's philosophical prose—the critical and metaphysical prose, in which the Marxist element constitutes something like an inversion of the metaphysical-theological—is its enormous suitability for canonization; I might almost say for quotation as a kind of Holy Writ." Scholem's commentary on this phenomenon continues at length. Briefly: Benjamin's texts have an occult quality in the sense that passages appearing quite lucid today may seem impenetrable later, and elements that read as indecipherable or incoherent now may read as transparently obvious upon later revisitation.
Susan Sontag Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...
said that in Benjamin's writing, sentences did not originate ordinarily, do not progress into one another, and delineate no obvious line of reasoning, as if each sentence "had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes", a "freeze-frame baroque" style of writing and cogitation. "His major essays seem to end just in time, before they self-destruct". The occasional difficulties of Benjamin's style are essential to his philosophical project. Fascinated by notions of reference and constellation, his goal in later works was to use intertexts to reveal aspects of the past that cannot, and should not, be understood within greater, monolithic constructs of historical understanding. Benjamin's writings identify him as a
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
for whom the philosophic merges with the literary: logical philosophic reasoning cannot account for all experience, especially not for self-representation via art. He presented his stylistic concerns in "The Task of the Translator", wherein he posits that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational modification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth. His work "The Task of the Translator" was the subject of a commentary by the French translation scholar Antoine Berman ('' L'âge de la traduction'').


Legacy and reception

Since the publication of ''Schriften'' (''Writings'', 1955), 15 years after his death, Benjamin's work—especially the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (French edition, 1936)—has become of seminal importance to academics in the humanities disciplines. In 1968, the first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft was established by the German thinker, poet and artist Natias Neutert, as a free association of philosophers, writers, artists, media theoreticians and editors. They did not take Benjamin's body of thought as a scholastic "closed architecture .. but as one in which all doors, windows and roof hatches are widely open", as the founder Neutert put it—more poetically than politically—in his manifesto. The members felt liberated to take Benjamin's ideas as a welcome touchstone for social change. Like the first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft, a new one, established in 2000, researches and discusses the imperative that Benjamin formulated in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest the tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it." The successor society was registered in Karlsruhe (Germany); Chairman of the Board of Directors was Bernd Witte, an internationally recognized Benjamin scholar and Professor of Modern German Literature in Düsseldorf (Germany). Its members come from 19 countries, both within and beyond Europe and it provides an international forum for discourse. The Society supported research endeavors devoted to the creative and visionary potential of Benjamin's works and their view of 20th century modernism. Special emphasis had been placed upon strengthening academic ties to Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe. The society conducts conferences and exhibitions, as well as interdisciplinary and intermedial events, at regular intervals and different European venues: * Barcelona Conference – September 2000 * Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Berlin – November 2001 * Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Karlsruhe – January 2003 * Rome Conference – November 2003 * Zurich Conference – October 2004 * Paris Conference – June 2005 * Düsseldorf Conference – June 2005 * Düsseldorf Conference – November 2005 * Antwerpen Conference – May 2006 * Vienna Conference – March 2007 In 2017 Walter Benjamin's ''Arcades Project'' was reinterpreted in an exhibition curated by Jens Hoffman, held at the
Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. Notable Jewish museums include: Albania * Solomon Museum, Berat Australia * Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourn ...
in New York City. The exhibition, entitled "The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin", featured 36 contemporary artworks representing the 36 convolutes of Benjamin's Project. In 2022, , a modern Russian philosopher, specialist in
media studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...
and translator of Benjamin's works into Russian, created the Russian-language
Telegram channel Telegram, also known as Telegram Messenger, is a Cloud computing, cloud-based, Cross-platform software, cross-platform, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 Octo ...
"Radio Benjamin". Benjamin is portrayed by
Moritz Bleibtreu Moritz Johann Bleibtreu ( is a German film actor, voice actor, and film director. He has been a successful actor in many movies such as ''Run Lola Run, Das Experiment, The Baader Meinhof Complex'', and Atomised (film), ''Elementary Particles''. ...
in the 2023
Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
series Transatlantic.


Commemoration

A commemorative plaque is located by the residence where Benjamin lived in Berlin during the years 1930–1933: (Prinzregentenstraße 66, Berlin-Wilmersdorf). A commemorative plaque is located in Paris (10 rue Dombasle, 15th) where Benjamin lived in 1938–1940. Close by Kurfürstendamm, in the district of
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf () is the fourth borough of Berlin, formed in an administrative reform with effect from 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf. Overview Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the ...
, a town square created by Hans Kollhoff in 2001 was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz". There is a memorial sculpture by the artist Dani Karavan at Portbou, where Walter Benjamin ended his life. It was commissioned to mark 50 years since his death.


