View source for Walter Benjamin

{{Short description|German cultural critic, philosopher and social critic (1892–1940)}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| name             = Walter Benjamin
| region           = [[Western philosophy]]
| era              = [[20th-century philosophy]]
| image            = Walter_Benjamin_vers_1928.jpg
| caption          = Benjamin in 1928
| birth_name       = Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin
| birth_date       = {{birth date|1892|07|15|df=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Berlin]], [[German Empire]]
| death_date       = {{death date and age|1940|09|26|1892|07|15|df=y}}
| death_place      = [[Portbou]], [[Catalonia]], [[Francoist Spain]]
| death_cause      = [[Suicide]] by [[morphine overdose]]
| school_tradition = [[Continental philosophy]]<br />[[Western Marxism]]<br />[[Marxist hermeneutics]]<ref>''Erasmus: Speculum Scientarium'', '''25''', p. 162: "the different versions of Marxist hermeneutics by the examples of Walter Benjamin's ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama|Origins of the German Tragedy]]'' {{sic}}, ... and also by Ernst Bloch's ''[[The Principle of Hope|Hope the Principle]]'' {{sic}}."</ref><br />[[College of Sociology]]
| education=[[University of Freiburg]]<br />[[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]]<br />[[University of Bern]] {{small|([[PhD]], 1919)}}<br />[[University of Frankfurt am Main]] ({{small|[[Habilitation candidate|Habil. cand.]])}}
| institutions     = University of Frankfurt am Main<ref name="SEP"/>
| main_interests   = [[Literary theory]], [[aesthetics]], [[philosophy of technology]], [[epistemology]], [[philosophy of language]], [[philosophy of history]]
| notable_ideas    = [[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction|Auratic perception]],<ref>Walter Benjamin, "L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée", 1936: "The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura." [''Die Einzigkeit des Kunstwerks ist identisch mit seinem Eingebettetsein in den Zusammenhang der Tradition. Diese Tradition selber ist freilich etwas durchaus Lebendiges, etwas außerordentlich Wandelbares. Eine antike Venusstatue z. B. stand in einem anderen Traditionszusammenhange bei den Griechen, die sie zum Gegenstand des Kultus machten, als bei den mittelalterlichen Klerikern, die einen unheilvollen Abgott in ihr erblickten. Was aber beiden in gleicher Weise entgegentrat, war ihre Einzigkeit, mit einem anderen Wort: ihre Aura''.]</ref> [[State of exception]],<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3534874.html |author=Giorgio Agamben.
|title=State of Exception. |publisher=University of Chicago, 2005}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|author=Walter Benjamin|title=[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama]]|publisher=Berlin: Rohwohlt, 1928.}}</ref> [[aestheticization of politics]], [[dialectical]] image,<ref name="SEP">[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/ "Walter Benjamin"] at the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]</ref> the ''[[flâneur]]''
}}

'''Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|ɛ|n|j|ə|m|ɪ|n}} {{respell|BEN|yə|min}}; {{IPA|de|ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn|lang|De-Walter Benjamin.ogg}};<ref>{{cite book| title=Duden Aussprachewörterbuch | edition=6 | year=2006 | publisher=Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG | location=Mannheim}}</ref> 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940)<ref name=Witte>{{cite book|last=Witte|first=Bernd|title=Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography (English translation)|url=https://archive.org/details/walterbenjaminin0000witt|url-access=registration|year=1991|publisher=Wayne State University Press|location=Detroit, MI|isbn=0-8143-2018-X|pages=[https://archive.org/details/walterbenjaminin0000witt/page/9 9]}}</ref> was a German-Jewish [[philosopher]], [[cultural critic]], [[media theorist]], and [[essayist]]. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of [[German idealism]], [[Jewish mysticism]], [[Western Marxism]], and [[neo-Kantianism|post-Kantianism]], he made contributions to the [[philosophy of history]], [[metaphysics]], [[historical materialism]], [[criticism]], [[aesthetics]] and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on the resurrection of the [[Kabbalah]] by virtue of his life-long epistolary relationship with [[Gershom Scholem]].<ref name=":15" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=Major trends in Jewish mysticism |date=1972 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0-8052-0005-8 |edition=6. print |location=New York}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940 |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |last3=Smith |first3=Gary |last4=Scholem |first4=Gershom |last5=Benjamin |first5=Walter |date=1989 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0-8052-4065-8 |edition= |location=New York}}</ref> 

Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought [[Gershom Scholem|Scholem]] wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher",<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=On Jews and Judaism in crisis: selected essays |date=1978 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0-8052-0588-6 |edition=1. paperback |series=Schocken paperbacks |location=New York |pages=177 |chapter="Walter Benjamin"}}</ref> while his younger colleagues Arendt<ref name=":9">{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Illuminations |last2=Zorn |first2=Harry |last3=Benjamin |first3=Walter |date=1999 |publisher=Pimlico |isbn=978-0-7126-6575-9 |editor-last=Arendt |editor-first=Hannah |location=London |pages=4, 14–15 |chapter="Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940"}}</ref> and Adorno<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal |last=Adorno |first=Theodor |title=A Portrait of Walter Benjamin |url=https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Adorno_Prisms.pdf |journal=Prism |pages=229}}</ref> contend that he was "not a philosopher".<ref name=":9" /><ref name=":10" /> Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction".<ref name=":8" /> Benjamin himself considered his research to be [[theological]],<ref name=":11">{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=371–373 |chapter="Letter to (publisher) Max Rychner, 7 March 1931"}}</ref> though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.<ref name=":9" /><ref name=":11" />

