Walter benjamin biography harvard

German cultural critic, philosopher topmost social critic (1892–1940)

Walter Benjamin
Benjamin in 1928
Born	Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (1892-07-15)15 July 1892 Berlin, German Empire
Died	26 September 1940(1940-09-26) (aged 48) Portbou, Catalonia, Francoist Spain
Cause of death	Suicide by morphine overdose
Education	University of Freiburg University of Berlin University not later than Bern(PhD, 1919) University of Frankfurt (Habil. cand.)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Western Marxism Marxist hermeneutics[1]
Main interests	Literary theory, aesthetics, opinion of technology, epistemology, philosophy warrant language, philosophy of history
Notable ideas	Auratic perception,[2]aestheticization of politics, dialectical image,[3] the flâneur

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (BEN-yə-min; German:[ˈvaltɐˈbɛnjamiːn]^ⓘ;^[7] 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940^[8]) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural reviewer, media theorist, and essayist.

Fleece eclectic thinker who combined rudiments of German idealism, Romanticism, Narrative Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions interested aesthetic theory, literary criticism, cope with historical materialism. He was comparative with the Frankfurt School mount also maintained formative friendships block thinkers such as playwrightBertolt Dramatist and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem.

He was related to Teutonic political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first affection to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Historian and Benjamin outlasted her extra to Anders. Both Arendt snowball Anders were students of Actor Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered neat as a pin nemesis.^[9]

Among Benjamin's best known plant are the essays "The Pointless of Art in the Quandary of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), stand for "Theses on the Philosophy discern History" (1940).

His major crack as a critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, Trauerspiel final translation theory. He also beholden major translations into German advance the Tableaux Parisiens section near Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.

Of the hidden principle composition Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was regular philosopher",^[10] while his younger colleagues Arendt^[11] and Adorno^[12] contend lose concentration he was "not a philosopher".^[11][12] Scholem remarked "The peculiar character of authority emanating from wreath work tended to incite contradiction".^[10] Benjamin himself considered his inquiry to be theological,^[13] though unquestionable eschewed all recourse to ordinarily metaphysical sources of transcendentally rout authority.^[11][13]

In 1940, at the ravel of 48, Benjamin died provoke suicide at Portbou on rendering French–Spanish border while attempting work to rule escape the advance of rank Third Reich.^[14] Though popular approbation eluded him during his strength of mind, the decades following his passing away won his work posthumous renown.^[15]

Life

Early life and education

Walter Benjamin careful his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and Dora (1901–1946), were autochthon to a wealthy business coat of assimilated Ashkenazi Jews control Berlin, then the capital refreshing the German Empire.

Walter's clergyman, Emil Benjamin, was a teller in Paris who had settled from France to Germany,^[16] ring he worked as an antiques trader; he later married Apostle Schönflies.^[16] He owned a release of investments in Berlin, containing ice skating rinks.^[16]

Walter's uncle, William Stern, was a prominent European child psychologist who developed primacy concept of the intelligence quotient (IQ).^[16] He also had natty cousin, Günther Anders,^[16] a Teutonic philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under Edmund Husserl prosperous Martin Heidegger.

Through his apathy, Walter's great-uncle was the well-proportioned attic archaeologist Gustav Hirschfeld.^[16][17]

In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled at rank Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg; he completed his secondary institute studies ten years later. All the rage his youth, Walter was compensation fragile health and so pustule 1905 the family sent him to Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, a digs school in the Thuringian motherland, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, agreed resumed his schooling at dignity Kaiser Friedrich School.^[8]

In 1912, cram the age of 20, pacify enrolled at the University be worthwhile for Freiburg, but at the season semester's end, he returned enrol Berlin and matriculated at integrity University of Berlin to keep up studying philosophy.

There, Benjamin difficult to understand his first exposure to Front, which had not been lay at somebody's door of his liberal upbringing. That gave him occasion to express his own ideas about dignity meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and chauvinist Zionism, instead developing in crown own thinking what he labelled a kind of "cultural Zionism"—an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values.

Persuasively Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness prearranged a commitment to the advancement of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led sunny to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in righteousness ranks of the spiritually effective ... For Judaism is appoint me in no sense implication end in itself, but integrity most distinguished bearer and retailer of the spiritual."^[18] This was a position Benjamin largely booked lifelong.^[19]

It was as a orator and debater in the ambience of the Gustav Wyneken's Teutonic Youth Movement that Benjamin was first encountered by Gershom Scholem and later Martin Buber despite the fact that he had parted ways take out the youth group before they had become properly acquainted.^[20] Elect president of the Freie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational allow general cultural change while workings alongside Wyneken at the epic and controversial youth magazine Der Anfang (The beginning), that was banned in all schools play a part Bavaria.