Works (selection)

Among Walter Benjamin's works are: * "Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen" (" On Language as Such and on the Language of Man", 1916) * "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" ("The Task of the Translator", 1921) – English translations b
Harry Zohn, 1968
and b
Stephen Rendell, 1997
* "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" (" Critique of Violence", 1921) * "Theologisch-politisches Fragment" ("Theologico-Political Fragment," 1921) * "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
's Elective Affinities", 1922) * ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' ('' The Origin of German Tragic Drama'', 1928) * ''Einbahnstraße'' ('' One Way Street'', 1928) * "Theorien des deutschen Faschismus.” (“Theories of German Fascism,” 1930) First published as "Theorien des deutschen Faschismus. Zu der Sammelschrift 'Krieg und Krieger' herausgegeben von
Ernst Jünger Ernst Jünger (; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomology, entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir ''Storm of Steel''. The son of a successful busin ...
," Die Gesellschaft 7 vol. 2, (1930), 32-41. * "Karl Kraus" (1931, in the '' Frankfurter Zeitung'')
''Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus''
("Unpacking my library", 1931) * ''Berliner Chronik'' (''Berlin Chronicle,'' 1932) (first edition of '' Berlin Childhood around 1900'' * '' Berlin Childhood around 1900'', 1932–1938) * "Lehre vom Ähnlichen" ("Doctrine of the Similar", 1933) * "Über das mimetische Vermögen" (" On the Mimetic Faculty", 1933) * "Kafka" (The Kafka writings are composed most famously of "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death", 1934, and "Some Remarks on Kafka", excerpted from a 1938 letter to Gershom Scholem. Both of these are collected in the anthology ''Illuminations.'' Benjamin also wrote, "Franz Kafka: Building the Great Wall of China" in 1931, a commentary on Max Brod's biography of Kafka in 1937, and carried on a correspondence about Kafka with Scholem and Adorno.) * “Der Autor als Produzent". “ The Author as Producer”, ‘presented as an address to the Institute for the Study of Fascism, 27 April 1934.’ * "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
", 1935) * "Paris, Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts" (" Paris, Capital of the 19th Century," 1935. This essay has been presented as a diptych with " Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire", as both are fragments from the preparatory writings for the unfinished '' Arcades Project''.) * "Der Erzähler" ("The Storyteller", 1936 was first published in ''Orient und Okzident'') * ''Deutschen Menschen'' (''German People,'' 1936 is an epistolary anthology of letters reflecting the spirit of humanism in German history with Benjamin's commentary that he was able to publish under the radar of the Nazi censors inside the Third Reich by using the pseudonym 'Detlef Holtz') * "Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker" ("Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian," 1937. Benjamin mentions embarking on the essay in letters from 1935 and was published the ''Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung'' two years later. Not much attended to compared to Benjamin's other major works, it contains the skeleton and many of the crucial phrases later made famous in his "Theses..."). * ''Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert'' (''Berlin Childhood around 1900'', 1938) * "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" (" The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire", 1938) * "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" (" Theses on the Philosophy of History", 1940)


See also

* '' Capitalism as Religion'' * Gershom Scholem *
Kabbalah Kabbalah or Qabalah ( ; , ; ) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of Mysticism, mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ...
*
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...
*
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...
*
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
*
Leo Strauss Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students an ...
*
Martin Buber Martin Buber (; , ; ; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I and Thou, I–Thou relationship and the I� ...
*
Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 8 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...
* The Frankfurt School * Rohwohlt Verlag *
Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of ...
*
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
*
Heinrich Rickert Heinrich John Rickert (; ; 25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936) was a German philosopher, one of the leading neo-Kantians. Life Rickert was born in Danzig, Prussia (now Gdańsk, Poland) to the journalist and later politician Heinrich Edwin Rickert a ...
*
Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...
* Gertrud Kolmar * Michael Heller * List of people from Berlin


References


Further reading


Primary literature


''The Arcades Project''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
,
''Berlin Childhood Around 1900''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
, * ''Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet In The Era Of High Capitalism''.
''The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
, * ''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940''. * ''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem''. * ''Illuminations''.
''Moscow Diary''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
, * ''One Way Street and Other Writings''. * ''Reflections''.
''On Hashish''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
, * ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama''. * ''Understanding Brecht''.
''Selected Writings''
in four volumes
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
: *
Volume 1, 1913–1926
*
Volume 2, 1927–1934
*
Volume 3, 1935–1938
*
Volume 4, 1938–1940

''The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
,
''The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media''
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
,
''Walter Benjamin's Archive: Images, Texts, Signs''
Ed. Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, Erdmut Wizisla. * '' The Sonnets of Walter Benjamin''. Trans. Andrew Paul Wood, bilingual edition German/English, Kilmog P., Dunedin, 2020. * ''Toward the Critique of Violence: a Critical Edition''. Ed. Peter Fenves and Julia Ng. Stanford, Stanford U.P., 2021.