He was associated with the [[Frankfurt School]] and also maintained formative relationships with thinkers and cultural figures such as [[playwright]] [[Bertolt Brecht]] (friend), [[Martin Buber]] (an early impresario in his career), Nazi constitutionalist [[Carl Schmitt]] (a rival), and many others. He was related to German [[political theory|political theorist]] and philosopher [[Hannah Arendt]] 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]], whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=82, 168, 172, 359–60, 365, 372, 571}}</ref>

Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]" (1935), and "[[Theses on the Philosophy of History]]" (1940).  His major work as a critic included essays on [[Charles Baudelaire|Baudelaire]], [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]], [[Karl Kraus (writer)|Kraus]], [[Nikolai Leskov|Leskov]], [[Marcel Proust|Proust]], [[Robert Walser (writer)|Walser]], [[Trauerspiel]] and [[translation theory]]. He translated the ''Tableaux Parisiens'' section of Baudelaire's ''[[Les Fleurs du mal]]'' and parts of Proust's ''[[In Search of Lost Time|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 [[Nazi Germany|Third Reich]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom Gerhard |last3=Knott |first3=Marie Luise |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-92451-9 |location=Chicago (Ill.) |pages=4 |chapter=Second letter from Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem: Oct. 21st, 1940}}</ref> Having remained in Europe until it was too late, as [[Cynthia Ozick]] puts it, Benjamin took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew.<ref name=":15">{{Cite book |last=Ozick |first=Cynthia |title=Art & Ardor |publisher=Random House |year=1983 |pages=145–147 |chapter=The Magisterial Reach of Gershom Scholem}}</ref> "Impressed and shaken by his death, the Spanish authorities allowed Benjamin's companions to continue their travel" into Spain by which route they were able to escape the Third Reich.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |url=http://archive.org/details/arcadesproject1999benj |title=The arcades project |date=1999 |publisher=Cambridge, MA. : Belknap Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-674-04326-8 |pages=953 |chapter=The Story of Old Benjamin by Lisa Fittko}}</ref>

Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings |last2=Jephcott |first2=Edmund |date=2007 |publisher=Schocken |isbn=978-0-8052-0802-3 |editor-last=Demetz |editor-first=Peter |location=New York, NY |pages=vii-xlii |chapter=Introduction by Peter Demetz}}</ref> Some German readers and academics encountered Benjamin after his Complete Works began to be released by [[Suhrkamp Verlag]] in 1955, but global acclaim came to him when his works were translated into English and introduced to a reading public in the [[Anglosphere]] by Hannah Arendt in 1968.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://archive.org/details/IlluminationsEssaysAndReflections |title=Illuminations Essays And Reflections |date=1968 |publisher=Schocken |edition=1st |pages=1–56 |language=English |chapter=Introduction by Hannah Arendt}}</ref>

== Life ==
{{Frankfurt School}}

=== Early life and education ===
Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and [[Dora Benjamin|Dora]] (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated [[Ashkenazi Jews]] in [[Berlin]], then the capital of the [[German Empire]]. Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany,<ref name=":5" /> where he worked as an antiques trader and art dealer;  marrying Pauline Schönflies.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |date=1982 |title=Ahnen und Verwandten Walter Benjamins |url=https://www.academia.edu/44509105 |journal=Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts |volume=61 |pages=29–55}}</ref> He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks.<ref name=":5" /> 

Walter's uncle, [[William Stern (psychologist)|William Stern]], was a prominent German [[child psychology|child psychologist]] who developed the concept of the [[intelligence quotient]] (IQ).<ref name=":5" /> He also had a cousin, [[Günther Anders]],<ref name=":5" /> a German philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under [[Edmund Husserl]] and [[Martin Heidegger]]. Through his mother, Walter's great-uncle was the classical archaeologist [[Gustav Hirschfeld]].<ref name=":5" /><ref>Howard Eiland, ''Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life'', Harvard University Press (2014), p. 20</ref>

In 1901, eight-year-old Walter was enrolled at the Kaiser Friedrich School in [[Charlottenburg]]; 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,<ref>{{cite web |title=Hermann Lietz Boarding School Village Haubinda |url=https://www.internatsdorf.de/en/ |website=www.internatsdorf.de |language=de}}</ref> part of the [[German rural boarding school movement]] in the [[Thuringia]]n countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School.<ref name="Witte" />

In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the [[University of Freiburg]], but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]] to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to [[Zionism]], 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]]"{{mdash}}an attitude that recognized and promoted [[Judaism]] and [[Jewish ethics]]. 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |title=Gesammelte Schriften II |publisher=Suhrkamp |year=1955 |pages=839 |language=German}}</ref> This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong.<ref>Witte, Bernd. (1996) ''Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography''. New York: Verso. pp. 26–27</ref>

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]] although he had parted ways with the youth group before they had become properly acquainted.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship |publisher=Schocken |year=1988 |isbn=0-8052-0870-4 |location=New York |pages=3–5, 7, 13}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life |last1=Eiland |last2=Jennings |first1=Howard |first2=Michael W |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA and London |date=2014 |isbn=978-0-674-05186-7}} Chapter II: 'Metaphysics of Youth' (Berlin and Freiburg: 1912–1914).</ref> When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures of [[Heinrich Rickert]]; at that time he traveled to France and Italy.

Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak of [[World War I]] in August 1914 was rejected by the army.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Jay|first=Martin|date=1999|title=Walter Benjamin, Remembrance, and the First World War|journal=Review of Japanese Culture and Society|volume=11/12|pages=18–31|issn=0913-4700|jstor=42800179}}</ref> Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription,<ref name=":1" /><ref name=Eberg2018>{{Cite book|last=Eilenberger|first=Wolfram|title=Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy|date=2020|others=Shaun Whiteside|isbn=978-0-525-55966-5|publisher=Penguin Press |location=New York|pages=91–94|oclc=1127067361}}</ref> allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poet [[Charles Baudelaire]]. His conspicuous refuge in Switzerland on dubious medical grounds was a likely factor in his ongoing challenges in obtaining academic employment after the war.<ref name=Eberg2018/>

The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the [[University of Munich]], where he met [[Rainer Maria Rilke]]<ref name="Faber and Faber">{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=33}}</ref> 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 [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]]".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=81 |chapter=Letter to Scholem November 11th, 1916}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Walter Benjamin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten |trans-title=W. Benjamin with self-testimonies and photo documents |last=Witte |first=Bernd |publisher=Rowohlt |location=Reinbek bei Hamburg |date=1985 |page=28 |language=de}}</ref> In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century [[Romanticism|Romantic]] German poet [[Friedrich Hölderlin]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=14}}</ref>

In 1917 Benjamin transferred to the [[University of Bern]]; there he met [[Ernst Bloch]], and Dora Sophie Pollak<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=20}}</ref> (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his [[PhD]] ''[[summa cum laude]]'' with the dissertation ''Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik'' (''The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism'').<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael W. |last3=Eiland |first3=Howard |last4=Smith |first4=Gary |last5=Livingstone |first5=Rodney |date=2005 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-674-01588-3 |edition= |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=422 |chapter=Curriculum Vitae (1)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael W. |last3=Eiland |first3=Howard |last4=Smith |first4=Gary |last5=Livingstone |first5=Rodney |date=2005 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-674-01588-3 |edition= |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=116–200 |chapter=The Concept of Art Criticism in german Romanticism}}</ref>

For his [[postdoctoral]] thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by [[Martin Heidegger]] in the latter's own postdoctoral project (''Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning'').<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London}}</ref> Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin's plan was "to legitimize [his theory of language] with reference to a largely forgotten tradition [found 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".<ref name="Eberg2018" /> After Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=167–169}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Eilenberger |first=Wolfram |title=Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy |date=2020 |publisher=Penguin Press |isbn=978-0-525-55966-5 |location=New York |pages=92 |translator-last=Whiteside |translator-first=Shaun}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Eberg2018"/>

Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin and resided with his parents. In 1921 he published the essay "[[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.<ref>''Jewish philosophy and the crisis of modernity'' (SUNY 1997), ''Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish thinker'', Kenneth Hart Green, Leo Strauss, page 55</ref><ref name=":3">Scholem, Gershom. 1981. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn, page 201, page 79</ref><ref>''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–40'', New York 1989, page 155–58</ref>

=== 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|interwar-period]] in [[Weimar Republic|Weimar Germany]] and interpreted those events in his writing.

He was in the crowd at [[Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences|the conference]] where [[Kurt Gödel]] first described the [[Gödel's incompleteness theorems|incompleteness theorem]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edmonds |first=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |publisher=Princeton |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-691-16490-8 |pages=97–98}}</ref> He once took a class on the [[Maya civilization|Ancient Mayans]] from [[Rainer Maria Rilke]].<ref name="Faber and Faber"/> 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 [[Weimar culture|Berlin cabaret theater scene]] writer and director [[Bertolt Brecht]]. [[Martin Buber]] took an interest in Benjamin, but Benjamin declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too esoteric.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=79–81 |chapter=Letter to Martin Buber, July 1916}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bloch |first=Ernst |title=On Walter Benjamin: critical essays and recollections |date=1991 |publisher=MIT Pr |isbn=978-0-262-19268-2 |editor-last=Smith |editor-first=Gary |edition=1. paperback ed., 3. print |series=Studies in contemporary German social thought |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=338 |chapter="Recollections of Watler Benjamin"}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=91}}</ref> It was Bloch's commission that inspired Benjamin's work on [[Category of being|the theory of categories]], according to Scholem.<ref name=":3" /> 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: [[The Holocaust|mass extermination in the death camps]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=The Story of a Friendship |publisher=Schocken |year=1969 |pages=14–15}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Mandel |first=Jonah |date= |title=When a Nazi Toured the Holy Land |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-a-nazi-toured-the-holy-land-to-find-a-solution-for-the-jewish-problem/ |website=Times of Israel}}</ref> 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]].<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=Major trends in Jewish mysticism |date=1972 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0-8052-0005-8 |edition=6. print |location=New York}}</ref> These were created when the books flooded into [[Mandatory Palestine]] during the period leading up to, coinciding with, and immediately following the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=From Berlin to Jerusalem: memories of my youth |last2=Zohn |first2=Harry |last3=Idel |first3=Mosheh |last4=Scholem |first4=Gershom |date=2012 |publisher=Paul Dry Books |isbn=978-1-58988-073-3 |edition= |series=Autobiography Jewish studies |location=Philadelphia}}</ref><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom Gerhard |last3=Knott |first3=Marie Luise |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-92451-9 |location=Chicago (Ill.)}}</ref>