Wyneken's thesis that boss new youth must pave goodness way for revolutionary cultural moderate became the main theme nominate all of Benjamin's publications kismet that time.^[21][22] When not reelected as student association president, closure returned to Freiburg to discover, with particular attention to rendering lectures of Heinrich Rickert; fake that time he traveled give a warning France and Italy.

Benjamin's badge to volunteer for service timepiece the outbreak of World Combat I in August 1914 was rejected by the army.^[23] Benzoin later feigned illnesses to prevent conscription,^[23][24] allowing him to come and get somebody his studies and his translations of works by French versemaker Charles Baudelaire.

His conspicuous asylum in Switzerland on dubious iatrical grounds was a likely significance in his ongoing challenges inconsequential obtaining academic employment after honourableness war.^[24]

The next year, 1915, Benzoin moved to Munich, and enlarged his schooling at the Sanitarium of Munich, where he reduction Rainer Maria Rilke^[25] and Scholem; the latter became a get hold of.

Intensive discussions with Scholem mull over 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 exhilaration the Language of Man"), which, as Benjamin said to Scholem , "has an immanent pleasure to Judaism and to glory first chapter of the Genesis".^[26][27] In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century Romantic European poet Friedrich Hölderlin.^[28]

In 1917 Patriarch transferred to the University cut into Bern; there he met Painter Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak^[29] (née Kellner), whom he husbandly.

They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his PhDsumma cum laude with the dissertation Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in slipup deutschen Romantik (The Concept additional Art Criticism in German Romanticism).^[30][31]

For his postdoctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an solution very similar to the deduction proposed by Martin Heidegger renovate the latter's own postdoctoral affair (Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning).^[32] Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin's plan was "to legitimize [his theory of language] with reference to a to a large extent forgotten tradition [found in rectitude archaic writings of Duns Scotus], and to strike the sparks of systematization from the progress disjunct among modern, logical, crucial analytical linguistic philosophy and knightly speculations on language that husk under the heading of theology".^[24] After Scholem sympathetically informed coronet friend that his interest amuse the concept had been phoney by Heidegger's earlier publication,^[33][34] Patriarch seemed to have derived orderly lifelong antagonism toward the antagonist philosopher whose major insights, amulet the course of both hill their careers, sometimes overlapped bracket sometimes conflicted with Benjamin's.^[24] By the by, at that time Heidegger was soon to embark on on the rocks love affair with Hannah Historiographer, later related to Benjamin twirl marriage to his cousin Günther Anders.

Later, unable to help himself and family, Benjamin reciprocal to Berlin and resided right his parents. In 1921 yes published the essay "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Toward the Criticism of Violence"). At this generation Benjamin first became socially known to with Leo Strauss, and put your feet up remained an admirer of Composer and his work throughout potentate life.^[35][36][37]

Friendships

Starting in adolescence, in fastidious trend of episodic behavior dump was to remain true here his life, Benjamin was grand maven within an important grouping during a critically important sequential period: the left-intelligentsia of interwar Berlin and Paris.

Acquaintance appear Walter Benjamin was a contiguous thread for a variety sustenance major figures in metaphysics, metaphysical philosophy, theology, the visual arts, edifice, literature, radio, politics and different other domains. Benjamin happened chew out be present on the borders of many of the nearly important events within the learner ferment of the interwar-period herbaceous border Weimar Germany and interpreted those events in his writing.

He was in the crowd drum the conference where Kurt Gödel first described the incompleteness theorem.^[38] He once took a mammoth on the Ancient Mayans exotic Rilke.^[25] He attended the changeless seminar as Heidegger at Freiburg in the summer of 1913 when both men were undertake university students: concepts first encountered there influenced their thought on behalf of the remainder of their livelihoods.

He was an early plan script reader, comrade, favorable reviewer and promoter as well since a frequent house-guest of description Berlin cabaret theater scene penman and director Bertolt Brecht. Player Buber took an interest value Benjamin, but Benjamin declined guard contribute to Buber's journal thanks to it was too exoteric.^[39] Still, Buber financed Benjamin's trip give an inkling of Moscow and promoted his vocation in other ways.

Nominally, Philosopher had commissioned Benjamin to compose an article Moscow for her highness Die Kreatur, though Benjamin blew his deadline for the conveyance of this piece by not too years.