Secondary literature

* Adorno, Theodor. (1967). ''Prisms (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought).'' London: Neville Spearman Ltd. eprinted by MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981. (cloth) – (paper)">MIT_Press.html" ;"title="eprinted by MIT Press">eprinted by MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981. (cloth) – (paper)* Victor Malsey, Uwe Raseh, Peter Rautmann, Nicolas Schalz, Rosi Huhn, ''Passages. D'après Walter Benjamin'' / ''Passagen. Nach Walter Benjamin''. Mainz: Herman Schmidt, 1992. * Andrew Benjamin">Benjamin Benjamin ( ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the younger of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's twe ...
, Andrew, and Peter Osborne, eds. (1993). ''Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience.'' London: Routledge. (cloth) – (paper) [reprinted by Clinamen Press, Manchester, 2000. (paper)] * Susan Buck-Morss, Buck-Morss, Susan. (1991). ''The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project.'' Cambridge:
The MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
. (cloth) – (paper) * Betancourt, Alex. (2008). ''Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud: Between Theory and Politics''. Saarbrücken, Germany:
VDM Verlag Omniscriptum Publishing Group, formerly known as VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, is a German publishing group headquartered in Riga, Latvia. Founded in 2002 in Düsseldorf, its book production is based on print-to-order technology. The company pub ...
. * Federico Castigliano, ''Flâneur. The Art of Wandering the Streets of Paris'', 2016. . *
Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...
, Jacques. (2001). "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority, in ''Acts of Religion'', Gil Anidjar, ed. London: Routledge. (cloth) – * Caygill, Howard. (1998) ''Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience''. London: Routledge. * de Man, Paul. (1986). Conclusions': Walter Benjamin's 'Task of the Translator, in ''The Resistance to Theory''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 73–105. * Eiland, Howard, and Michael W. Jennings. (2014). ''Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life''. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. * __________. (2004)
''The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin.''
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
. (cloth) (paper) * Eilenberger, Wolfram (2020). ''Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy''. New York: Penguin Press. (cloth) * Ferris, David S., ed. (1996)
''Walter Benjamin: Theoretical Questions.''
Stanford:
Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Ass ...
. (cloth) – (paper) * Gandler, Stefan (2010). "The Concept of History in Walter Benjamin's Critical Theory", in ''Radical Philosophy Review'', San Francisco, CA, Vol. 13, Nr. 1, pp. 19–42. . * Jacobs, Carol. (1999). ''In the Language of Walter Benjamin''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. (cloth) – (paper) * Jennings, Michael. (1987). ''Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism.'' Ithaca:
Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University, an Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. It is currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, maki ...
. (cloth) * Jacobson, Eric. (2003). ''Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem.'' New York: Columbia University Press, , S. 352ff. * Kermode, Frank
"Every Kind of Intelligence; Benjamin"
''New York Times.'' 30 July 1978. * Kirst-Gundersen, Karoline. ''Walter Benjamin's Theory of Narrative.'' Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989 * Kishik, David. (2015)
"The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City."
Stanford: Stanford University Press. (cloth) – (paper) * Leslie, Esther. (2000). ''Walter Benjamin, Overpowering Conformism.'' London:
Pluto Press Pluto Press is a British independent book publisher based in London, founded in 1969. Pluto Press states that it publishes "radical, left‐wing non­‐fiction books", and is anti-capitalist and internationalist. It belongs to The Internat ...
. (cloth) – (paper) * Libero Federici, Il misterioso eliotropismo. Filosofia, politica e diritto in Walter Benjamin, Ombre Corte, Verona 2017 * Lindner, Burkhardt, ed. (2006). ''Benjamin-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung'' Stuttgart: Metzler. (paper) * Löwy, Michael. (2005). ''Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History. Trans. Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso. * Marchesoni, Stefano. (2016). ''Walter Benjamins Konzept des Eingedenkens. Über Genese und Semantik einer Denkfigur''. Berlin: Kadmos Verlag. * * Menke, Bettine. (2010). ''Das Trauerspiel-Buch. Der Souverän – das Trauerspiel – Konstellationen – Ruinen.'' Bielefeld: . . * Missac, Pierre (1996)
''Walter Benjamin's Passages.''