=== Career ===
In 1923, when the [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]] was founded, later to become home to the [[Frankfurt School]], Benjamin published ''Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens''. At this time he became acquainted with [[Theodor Adorno]] 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]], in the ''Neue Deutsche Beiträge'' magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("[[Goethe]]'s [[Elective Affinities]]"), about Goethe's third novel, ''[[Elective Affinities|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]]. 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.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Benjamin Handbook. Leben - Werk - Wirkung |trans-title=Benjamin handbook. Life - work - effect |last=Lindner |first=Burkhardt |publisher=Metzler |location=Stuttgart |date=2011 |pages=472–493 |language=de}}</ref>

Likewise, according to [[Hannah Arendt]], it was his essay on Goethe that ruined Benjamin's only chance of a university career.<ref name=":14" /> 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.<ref name=":14" /> 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 [[George-Kreis|(Stefan) George-Kreis]]--a cult of post-symbolist, romantic nationalist poets with a mystically conservative, medievalist bent.<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |title=Illuminations. Essays and Reflections |last=Arendt |first=Hannah |publisher=[[Schocken Books]] |location=New York |date=1969 |pages=8–9}}</ref> 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 [[Nazi Germany|the Nazi regime]]) this group's commitment to particular archaic styles anticipated the aesthetics of [[fascism]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Adorno |first1=Theodor Wiesengrund |title=Aesthetics and politics |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |last3=Bloch |first3=Ernst |last4=Brecht |first4=Bertolt |last5=Lukacs |first5=György |date=2007 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-84467-570-8 |series=Radical thinkers |location=London}}</ref>

Later that year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island of [[Capri]]; 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]], then residing in Moscow; he became her lover and she was a lasting intellectual influence on him.<ref>[[Mark Lilla]], "The Riddle of Walter Benjamin" in ''[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/05/25/the-riddle-of-walter-benjamin/ The New York Review of Books]'', May 25, 1995.</ref>

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.<ref name="BL">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."</ref> The work was a study in which he sought to "save" the category of [[allegory]]. It proved too unorthodox and abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of the humanities faculty, such as [[Hans Cornelius]].<ref name="Baroque">{{Cite book |title=The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 |last=Jay |first=Martin |publisher=University of California Press |date=1996 |pages=199–215 |isbn=0520917510}}</ref> [[Max Horkheimer]] 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 [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]] and is best remembered as the co-author of Benjamin's closest disciple [[Theodor W. Adorno|Theodor Adorno]]'s magnum opus, the ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment|Dialectic of the Enlightenment]]'' (a book which cribs heavily from Benjamin's unpublished, esoteric writings in many of its most important passages).<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last1=Steiner |first1=George |title=The Origin of German Tragic Drama |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |publisher=Verso |year=1928 |publication-date=1928 |pages=7–27 |chapter=George Steiner's Introduction to Walter Benjamin's 'Origin of German Tragic Drama'}}</ref><ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Müller-Doohm |first=Stefan |title=Adorno: a biography |date=2009 |publisher=Polity Press |isbn=978-0-7456-3109-7 |edition= |location=Cambridge, UK}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> That is to say: His committee informed him that he will not be accepted as an academic instructor in the German university system.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> 

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.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> [[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.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> Adorno's 1931 and 1932 seminars, delivered at Frankfurt University, devoted themselves to a close reading of the ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama|Origins of German Tragic Drama]]''. Adorno was still teaching this class on the ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama|Origins of German Tragic Drama]]'' during the winter semester that [[Adolf Hitler]] 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.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> [[Max Horkheimer|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."<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

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.<ref name="Baroque" /> Working with [[Franz Hessel]] he translated the first volumes of [[Marcel Proust]]'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<ref>Seits, Irina S. [https://actual-art.spbu.ru/en/publications/archive/vol-8/art-theory/10671.html Invisible Avant-Garde and Absent Revolution: Walter Benjamin's New Optics for Moscow Urban Space of the 1920s], in ''Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles, vol. 8.'' St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2018, pp. 575–582. ISSN 2312-2129.</ref> to meet Lācis and found her ill in a sanatorium.<ref>''Moscow Diary''</ref>

During his stay in Moscow, he was asked by the editorial board of the [[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] to write an article on Goethe for the first edition of the encyclopedia. Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, with reviewer [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]] (then the [[People's Commissariat for Education|People's Commissar of Education]]) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic",<ref>{{Cite book|title=On Literature and Art|last=Lunacharsky|first=Anatoly|author-link=Anatoly Lunacharsky|year=1929|chapter=On Walter Benjamin's Goethe article|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lunachar/works/benjamin.htm|publisher=Progress Publishers|publication-place=Moscow|translator-last=P.|translator-first=Anton}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://knigogid.com/books/dokumentalnye-knigi/biografii-i-memuary/page-48-36991-valter-benyamin-moskovskii-dnevnik.html |title=Вальтер Беньямин - Московский дневник » Страница 48 » Книги читать онлайн бесплатно без регистрации |publisher=Knigogid.com |date= |access-date=2022-03-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://vk.com/doc5787984_441044913?hash=eef7a1a58fb5526d27&dl=0d92c414ce65478520 |title=(1996, Вальтер Беньямин) Произведение искусства в эпоху его технической воспроизводимости.pdf |publisher=Vk.com |date= |access-date=2022-03-16}}</ref>

In 1927, he began ''[[The Arcades Project|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]], 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]].