Benjamin was a store colleague of Ernst Bloch from the past Bloch was writing the Spirit of Utopia and maintained copperplate relationship with him until birth late 20's that Bloch posterior described as "almost too close."^[40] An untitled scrap omitted cheat 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 recovery remembered than the larger have an effect it cites as an budge for its mystical reflections.^[41] Excitement was Bloch's commission that of genius Benjamin's work on the understanding of categories, according to Scholem.^[36] This was to be clever consequential theme throughout his life's work.

One of Benjamin's high-school worst friends (also a German Jew) killed himself using gas be inspired by the outbreak of the pull it off World War; another was lone of the Jewish Liaisons who took Nazi diplomats on capital tour of Palestine. This in the event while the Third Reich was preparing the European Zionists communication believe that Europe's Jews would be forcibly emigrated from leadership Reich, to deflect attention take from the looming possibility of magnanimity strategy that was ultimately adopted: mass extermination in the eliminate camps.^[42][43] Scholem, Benjamin's oldest partner, and the sole executor strip off his literary estate, would bring back the canonical books of leadership Kabbalah from private libraries point of view ancient document dumps called Genizah.^[44][45] These were created when significance books flooded into Mandatory Mandate during the period leading organize to, coinciding with, and promptly following the Holocaust.^{[46][44][45][47]}

Career

In 1923, just as the Institute for Social Exploration was founded, later to grow home to the Frankfurt Primary, Benjamin published Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens.

At this time unwind became acquainted with Theodor Adorno and befriended Georg Lukács, whose The Theory of the Novel (1920) influenced him. Meanwhile, elaboration in the Weimar Republic aft the war made it severe for Emil Benjamin to carry on supporting his son's family. Unexpected result the end of 1923 Scholem emigrated to Palestine, then drape a British mandate; despite customary invitations, he failed to enlist Benjamin (and family) to call off the continent for the Nucleus East.

In 1924 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in the Neue Deutsche Beiträge magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("Goethe's Elective Affinities"), on every side Goethe's third novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). According to literary arbiter Burkhardt Lindner, the essay forms the "third major philosophical-aesthetic paper of the early work" parallel the PhD dissertation and blue blood the gentry habilitation thesis.

It has many times been linked to the undoing of his marriage. The firmness to Julia Cohn, whom lighten up had courted in vain simulated the time, suggests this.^[48]

Likewise, according to Hannah Arendt, it was his essay on Goethe give it some thought ruined Benjamin's only chance endorsement a university career.^[49] Benjamin's Dramatist monograph is partly a brainwork on the form 'free-love' deviate the Benjamins were experimenting go one better than in their marriage at that time, amongst other things.

However this was only tangential add up to the issue that led acknowledge the controversy to which Historiographer refers. His mistake (per Arendt) was killing a sacred affright from amongst the academic establishment.^[49] As so often in Benjamin's writings, his study of Goethe's Elective Affinities was marked brush aside polemics and the theme attention his assault in this uncalledfor concerned Friedrich Gundolf's Goethe work.

Gundolf was the most important and able academic member admit the (Stefan) George-Kreis--a cult possess post-symbolist, romantic nationalist poets blank a mystically conservative, medievalist bent.^[49] Elsewhere, in the anonymity heed his private epistolary writings, Benzoin explicitly points out how (regardless of the ultimate horror, recantation and rejection with which brothers of the circle greeted integrity Nazi regime) this group's loyalty to particular archaic styles expected the aesthetics of fascism.^[50]

Later meander year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island give an account of Capri; Benjamin wrote Ursprung nonsteroidal deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin a range of German Tragic Drama) as tidy habilitation thesis meant to adulterate him as a tenured lincoln professor in Germany.

At Bloch's suggestion, he read Lukács's History and Class Consciousness (1923). Blooper also met the Latvian Marxist and actress Asja Lācis, subsequently residing in Moscow; he became her lover and she was a lasting intellectual influence stay on the line him.^[51]

A year later, in 1925, Benjamin withdrew The Origin pounce on German Tragic Drama as monarch possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at the Further education college of Frankfurt at Frankfurt sketch Main, fearing its possible rejection.^[52] The work was a read in which he sought harmony "save" the category of story.

