Walter Benjamin

Benjamin at the Abbey of Pontigny, 1938. Photo by Gisèle Freund.
Born	July 15, 1892(1892-07-15) Berlin, German Empire
Died	September 26, 1940(1940-09-26) (aged 48) Portbou, Catalonia, Spain

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism, historical materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and is associated with the Frankfurt School.

Life and work

This section is sourced from Marianne Franklin's article on Walter Benjamin (2003), pp 14-16.

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was born in Berlin, Germany, into a ‘wealthy run-of-the-mill assimilated Jewish family’. He was raised in a welloff quarter of the city and came of age during the Weimar Republic years before eventually settling in Paris in the 1930s. The historical record is patchy but apparently he earned his living, supported a wife and family until his divorce in 1930 and a passion for book collecting, from a combination of journal and newspaper publications, a stipend from the Frankfurt School, and by other ‘private means’, most likely his father, who was an art dealer and antiquarian.

The longevity and extent of Walter Benjamin’s posthumous fame and influence is in inverse proportion to the relative brevity of his life, and the even shorter time-span of his academic and publishing output. His publishing career spanned but a decade. His early academic record was chequered, to say the least, in that a mixture of ‘bungling and bad luck’ dogged the reception of his work effectively preventing him from establishing a university career. His two main pieces of scholarly research were published in 1920 and 1928, both of which were famously misunderstood at the time. It was only fifteen years after his death, with the publication of his collected work through the joint effort of Theodor Adorno and others, that his influence began to spread.

Perhaps the best known biographical detail of Benjamin’s life is how it ended, with suicide at the age of 48 on the Franco-Spanish border in September of 1940. He was uneasily awaiting a visa that would allow him to emigrate to the United States of America, after fleeing to France from Nazi persecution. In Arendt’s account, ‘the immediate occasion for Benjamin’s suicide was an uncommon stroke of bad luck’. Apparently, he mistakenly believed that he would not be able to obtain the necessary papers after being stopped at the Spanish border. Expecting to be sent back to Nazi Germany, he chose to kill himself instead. The historical and intellectural resonances of this personal choice have not gone unacknowledged by later commentators.

A crucial aspect to Walter Benjamin’s intellectual legacy is his role as co-founder of ‘Critical Theory’, the body of Marxist and Freudian influenced theory and research based at the University of Frankfurt. His close – albeit stormy – intellectual relationship with Adorno and Horkheimer, the doyens of the Frankfurt School, is an important theme in the literature. Benjamin, who ‘was no-one’s disciple’, was ‘probably the most peculiar Marxist ever produced by this movement, which God knows had its full share of oddities’; was involved in the European Communist movement – he visited the Soviet Union – and Zionist activism at the same time; dreamt of publishing a work made up entirely of quotations in a pre-postmodern age; contributed to aesthetic and architectural theory and philosophy of history; was an accomplished translator; wrote (famously) about Goethe, Proust, Baudelaire and Kafka, book collecting, wandering about the city, and technological change. This eclecticism is reflected in the vast quantity of secondary literature on his life and work. The main thing to remember for the interested reader is that caveats and arguments – about ideological affiliation, methodology, political applicability – abound when it comes to this thinker.

Literature

Benjamin's collected writings

In German

• Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1950. With Afterword by Theodor W. Adorno and editorial postscript by Rolf Tiedemann.
• Versuche über Brecht, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966.
• Gesammelte Schriften, Bd I-VII, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974-1991. [1]
  • Band I: Abhandlungen, 3 Teilbände, 1974, 1276 pp.
  • Band II: Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge, 3 Teilbände, 1977, 1526 pp.
  • Band III: Kritiken und Rezensionen, 1991, 727 pp.
  • Band IV: Kleine Prosa. Baudelaire-Übertragungen, 2 Teilbände, 1972, 1108 pp.
  • Band V: Das Passagen-Werk, 2 Teilbände, 1982, 1354 pp.
  • Band VI: Fragmente vermischten Inhalts. Autobiographische Schriften, 1985, 840 pp.
  • Band VII: Nachträge, 2 Teilbände, 1991, 1024 pp.
• Über den Begriff der Geschichte, ed. Gerard Raulet, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010.

In Spanish

• Iluminaciones II: Baudelaire: un poeta en el esplendor del capitalismo, Madrid: Taurus, trans. Jesús Aguirre, 1972.
• Infancia en Berlín hacia 1900, trans. Klaus Wagner, Madrid: Alfaguara, 1982, 144 pp.
• Discursos Interrumpidos I. Filosofia del arte y de la historia, Buenos Aires: Taurus, 1989.

In Serbo-Croatian

• Eseji, trans. Milan Tabaković, Belgrade: Nolit, 1974, 324 pp.