=== Exile and death ===
[[File:BenjaminBnF.jpg|alt= Walter Benjamin's membership card for the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1940).|thumb|257x257px|Walter Benjamin's membership card for the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]] (1940)]]
In 1932, during the turmoil preceding [[Adolf Hitler]]'s assumption of the office of [[Chancellor of Germany]], Benjamin left Germany temporarily for the Spanish island of [[Ibiza]] where he stayed for some months; he then moved to [[Nice]], where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the sociopolitical and cultural significance of the [[Reichstag fire]] (27 February 1933) as the ''de facto'' Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequent [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|persecution of the Jews]], he permanently left Berlin and Germany  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]], 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]], novelist [[Hermann Hesse]], and composer [[Kurt Weill]]. In 1936, a first version of "[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]" (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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=various |url=http://archive.org/details/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung5.Jg |title=Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 5. Jg |pages=40–68 |language=german}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Benjamin|first=Walter|date=1968|chapter=The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction|title=Illuminations: Essays and Reflections|pages=217–253}}</ref> [[File:Benjamin's apartment in Paris (fot. Mateusz Palka).jpg|thumb|342x342px|Walter Benjamin's Paris apartment at 10 {{Interlanguage link|Rue Dombasle (Paris)|lt=rue Dombasle|fr|Rue Dombasle (Paris)}} (1938–1940)]] In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), met [[Georges Bataille]] (to whom he later entrusted the ''Arcades Project'' manuscript), and joined the [[College of Sociology]] (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.")<ref>{{Cite book | last = Nguyen | first = Duy Lap | title = Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy.| location = London | publisher = Bloomsbury academic | date = 2022 |pages = 216–223}}</ref> In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=216}}</ref> 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]], in central [[Burgundy (French region)|Burgundy]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom Gerhard |last3=Knott |first3=Marie Luise |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-92451-9 |location=Chicago (Ill.) |pages=5–9 |chapter=Letter 4 (Arendt to Scholem, 17 Oct. 1941}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Eiland |first1=Howard |title=Walter Benjamin: a critical life |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael William |date=2014 |publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-05186-7 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |pages=654–755 |chapter='The Angel of History': Paris, Nevers, Port Bou}}</ref>

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]] was pushing back the [[French Army]], on 13 June Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town of [[Lourdes]], 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]], Benjamin planned to travel to the U.S. from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach via [[Francoist Spain]], then ostensibly a neutral country.

[[File:Grab Walter Benjamin.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Walter Benjamin's grave in Portbou. The epitaph in German, repeated in Catalan, quotes from Section 7 of "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"]]The historical record indicates that he safely crossed the French–Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of [[Portbou]], in [[Catalonia]] 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]] tablets that night, while staying at the ''Hotel de Francia''; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the date of death.<ref name="Witte"/><ref>{{Cite book|last=Arendt|editor=Walter Benjamin|first=Hannah|date=1968|chapter=Introduction|title=Illuminations: Essays and Reflections|pages=23–24}}</ref><ref>Jay, Martin ''The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950''.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Leslie|first=Esther|title=Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FXUN34lH-jgC&pg=PA215|access-date=August 28, 2009|series=Modern European Thinkers|year=2000|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=978-0-7453-1568-3|page=215|chapter=Benjamin's Finale}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Lester|first=David|title=Suicide and the Holocaust|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R1nkj-xSzYgC&pg=PA74|access-date=August 28, 2009|year=2005|publisher=Nova Publishers|isbn=978-1-59454-427-9|page=74|chapter=Suicide to Escape Capture: Cases}}</ref> Benjamin's colleague [[Arthur Koestler]], also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but survived.<ref>"Afraid of being caught by the Gestapo while fleeing France, [Koestler] borrowed suicide pills from Walter Benjamin. He took them several weeks later when it seemed he would be unable to get out of Lisbon, but didn't die." [[Anne Applebaum]], "[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/26/did-the-death-of-communis_n_435939.html Did The Death Of Communism Take Koestler And Other Literary Figures With It?]" Huffington Post, 28 March 2010, URL retrieved 15 March 2012.</ref> Benjamin's brother Georg was killed at the [[Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp]] 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]] on 30 September. [[Hannah Arendt|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.<ref>{{cite web |last1=van Straten |first1=Giorgio |title=Lost in migration |url=https://aeon.co/essays/what-happened-to-walter-benjamins-precious-black-suitcase |website=aeon.co |access-date=4 April 2019}}</ref>

== Thought ==
[[File:Klee, Angelus novus.png|thumb|right|293x293px|[[Paul Klee]]'s 1920 painting ''[[Angelus Novus]]'', which Benjamin bought in 1921 and compared to "the angel of history"]]
In addition to his lifelong dialogue in letters with [[Gershom Scholem]], Walter Benjamin maintained an intense correspondence with [[Theodor Adorno]] and [[Bertolt Brecht]], and was occasionally funded by the [[Frankfurt School]] 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]] and his publishing associates including [[Salman Schocken]].

The dynamism or conflict between these competing influences—Brecht's Marxism, Adorno's [[critical theory]], 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, [[religious studies|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]] on Benjamin.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Josephson |first=Jason Ānanda |title=The myth of disenchantment: magic, modernity, and the birth of the human sciences |date=2017 |publisher=The university of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-40322-9 |location=Chicago |pages=226–236}}</ref> Some of Benjamin's key ideas were adapted from occultists and [[New Age movement|New Age]] figures including [[Eric Gutkind]] and [[Ludwig Klages]], and his interest in esotericism is known to have extended far beyond the Jewish [[Kabbalah]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Josephson-Storm | first = Jason | title = The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | date = 2017 |pages = 226–36 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ | isbn = 978-0-226-40336-6 }}</ref> 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 (Marx)|Capital]]'' to understanding Benjamin's engagement with [[Marxism]] in later works like the ''[[Arcades Project|Arcades]]''. Karl Korsch's ''Karl Marx'', which was "one of Benjamin's main sources [on]... Marxism," introduced him "to an advanced understanding of Marxism."<ref>{{Cite book | last = Eiland | first = Howard | title = Walter Benjamin : A Critical Life.| location = Cambridge Mass | publisher = Belknap Press of Harvard University Press | date = 2016 |page = 465}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | last = See also Nguyen | first = Duy Lap | title = Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy.| location = London | publisher = Bloomsbury academic | date = 2022 |pages = 142–159}}</ref>