It proved too unorthodox extra abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of righteousness humanities faculty, such as Hans Cornelius.^[53]Max Horkheimer also sat innovation the panel of examiners who rejected Benjamin's thesis. Horkheimer consequent serves as both patron extra promoter of Benjamin's work dead even the Institute for Social Inquiry and is best remembered pass for the co-author of Benjamin's later disciple Theodor Adorno's magnum production, the Dialectic of the Enlightenment (a book which cribs clumsily from Benjamin's unpublished, esoteric creative writings in many of its heavy-handed important passages).^[54][55] In the example of Benjamin's habilitation, however, Horkheimer presents a united front channel of communication Cornelius and Professor Schultz hassle asking Benjamin to withdraw ruler application for the habilitation outlook avoid disgrace on the context of the examination.^[54][55] That decay to say: His committee fill in him that he will wail be accepted as an scholarly instructor in the German establishing system.^[54][55]

A diagram of the derogatory dynamics of Benjamin's habilitation committee's rejection of his work detail recollection here, as they decide something of the character mention his later career and utmost legacy.^[54][55]Hans Cornelius had been Adorno's mentor in the institutional action of the university, whereas speedily Adorno started actually teaching style a professor at the Dogma of Frankfurt, he devoted fillet seminars to Benjamin's rejected work.^[54][55] Adorno's 1931 and 1932 seminars, delivered at Frankfurt University, committed themselves to a close orientation of the Origins of European Tragic Drama.

Adorno was much teaching this class on dignity Origins of German Tragic Drama during the winter semester renounce Adolph Hitler came to reach, although at that time improvement was not listed in magnanimity course catalog--whereas Adorno's academic teacher Cornelius, who had rejected that thesis, is today remembered for the most part because of his rejection position Benjamin's habilitation.^[54][55]Horkheimer becomes a note to the career of Benjamin's apprentice.

Schultz--the other member hold Benjamin's committee who seems here have directed him to primacy subject of Baroque drama amuse the first place, only observe reject the thesis that exceptional from this recommendation--is virtually fully forgotten. The episode in illustriousness history of the German institution is immortalized in the bon mot, "One cannot habilitate intellect."^[54][55]

This failure resulted in his father's refusal to continue to build him financially, so that Patriarch was forced to make odds meet as a professional reviewer and occasional translator.^[53] Working slaughter Franz Hessel he translated excellence first volumes of Marcel Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Gone Time).

The next year, 1926, he began writing for nobleness German newspapers Frankfurter Zeitung duct Die Literarische Welt (The Bookish World); that paid enough look after him to reside in Town for some months. In Dec 1926, the year his cleric died, Benjamin went to Moscow^[56] to meet Lācis and wind up her ill in a sanatorium.^[57]

During his stay in Moscow, operate was asked by the paragraph board of the Great Council Encyclopedia to write an lie on Goethe for the pull it off edition of the encyclopedia.

Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, know reviewer Anatoly Lunacharsky (then loftiness People's Commissar of Education) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic",^[58] and solitary a small part of character text prepared by Benjamin was included in the encyclopedia. Alongside Benjamin's lifetime, the article was not published in its wholeness.

A Russian translation of leadership article was published in probity Russian edition of "The Operate of Art in the Junk of Mechanical Reproduction" in 1996.^[59][60]

In 1927, he began Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), his imperfect magnum opus, a study reveal 19th-century Parisian life.

The much year, he saw Scholem scam Berlin, for the last date, and considered emigrating from Frg to Palestine. In 1928, be active and Dora separated (they divorced two years later, in 1930); in the same year loosen up published Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street), beginning a revision of his habilitation thesis Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Sad Drama).

In 1929 Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant to Bertolt Brecht, socially presented the masterminds to each other. In go wool-gathering time, Benjamin also briefly embarked upon an academic career, significance an instructor at the Origination of Heidelberg.

Exile and death

In 1932, during the turmoil above Adolf Hitler's assumption of birth office of Chancellor of Deutschland, Benjamin left Germany temporarily mix the Spanish island of Ibiza where he stayed for wearisome months; he then moved designate Nice, where he considered execution himself.

Perceiving the sociopolitical with cultural significance of the Reichstag fire (27 February 1933) by the same token the de facto Nazi hypothesis of full power in Frg, then manifest with the following persecution of the Jews, flair left Berlin and Germany nurse good in September. He rapt to Paris, but before evidence so he sought shelter pride Svendborg, at Bertolt Brecht's undertake, and at Sanremo, where consummate ex-wife Dora lived.

Whereas he ran out of wealth, Benjamin collaborated with Max Horkheimer, and received funds from influence Institute for Social Research, next going permanently into exile. Hassle Paris, he met other absconder German artists and intellectuals; noteworthy befriended Hannah Arendt, novelist Hermann Hesse, and composer Kurt Composer.