Cambridge: MIT Press. (cloth) – (paper) * Neutert, Natias : ''Mit Walter Benjamin!'' Poeto-philosophisches Manifest zur Gründung der Internationalen Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft. Lüdke Verlag, Hamburg 1968. * Nguyen, Duy Lap. (2022). ''Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy : A New Historical Materialism''. London UK: Bloomsbury Academic. * Perret, Catherine "Walter Benjamin sans destin", Ed. La Différence, Paris, 1992, rééd. revue et augmentée d'une préface, Bruxelles, éd. La Lettre volée, 2007. * Perrier, Florent, ed., Palmier, Jean-Michel (Author), Marc Jimenez (Preface). (2006) ''Walter Benjamin. Le chiffonnier, l'Ange et le Petit Bossu.'' Paris: Klincksieck. * Pignotti, Sandro (2009). ''Walter Benjamin – Judentum und Literatur. Tradition, Ursprung, Lehre mit einer kurzen Geschichte des Zionismus.'' Rombach, Freiburg * Plate, S. Brent (2004). ''Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics''. London: Routledge. * Roberts, Julian (1982). ''Walter Benjamin''. London: Macmillan. * Rudel, Tilla (2006) : ''Walter Benjamin L'Ange assassiné'', éd. Menges – Place Des Victoires, 2006 * Rutigliano, Enzo: Lo sguardo dell'angelo, Bari, Dedalo, 1983 * Scheurmann, Ingrid, ed., Scheurmann, Konrad ed., Unseld, Siegfried (Author), Menninghaus, Winfried (Author), Timothy Nevill (Translator) (1993). ''For Walter Benjamin – Documentation, Essays and a Sketch including: New Documents on Walter Benjamin's Death.'' Bonn: AsKI e.V. * Scheurmann, Ingrid / Scheurmann, Konrad (1995). ''Dani Karavan – Hommage an Walter Benjamin. Der Gedenkort 'Passagen' in Portbou. Homage to Walter Benjamin. 'Passages' Place of Remembrance at Portbou.'' Mainz: Zabern. * Scheurmann, Konrad (1994) ''Passages Dani Karavan: An Environment in Remembrance of Walter Benjamin Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.'' Bonn: AsKI e.V. * Schiavoni, Giulio. (2001). ''Walter Benjamin: Il figlio della felicità. Un percorso biografico e concettuale.'' Turin:
Giulio Einaudi Editore Arnoldo Mondadori Editore () is the biggest publishing company in Italy. History The company was founded in 1907 in Ostiglia by 18-year-old Arnoldo Mondadori who began his publishing career with the publication of the magazine ''Luce!''. In 1 ...
. * Scholem, Gershom. (2003). ''Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship.'' Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: New York Review Books. * Steinberg, Michael P., ed. (1996). ''Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History.'' Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (cloth) – (paper) * Steiner, Uwe. (2010). ''Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to his Work and Thought.'' Trans. Michael Winkler. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. * Singh, Iona (2012) ''Vermeer, Materialism and the Transcendental in Art, from Color, Facture, Art & Design''. Hampshire: Zero Books * Taussig, Michael. (2006). ''Walter Benjamin's Grave.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . * Tedman, Gary. (2012). ''the Art Aesthetic State Apparatuses - from Aesthetics & Alienation''. Hampshire : Zero Books. . * Weber, Samuel. (2008).
Benjamin's -abilities.
' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (cloth) – (paper) * Weigel, Sigrid. (2013). ''Walter Benjamin. Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy''. Transl. by Chadwick Truscott Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. * Witte, Bernd. (1996). ''Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography''. New York: Verso. * Wizisla, Erdmut. 2009. '. Translated by Christine Shuttleworth. London / New Haven: Libris / Yale University Press. ontains a complete translation of the newly discovered Minutes of the meetings around the putative journal ''Krise und Kritik'' (1931) * Wolin, Richard, ''Telos'' 43, ''An Aesthetic of Redemption: Benjamin's Path to Trauerspiel''. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Spring 1980.
Telos Press
. * Wolin, Richard, ''Telos'' 53, ''The Benjamin-Congress: Frankfurt (July 13, 1982)''. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Fall 1982.
Telos Press
.


In other media

* '' Transatlantic'' (2023 TV series) * '' Les Unwanted de Europa'' (2018 film on Benjamin's last days)
''13, a ludodrama about Walter Benjamin'', a cinematic essay by Carlos Ferrand and Thomas Sieber Satinsky, 2018, 77 min.
* ''The Passages of Walter Benjamin'' (2014 documentary) * ''Who Killed Walter Benjamin?'' (2005 documentary) * ''One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin'' (1992 documentary)


External links

*

at
Marxists Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive, also known as MIA or Marxists.org, is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Enge ...

"Walter Benjamin"
at the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication ...

The Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft
(in English and German) at
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

"Radio Benjamin". Telegram channel of modern Russian philosopher Igor Chubarov
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