=== "Theses on the Philosophy of History" ===
{{main|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'':

{{blockquote|In the "Concept of History" Benjamin also turned to Jewish mysticism for a model of praxis in dark times, inspired by the kabbalistic precept that the work of the holy man is an activity known as [[Tikkun olam|tikkun]]. According to the kabbalah, God's attributes were once held in vessels whose glass was contaminated by the presence of evil and these vessels had consequently shattered, disseminating their contents to the four corners of the earth. Tikkun was the process of collecting the scattered fragments in the hopes of once more piecing them together. Benjamin fused tikkun with the Surrealist notion that liberation would come through releasing repressed collective material, to produce his celebrated account of the revolutionary historiographer, who sought to grab hold of elided memories as they sparked to view at moments of present danger.}}

In the essay, Benjamin's famed ninth thesis struggles to reconcile the [[Idea of Progress]] in the present with the apparent chaos of the past:

{{blockquote|A [[Paul Klee|Klee]] painting named ''[[Angelus Novus]]'' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.}}

The final paragraph about the Jewish quest for the [[Messiah]] 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" ===
{{main|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.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=https://bookoblivion.com/2019/05/13/walter-benjamin-aura/|title=How Time and Space Converge to Evoke Walter Benjamin's Aura|last=Manuel|first=Jessica S.|date=2019-05-13|website=Book Oblivion|language=en-US|access-date=2019-05-13}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name=":0" />

=== ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' ===
{{main|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]] (1545–1648). Benjamin presented the work to the University of Frankfurt in 1925 as the [[postdoctoral]] 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]], the readers of which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work.<ref name="Baroque" /> The university officials recommended that Benjamin withdraw ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' as a habilitation thesis to avoid formal rejection and public embarrassment.<ref name="BL"/> He heeded the advice, and three years later, in 1928, he published ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' as a book.<ref>''Introducing Walter Benjamin'', Howard Cargill, Alex Coles, Andrey Klimowski, 1998, p. 112</ref>

=== ''One Way Street'' ===
{{main|One Way Street (1928 book)}}

''[[One Way Street (1928 book)|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]] 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]] compares certain formal qualities of the book to the graphic novel ''Hundred Headless Women'' by [[Max Ernst]],<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |title=One-way street |date=2016 |others=E. F. N. Jephcott, Michael William Jennings, Greil Marcus |isbn=978-0-674-54590-8 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |pages=xii, xix,1, 2 |oclc=947118942}}</ref> or to [[Walter Ruttmann|Walter Ruttman's]] ''The Weekend'' (an early sound collage film)''.<ref name=":2" />'' The book avoids "all semblance of linear-narrative...[offering] a 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]] 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."<ref name=":2" />

Written contemporaneously with Martin Heidegger's ''[[Being and Time|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.''<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Andrew |title=Sparks Will Fly |last2=Schwebel |first2=Paula |publisher=SUNY Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-4384-5504-4 |location=Albany |pages=123–144 |oclc=928782460}}</ref>

=== ''The Arcades Project'' ===
{{Main|Arcades Project}}
The ''[[Arcades Project|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 [[flâneur|''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 culture|European]] [[urban culture]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the City|last=Caves|first=R. W.|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|page=40}}</ref> Several of the major published works that appeared in his lifetime—"[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]", "[[Paris, Capital of the 19th Century|Paris, The Capital of the 19th Century]]", and his [[The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire|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.<ref>Buck-Morss, Susan. ''The Dialectics of Seeing''. The MIT Press, 1991, p. 5.</ref>

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."<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=On Jews and Judaism in crisis : selected essays |date=2012 |publisher=Paul Dry Books |others=Werner J. Dannhauser |isbn=978-1-58988-074-0 |edition=1st |location=Philadelphia |pages=51–70 |chapter=Walter Benjamin and His Angel |oclc=709681212}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":4" />

[[Susan Sontag]] 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".<ref>Susan Sontag, ''[[Under the Sign of Saturn]]'' (1980), p. 129.</ref> 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 [[Intertextuality|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 [[Modernism|modernist]] 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 ==
[[File:Walter Benjamin. Passagen (Port-Bou).jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Memorial in Portbou<br />]]
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.<ref>Wengrofsky, Jeffrey , "[http://coilhouse.net/2011/07/on-the-occasion-of-walter-benjamin%e2%80%99s-121st-birthday/ On the Occasion of Walter Benjamin's 119th Birthday]". Coilhouse Magazine. Archived from the original on 07-2011. Retrieved 2020-05-20.</ref> In 1968, the first [[Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft]] was established by the [[Germany|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.<ref>Cf. ''Mit Walter Benjamin. Gründungsmanifest der Internationalen Walter-Benjamin-Gesellschaft.'' Copyleft Verlag, Hamburg, 1968, p. 6.</ref> The members felt liberated to take Benjamin's ideas as a welcome touchstone for social change.<ref>Hereto Helmut Salzinger: ''Swinging Benjamin. Verlag Michael Kellner'', Hamburg 1990. {{ISBN|3-927623-05-9}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://walterbenjamin.info/|title=International Walter Benjamin Society|website=walterbenjamin.info}}</ref>
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<ref>Cf. [http://walterbenjamin.info/ WalterBenjamin.info]</ref>