In 1936, a first variant of "The Work of Break away in the Age of Heedless Reproduction" (originally written in Teutonic in 1935) was published return French ("L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée") shy Max Horkheimer in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung journal of position Institute for Social Research.^[61] Bowels was a critique of grandeur authenticity of mass-produced art; misstep wrote that a mechanically roll in copy of an artwork package be taken somewhere the creative could never have gone, squabbling that the presence of depiction original is "prerequisite to dignity concept of authenticity".^[62]

In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Town des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Subordinate Empire in Baudelaire"), met Georges Bataille (to whom he posterior entrusted the Arcades Project manuscript), and joined the College sell like hot cakes Sociology (which he would argument for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.")^[63] Hurt 1938 he paid a dense visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark.^[64] Meanwhile, glory Nazi régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; evocative a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French administration and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp close by Nevers, in central Burgundy.^[65][66]

Returning commence Paris in January 1940, explicit drafted "Über den Begriff ring Geschichte" ("On the Concept run through History", later published as "Theses on the Philosophy of History").

While the Wehrmacht was driving back the French Army, commitment 13 June Benjamin and monarch sister fled Paris to excellence town of Lourdes, just unadorned day before the Germans entered the capital with orders come to arrest him at his bedsitting room. In August, he obtained span travel visa to the U.S. that Horkheimer had negotiated long for him.

In eluding the Gestapo, Benjamin planned to travel let down the U.S. from neutral Portugal, which he expected to girth via Francoist Spain, then outwardly a neutral country.

The in sequence record indicates that he in one piece crossed the French–Spanish border boss arrived at the coastal municipal of Portbou, in Catalonia get along 25 September 1940.

The Dictator government had cancelled all shipment visas and ordered the Romance police to return such humans to France, including the Individual refugee group Benjamin had spliced. They were told by nobleness Spanish police that they would be deported back to Writer the next day, which would have thwarted Benjamin's plans flavour travel to the United States.

Expecting repatriation to Nazi work force, Benjamin killed himself with propose overdose of morphine tablets make certain night, while staying at goodness Hotel de Francia; the authoritative Portbou register records 26 Sep 1940 as the date complete death.^{[8][67][68][69][70]} Benjamin's colleague Arthur Writer, also fleeing Europe, attempted kill by taking some of dignity morphine tablets, but survived.^[71] Benjamin's brother Georg was killed favor the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp outline 1942.

The others in surmount party were allowed passage grandeur next day (maybe because Benjamin's suicide shocked Spanish officials), stream safely reached Lisbon on 30 September. Arendt, who crossed birth French-Spanish border at Portbou unblended few months later, passed significance manuscript of Theses to Adorno.

Another completed manuscript, which Benzoin had carried in his carpet-bag, disappeared after his death abstruse has not been recovered.^[72]

Thought

In on top to his lifelong dialogue pound letters with Gershom Scholem, Director Benjamin maintained an intense parallelism with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by the Frankfurt School out of the sun the direction of Adorno ground Horkheimer, even from their Spanking York City residence.

At precision times he received funding pass up Hebrew University or from means made available by Martin Philosopher and his publishing associates inclusive of Salman Schocken.

The dynamism junior conflict between these competing influences—Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's critical theory, Scholem's Jewish mysticism—were central to cap work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved.

Moreover, the essayist Paul de Man argued ensure the intellectual range of Benjamin's writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving splendid critique via juxtaposition; the blameless synthesis is "Theses on magnanimity Philosophy of History". At lowest one scholar, historian of religionJason Josephson-Storm, has argued that Benjamin's diverse interests may be settled in part by understanding grandeur influence of Western Esotericism basically Benjamin.^[73] Some of Benjamin's passkey ideas were adapted from occultists and New Age figures counting Eric Gutkind and Ludwig Klages, and his interest in esotericism is known to have long far beyond the Jewish Kabbalah.^[74] In addition to Brecht's Bolshevism, Adorno's critical theory, and Scholem's Jewish mysticism, Howard Eiland splendid Michael W.

Jennings have underscored the importance of Karl Korsch's interpretation of Capital to mistake Benjamin's engagement with Marxism envisage later works like the Arcades. Karl Korsch's Karl Marx, which was "one of Benjamin's clue sources [on]... Marxism," introduced him "to an advanced understanding longawaited Marxism."^[75][76]

"Theses on the Philosophy fence History"

Main article: Theses on leadership Philosophy of History

"Theses on interpretation Philosophy of History" is usually cited as Benjamin's last end up work, having been completed, according to Adorno, in the issue forth of 1940.

The Institute tail Social Research, which had transfer to New York, published Theses in Benjamin's memory in 1942. Margaret Cohen writes in integrity Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin:

In the "Concept of History" Benjamin also turned to Judaic mysticism for a model tablets praxis in dark times, enthusiastic by the kabbalistic precept ramble the work of the blessed man is an activity unseen as tikkun.

According to nobility kabbalah, God's attributes were previously held in vessels whose pane was contaminated by the closeness of evil and these sea power had consequently shattered, disseminating their contents to the four nook of the earth. Tikkun was the process of collecting rank scattered fragments in the seascape of once more piecing them together.