In English

• One-Way Street and Other Writings, London: NLB, 1979.
• Understanding Brecht, London/New York: Verso, 1998.
• Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, Belknap Press, 1996.
• The Arcades Project, The Belknap Press, 1999.
• Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, New York: Schocken Books, trans. Harry Zohn, 2007.
• Early Writings, 1910-1917, Cambridge/MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

In Portuguese

• Obras escolhidas, vol. 1: Magia e técnica, arte e política. Ensaios sobre literatura e historia da cultura, trans. Sergi Paulo Rouanet, São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1985; 3rd Ed., 1987, 253 pp.
• Obras escolhidas, vol. 2: Rua de mâo unica, trans. Rubens Rodrigues Torres Filho and José Carlos Martins Barbosa, São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1987.

In Slovak

• Iluminácie, Bratislava: Kalligram, trans. Adam Bžoch and Jana Truhlářová, 1999.

Articles by Benjamin (selection)

• "L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction méchanisée", 1936. (French)
  • "Произведение искусства в эпоху его технической воспроизводимости. Избранные эссе", 1996. (Russian)
  • The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press, 2008.
• Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht, Lukács: Aesthetics and Politics, London: Verso, 1980.
• "Moscow Diary", October, No 35 (Winter 1985), MIT Press.

Private correspondence

• Briefe I, 1910-1928, edited and annotated by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966/1978, 885 pp. (German)
• The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940, University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Books on Benjamin

• Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute, New York: The Free Press, 1977. Republished, 2002. London: Harvester Press, 1978. Paperback edition, 1979.
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Origen de la dialéctica negativa, Mexico: Siglo XXI editores, trans. Nora Rabotnikof, 1981. (Spanish)
• Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin, or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism, London: NLB, 1981.
• Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, MIT Press, 1989. Paperback edition, 1991.
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Dialektik des Sehens - Walter Benjamin und das Passagen-Werk, Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, trans. Joachim Schulte, 1993; paperback 2000. (German) [2]
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Dialéctica de la mirada: Walter Benjamin y la dialéctica de los pasajes, Madrid: Visor, 1995. (Spanish)
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Dialética do olhar: Walter Benjamin e o projeto das passagens, Belo Horizonte: Editora da UFMG, trans. Ana Luiza Andrade, 2002. (Portuguese)
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Η διαλεκτική της όρασης: Ο Βάλτερ Μπένγιαμιν και το Σχέδιο Eργασίας περί Στοών, Crete University Press, trans. Αθανασάκης Μανόλης, 2009. (Greek) [3]
  • Susan Buck-Morss, Görmenin Diyalektiği: Walter Benjamin ve Pasajlar Projesi, Istanbul: Metis, trans. Ferit Burak Aydar, 2010. (Turkish) [4]
• Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, University of California Press, 1994.
• Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, University of California Press, 1995.
• Sigrid Weigel, Body- and Image- Space: Re-reading Walter Benjamin, Routledge, 1996, 224 pp.
• Rainer Rochlitz, The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin, Guilford Press, 1996.
• Kia Lindroos, Now-Time. Image-Space. Temporalization of Politics in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy of History and Art, Jyvaskyla: Kampus Kirja, 1998.
• Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations, Polity Press, 2002.
• Eric Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, Columbia University Press, 2003.
• Tim Beasley-Murray, Mikhail Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin: Experience and Form, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
• Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin, Reaktion Books, 2008.
• Andrew Benjamin, Charles Rice (eds.), Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity, Melbourne: re.press, 2009.
• Erdmut Wizisla, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: The Story of a Friendship, Yale University Press, 2009.
• César Rendueles, Ana Useros, Atlas Constelaciones, Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2010. Catalogue. (Spanish)
• Elizabeth Stewart, Catastrophe and Survival: Walter Benjamin and Psychoanalysis, Continuum, 2010.
• Momme Brodersen, Klassenbild mit Walter Benjamin: Eine Spurensuche, Munich: Siedler, 2012, 240 pp. (German)
• Tobias Robert Klein (ed.), Klang und Musik bei Walter Benjamin, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2013, 224 pp. (in German) [5]
• Sigrid Weigel, Walter Benjamin: Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy Stanford: Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2013, 320 pp. [6]
• Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, Harvard University Press, 2014.

Journal issues on Benjamin

• New German Critique No 17 (Spring 1979): "Walter Benjamin".
• Critical Inquiry 25-2 (Winter 1999): "Angelus Novus: Perspectives on Walter Benjamin".
• New German Critique No 83 (Summer-Spring 2001): "Walter Benjamin".
• Boundary 2 (Spring 2003): "Benjamin Now: Critical Encounters With the Arcades Project".

Articles on Benjamin

• Esther Leslie, "Walter Benjamin, Politics, Aesthetics, Rebelart, 2009.
• Peter Osborne, Matthew Charles, "Walter Benjamin", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Morgan Meis, "Jerk Reaction", The Smart Set, 13 January 2014.

See also

• Asja Lacis
• Walter Benjamin Archives

External links

• The Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate
• Benjamin in Bibliotheca Augustana
• "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" at Wikipedia
• Benjamin at Wikipedia