In 2017 Walter Benjamin's ''Arcades Project'' was reinterpreted in an exhibition curated by [[Jens Hoffmann|Jens Hoffman]], held at the [[Jewish Museum (Manhattan)|Jewish Museum]] 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-arcades-contemporary-art-and-walter-benjamin|title=The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin (March 17 - August 6, 2017)|website=The Jewish Museum. thejewishmuseum.org|access-date=July 29, 2017}}</ref>

In 2022, {{Interlanguage link|Igor Chubarov|ru|3=Игорь Михайлович Чубаров|lt=Igor Chubarov}}, a modern [[Russian culture|Russian]] philosopher, specialist in [[media studies]] and translator of Benjamin's works into Russian, created the [[Russian-language]] [[Telegram channel]] "Radio Benjamin".<ref>"Radio Benjamin", since 2022 (Telegram channel in Russian): [https://t.me/radio_benjamin ''We criticize a lot - we doubt everything: a channel about freedom in the conditions of its impossibility''.]</ref>

Benjamin is portrayed by [[Moritz Bleibtreu]] in the 2023 [[Netflix]] series [[Transatlantic (TV series)|Transatlantic]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g43522129/transatlantic-cast-vs-real-life-photos/ | title=How the Stars of Transatlantic Compare to Their Real-Life Counterparts | date=14 April 2023 }}</ref>

== Commemoration ==
[[File:Berliner Gedenktafel Walter Benjamin Prinzregentenstraße 66 Berlin-Wilmersdorf.jpg|thumb|Commemorative plaque for Walter Benjamin, Berlin-Wilmersdorf]]
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 arrondissement of Paris|15th]]) where Benjamin lived in 1938–1940.

Close by [[Kurfürstendamm]], in the district of [[Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf]], a town square created by [[Hans Kollhoff]] in 2001 was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz".<ref>[http://www.baunetz.de/meldungen/Meldungen_Eroeffnung_der_Leibniz-Kolonnaden_in_Berlin_8927.html ''Stadtplatz aus Stein: Eröffnung der Leibniz-Kolonnaden in Berlin.''] (in German). May&nbsp;14, 2001. ''[[BauNetz]]''. baunetz.de. Retrieved July&nbsp;29, 2017.</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://walterbenjaminportbou.cat/en/content/lobra|title=Walter Benjamin a Portbou|website=walterbenjaminportbou.cat}}</ref>
{{-}}

== 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 by [http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm Harry Zohn, 1968], and by [https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ttr/1997-v10-n2-ttr1487/037302ar/ Stephen Rendell, 1997]
* "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("[[Towards the Critique of Violence|Critique of Violence]]", 1921)
* "Theologisch-politisches Fragment" ("Theologico-Political Fragment," 1921)
* “Kapitalismus als Religion”(“[[Capitalism as Religion]]”,1921)
* “Welt und Zeit” (“World and Time”, c. 1921-1922)
* "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("[[Goethe]]'s [[Elective Affinities]]", 1922)
* ''Moskau Tageblatt'' (''Moscow Diaries,'' 1926-1927)
* ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' (''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama]]'', 1928)
* ''Einbahnstraße'' (''[[One Way Street (book)|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]]," Die Gesellschaft 7 vol. 2, (1930), 32-41.
* "Karl Kraus" (1931, in the ''[[Frankfurter Zeitung]]'')
* [https://www.textlog.de/benjamin/kleine-prosa/denkbilder/packe-bibliothek-aus ''Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus''] ("Unpacking my library", 1931)<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mV06rdTclagC | chapter=Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting|pages=59–68|translator=Harry Zohn|title=Illuminations: Essays and Reflections | isbn=978-0-547-54065-8 | last1=Benjamin | first1=Walter | date=23 October 1968 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Manguel, Alberto|author-link=Alberto Manguel|website=The Paris Review|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/01/art-unpacking-library/ |title=The Art of Unpacking a Library |date=February 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Cronon, William|author-link=William Cronon|date=November 2012|url=https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/november-2012/recollecting-my-library--and-my-self |title=Recollecting My Library ... And My Self &#124; Perspectives on History &#124; AHA }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Heidt, Sarah|url=https://kenyonreview.org/2006/08/unpacking-my-library/ |title=Unpacking my library: On book-moving and Benjamin « Kenyon Review Blog |date=24 August 2006 }}</ref>
* ''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]]", 1935)
* "Paris, Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts" ("[[Paris, Capital of the 19th Century]]," 1935. This essay has been presented as a diptych with "[[The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire|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 on the Philosophy of History|"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]]
* [[Hannah Arendt]]
* [[Theodor W. Adorno|Theodor Adorno]]
* [[Bertolt Brecht]]
* [[Leo Strauss]]
* [[Martin Buber]]
* [[Georges Bataille]]
* [[Frankfurt School|The Frankfurt School]]
* [[Rowohlt Verlag|Rohwohlt Verlag]]
* [[Carl Schmitt]]
* [[Martin Heidegger]]
* [[Heinrich Rickert]]
* [[Giorgio Agamben]]
* [[Gertrud Kolmar]]
* [[Michael Heller (poet)|Michael Heller]]
* [[List of people from Berlin]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
=== Primary literature ===
{{refbegin}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008021 ''The Arcades Project''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-00802-2}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022225 ''Berlin Childhood Around 1900''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-02222-X}}
* ''Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet In The Era Of High Capitalism''. {{ISBN|0-902308-94-7}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674006898 ''The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-15427-4}}
* ''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940''. {{ISBN|0-226-04237-5}}
* ''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem''. {{ISBN|0-674-17415-1}}
* ''Illuminations''. {{ISBN|0-8052-0241-2}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674587441 ''Moscow Diary''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-58744-8}}
* ''One Way Street and Other Writings''. {{ISBN|0-86091-836-X}}
* ''Reflections''. {{ISBN|0-8052-0802-X}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022218 ''On Hashish''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-02221-1}}
* ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama''. {{ISBN|0-86091-837-8}}
* ''Understanding Brecht''. {{ISBN|0-902308-99-8}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/results-list.php?collection=1502 ''Selected Writings''] in four volumes [[Harvard University Press]]:
** [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674013551 Volume 1, 1913–1926], {{ISBN|0-674-94585-9}}
** [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/results-list.php?collection=1503 Volume 2, 1927–1934], {{ISBN|0-674-94586-7}}
** [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019812 Volume 3, 1935–1938], {{ISBN|0-674-00896-0}}
** [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022294 Volume 4, 1938–1940], {{ISBN|0-674-01076-0}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022874 ''The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-02287-4}}
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674024458 ''The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media''], [[Harvard University Press]], {{ISBN|0-674-02445-1}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080723122407/http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/benjamin_w_the_archive.shtml ''Walter Benjamin's Archive: Images, Texts, Signs'']. Ed. Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, Erdmut Wizisla. {{ISBN|978-1-84467-196-0}}
* '' 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. {{ISBN|978-0-8047-4953-4}}
{{refend}}