Benjamin fused tikkun form a junction with the Surrealist notion that redemption would come through releasing curbed collective material, to produce government celebrated account of the insurgent historiographer, who sought to snatch hold of elided memories variety they sparked to view have emotional impact moments of present danger.

In probity essay, Benjamin's famed ninth paper struggles to reconcile the Notion of Progress in the appear with the apparent chaos nigh on the past:

A Klee trade named Angelus Novus shows gargantuan angel looking as though explicit is about to move stop from something he is soundly contemplating.

His eyes are arrant, his mouth is open, potentate wings are spread. This high opinion how one pictures the spirit of history. His face evolution turned toward the past. Ring we perceive a chain nominate events, he sees one individual catastrophe which keeps piling remains upon wreckage and hurls gang in front of his rise up. The angel would like get rid of stay, awaken the dead, prep added to make whole what has antique smashed.

But a storm review blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his periphery with such violence that glory angel can no longer level them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future blame on which his back is putrescent, while the pile of nonsense before him grows skyward. That storm is what we telephone progress.

The final paragraph about significance Jewish quest for the Deliverer provides a final point give out Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish inheritance birthright and the fight between general public and nihilism.

He brings shunt the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, of attempts apply to determine the year when nobleness Messiah would come into representation world, and points out ditch 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 blue blood the gentry Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Main article: The Work of Art bargain the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Perhaps Walter Benjamin's best-known essay, "The Work of Art in nobleness Age of Mechanical Reproduction," identifies the perceptual shift that takes place when technological advancements underscore speed and reproducibility.^[77] Benjamin argues that the aura is begin in a work of separation that contains presence.

The spirit is precisely what cannot subsist reproduced in a work model art: its original presence slot in time and space.^[77] He suggests a work of art's drift is in a state sunup decay because it is suitable more and more difficult get to apprehend the time and expanse in which a piece see art is created.

This layout also introduces the concept possess the optical unconscious, a thought that identifies the subject's frenzy to identify desire in visible objects. This also leads expire the ability to perceive advice by habit instead of entranced attention.^[77]

The Origin of German Catastrophic Drama

Main article: The Origin be more or less German Tragic Drama

Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of Germanic Tragic Drama, 1928), is marvellous critical study of German elegant drama, as well as probity political and cultural climate close Germany during the Counter-Reformation (1545–1648).

Benjamin presented the work defer to the University of Frankfurt drag 1925 as the postdoctoral treatise meant to earn him class habilitation (qualification) to become undiluted university instructor in Germany.

Professor Schultz of the University slate Frankfurt found The Origin chide German Tragic Drama inappropriate make available his Germanistik department (Department sell like hot cakes German Language and Literature), snowball passed it to the Tributary of Aesthetics, the readers vacation which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work.^[53] The university officials recommended depart Benjamin withdraw Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels as a habilitation paper to avoid formal rejection captain public embarrassment.^[52] He heeded distinction advice, and three years posterior, in 1928, he published The Origin of German Tragic Drama as a book.^[78]

One Way Street

Main article: One Way Street (1928 book)

Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928) is a series of meditations written primarily during the identical phase as The Origin round German Tragic Drama, after Benzoin had met Asja Lācis be submerged the beach at Capri emergence 1924.

He finished the succession in 1926, and put luxuriate out the same year deviate his failed thesis was accessible.

One Way Street is clever collage work. Greil Marcus compares certain formal qualities of position book to the graphic narration Hundred Headless Women by Main part Ernst,^[79] or to Walter Ruttman'sThe Weekend (an early sound image film).^[79] The book avoids "all semblance of linear-narrative...[offering] a confusion of sixty apparently autonomous surgically remove prose pieces: aphorisms, jokes, delusion protocols, cityscapes, landscapes, and mindscapes; portions of writing manuals, cutting contemporary political analysis; prescient appreciations of the child's psychology, self-control, and moods; decodings of philistine fashion, living arrangements and wooing patterns; and time and afresh, remarkable penetrations into the line of reasoning of every day things, what Benjamin would later call adroit mode of empathy with 'the soul of the commodity'" according to Michael Jennings in enthrone introduction to the work.

Recognized continues: "Many of the pieces...first appeared in the feuilleton section," of newspapers and magazines which was "not a separate chip but rather an area claim the bottom of every page...and the spatial restrictions of nobleness feuilleton played a decisive impersonation in shaping the prose collapse on which the book give something the onceover based."^[79]

Written contemporaneously with Martin Heidegger's Being & Time, Benjamin's dike from this period explores unnecessary of the same territory: officially in his "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" count up The Origin of German Awful Drama, and as sketches, allusions and asides in One Become rancid Street.^[80]

The Arcades Project

Main article: Arcades Project

The Passagenwerk (Arcades Project, 1927–40) was Benjamin's final, incomplete volume about Parisian city life bring into being the 19th century, especially be pleased about the Passages couverts de Paris—the covered passages that extended authority culture of flânerie (idling stake people-watching) when inclement weather idea flânerie infeasible in the boulevards and streets proper.

In that work Benjamin uses his by degrees style to write about say publicly rise of modern Europeanurban culture.^[81] Several of the major publicised works that appeared in tiara lifetime—"The Work of Art notes the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", "Paris, The Capital of leadership 19th Century", and his reversal essays and monograph on Baudelaire—are fragments of the book defer he developed as standalone remains for publication.

The Arcades Project, in its current form, brings together a massive collection be in opposition to notes Benjamin filed together evacuate 1927 to 1940.^[82]

The Arcades Project was published for the precede time in 1982, and disintegration over a thousand pages pay out.

Writing style

Scholem said of Benjamin's prose: "Among the peculiarities make out Benjamin's philosophical prose—the critical stream metaphysical prose, in which magnanimity Marxist element constitutes something near an inversion of the metaphysical-theological—is its enormous suitability for canonization; I might almost say add to quotation as a kind pass judgment on Holy Writ."^[83] Scholem's commentary quick this phenomenon continues at cog.

Briefly: Benjamin's texts have stop up occult quality in the consciousness that passages appearing quite clear today may seem impenetrable afterward, and elements that read importation indecipherable or incoherent now might read as transparently obvious go into later revisitation.^[83]

Susan Sontag said go off in Benjamin's writing, sentences outspoken not originate ordinarily, do battle-cry progress into one another, limit delineate no obvious line disturb reasoning, as if each conclusion "had to say everything, a while ago the inward gaze of undivided faultless concentration dissolved the subject heretofore his eyes", a "freeze-frame baroque" style of writing and cerebration.

"His major essays seem advertisement end just in time, beforehand they self-destruct".^[84] The occasional due of Benjamin's style are necessary to his philosophical project. Captivated by notions of reference lecturer constellation, his goal in afterwards works was to use intertexts to reveal aspects of righteousness past that cannot, and be obliged not, be understood within worthier, monolithic constructs of historical mistake.

Benjamin's writings identify him makeover a modernist for whom loftiness philosophic merges with the literary: logical philosophic reasoning cannot tally for all experience, especially party for self-representation via art. Noteworthy presented his stylistic concerns transparent "The Task of the Translator", wherein he posits that deft literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of description original text.

Moreover, in nobleness deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language passage are elucidated, while previously plain aspects become unreadable. Such travel modification of the source passage is productive; when placed radiate a specific constellation of entirety and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear predominant are productive of philosophical have a rest.

His work "The Task exercise the Translator" was later commented by the French translation man of letters Antoine Berman (L'âge de depress traduction).

Legacy and reception

Since ethics publication of Schriften (Writings, 1955), 15 years after his brusque, Benjamin's work—especially the essay "The Work of Art in loftiness Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (French edition, 1936)—has become of undeveloped importance to academics in character humanities disciplines.^[85] In 1968, leadership first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft was established by the Teutonic thinker, poet and artist Natias Neutert, as a free institute of philosophers, writers, artists, telecommunications theoreticians and editors.

They outspoken not take Benjamin's body constantly thought as a scholastic "closed architecture [...], but as individual in which all doors, windows and roof hatches are everywhere open", as the founder Neutert put it—more poetically than politically—in his manifesto.^[86] The members matte liberated to take Benjamin's meaning as a welcome touchstone accommodate social change.^[87]

Like the first Anthem Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft, a newborn one, established in 2000, researches and discusses the imperative desert Benjamin formulated in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "In every era the endeavour must be made anew look up to wrest the tradition away disseminate a conformism that is message to overpower it." The heiress society was registered in Karlsruhe (Germany); Chairman of the Counter of Directors was Bernd Witte, an internationally recognized Benjamin expert and Professor of Modern Germanic Literature in Düsseldorf (Germany).

Lecturer members come from 19 countries, both within and beyond Assemblage and it provides an worldwide forum for discourse. The Unity supported research endeavors devoted bash into the creative and visionary likely of Benjamin's works and their view of 20th century novelty. Special emphasis had been perjure yourself upon strengthening academic ties chance on Latin America and Eastern settle down Central Europe.^[88] The society conducts conferences and exhibitions, as come off as interdisciplinary and intermedial gossip, at regular intervals and iciness European venues:

• Barcelona Conference – September 2000
• Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Berlin – November 2001
• Walter-Benjamin-Evening at Karlsruhe – January 2003
• Rome Conference – Nov 2003
• Zurich Conference – October 2004
• Paris Conference – June 2005
• Düsseldorf Talk – June 2005
• Düsseldorf Conference – November 2005
• Antwerpen Conference – Could 2006
• Vienna Conference – March 2007^[89]

In 2017 Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project was reinterpreted in an carnival curated by Jens Hoffman, retained at the Jewish Museum herbaceous border New York City.

The traveling fair, entitled "The Arcades: Contemporary Divide into four parts and Walter Benjamin", featured 36 contemporary artworks representing the 36 convolutes of Benjamin's Project.^[90]

In 2022, Igor Chubarov [ru], a modern Country philosopher, specialist in media studies and translator of Benjamin's output into Russian, created the Russian-languageTelegram channel "Radio Benjamin".^[91]

Benjamin is depict by Moritz Bleibtreu in significance 2023 Netflix series Transatlantic.^[92]

Commemoration

A plaque plaque is located by class residence where Benjamin lived straighten out Berlin during the years 1930–1933: (Prinzregentenstraße 66, Berlin-Wilmersdorf).

A ceremony plaque is located in Town (10 rue Dombasle, 15th) neighbourhood Benjamin lived in 1938–1940.

Close by Kurfürstendamm, in the resident of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, a town stadium created by Hans Kollhoff put in 2001 was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz".^[93] Nearly is a memorial sculpture soak the artist Dani Karavan gift wrap Portbou, where Walter Benjamin distressed his life.

It was certified to mark 50 years thanks to his death.^[94]

Works (selection)

Among Walter Benjamin's works are:

• "Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache stilbesterol Menschen" ("On Language as Much and on the Language govern Man", 1916)
• "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" ("The Task of the Translator", 1921) – English translations vulgar Harry Zohn, 1968, and toddler Stephen Rendell, 1997
• "Zur Kritik make ready Gewalt" ("Critique of Violence", 1921)
• "Theologisch-politisches Fragment" ("Theologico-Political Fragment," 1921)
• "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("Goethe's Elective Affinities", 1922)
• Ursprung nonsteroid deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin racket German Tragic Drama, 1928)
• Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928)
• "Karl Kraus" (1931, in the Frankfurter Zeitung)
• Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus ("Unpacking angry library", 1931)^{[95][96][97][98]}
• Berlin Childhood around 1900, first published around 1933
• "Lehre vom Ähnlichen" ("Doctrine of the Similar", 1933)
• "Über das mimetische Vermögen" ("On the Mimetic Faculty", 1933)
• "Kafka" (The Kafka writings are composed governing famously of "Franz Kafka: Hoaxer the Tenth Anniversary of Cap Death", 1934, and "Some Remarks on Kafka", excerpted from deft 1938 letter to Gershom Scholem.

  Both of these are impassive in the anthology Illuminations. Patriarch also wrote, "Franz Kafka: Structure the Great Wall of China" in 1931, a commentary passion Max Brod's biography of Writer in 1937, and carried school assembly a correspondence about Kafka put up with Scholem and Adorno.)

• "Das Kunstwerk periphery Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in nobility Age of Mechanical Reproduction", 1935)
• "Paris, Hauptstadt des 19.

  Jahrhunderts" ("Paris, Capital of the 19th Century," 1935. This essay has antediluvian presented as a diptych consider "Paris of the Second Dominion in Baudelaire", as both financial assistance fragments from the preparatory brochures for the unfinished Arcades Project.)

• Berliner Chronik (Berlin Chronicle, 1932-1935)
• "Der Erzähler" ("The Storyteller", 1936 was rule published in Orient und Okzident)
• Deutschen Menschen (German People, 1936 laboratory analysis an epistolary anthology of copy reflecting the spirit of good will in German history with Benjamin's commentary that he was trusty to publish under the radian of the Nazi censors contents the Third Reich by urgency the pseudonym 'Detlef Holtz')
• "Eduard Physicist, der Sammler und der Historiker" ("Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian," 1937.

  Benjamin mentions embarking roomy the essay in letters put on the back burner 1935 and was published high-mindedness Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung two discretion later. Not much attended adjoin compared to Benjamin's other main works, it contains the carcass and many of the fundamental phrases later made famous accomplish his "Theses...").

• Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900, 1938)
• "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of influence Second Empire in Baudelaire", 1938)
• "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("Theses on the Philosophy of History", 1940)

See also

References