=== Secondary literature ===
{{refbegin}}
* [[Theodor Adorno|Adorno]], Theodor. (1967). ''Prisms (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought).'' London: Neville Spearman Ltd. [reprinted by [[MIT Press]], Cambridge, 1981. {{ISBN|978-0-262-01064-1}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-262-51025-7}} (paper)]
* Victor Malsey, Uwe Raseh, Peter Rautmann, Nicolas Schalz, Rosi Huhn, ''Passages. D'après Walter Benjamin'' / ''Passagen. Nach Walter Benjamin''. Mainz: Herman Schmidt, 1992. {{ISBN|3-87439-251-1}}
* [[Andrew Benjamin|Benjamin]], Andrew, and Peter Osborne, eds. (1993). ''Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience.'' London: [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|978-0-415-08368-3}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-415-08369-0}} (paper) [reprinted by Clinamen Press, Manchester, 2000. {{ISBN|978-1-903083-08-6}} (paper)]
* [[Susan Buck-Morss|Buck-Morss, Susan]]. (1991). ''The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project.'' Cambridge: [[The MIT Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-262-02268-2}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-262-52164-2}} (paper)
* Betancourt, Alex. (2008). ''Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud: Between Theory and Politics''. Saarbrücken, Germany: [[VDM Verlag]]. {{ISBN|978-3-8364-3854-4}}
* [[Federico Castigliano]], ''Flâneur. The Art of Wandering the Streets of Paris'', 2016. {{ISBN|978-1534911451}}.
* [[Jacques Derrida|Derrida]], Jacques. (2001). "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority{{'"}}, in ''Acts of Religion'', Gil Anidjar, ed. London: Routledge. {{ISBN|978-0-415-92400-9}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-415-92401-6}}
* [[Caygill, Howard]]. (1998) ''Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience''. London: Routledge.
* [[Paul de Man|de Man, Paul]]. (1986). {{"'}}Conclusions': Walter Benjamin's 'Task of the Translator{{'"}}, in ''The Resistance to Theory''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp.&nbsp;73–105. {{ISBN|0-8166-1294-3}}
* Eiland, Howard, and Michael W. Jennings. (2014). ''Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life''. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-674-05186-7}}
* __________. (2004). [https://books.google.com/books?id=kIlRQ9Ngc54C ''The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin.''] Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-521-79329-7}} (cloth) {{ISBN|0-521-79724-1}} (paper)
* Eilenberger, Wolfram (2020). ''Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy''. New York: Penguin Press. {{ISBN|978-0-5255-5966-5}} (cloth)
* Ferris, David S., ed. (1996). [http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=2569%202570 ''Walter Benjamin: Theoretical Questions.''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120113083426/http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=2569%202570 |date=2012-01-13 }} Stanford: [[Stanford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-8047-2569-9}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-8047-2570-5}} (paper)
* [[Stefan Gandler|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.&nbsp;19–42. {{ISSN|1388-4441}}.
* Jacobs, Carol. (1999). ''In the Language of Walter Benjamin''. Baltimore: [[Johns Hopkins Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-8018-6031-7}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-8018-6669-2}} (paper)
* Jennings, Michael. (1987). ''Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism.'' Ithaca: [[Cornell University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-8014-2006-1}} (cloth)
* Jacobson, Eric. (2003). ''Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem.'' New York: Columbia University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-231-12657-1}}, S. 352ff.
* Kermode, Frank. [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0614F73D5413728DDDA90B94DF405B888BF1D3&scp=1&sq=walter+benjamin&st=p "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). [http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23184 "The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City."] Stanford: Stanford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-80478-603-4}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-1-50360-277-9}} (paper)
* Leslie, Esther. (2000). ''Walter Benjamin, Overpowering Conformism.'' London: [[Pluto Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-7453-1573-7}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-7453-1568-3}} (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 Verlag|Metzler]]. {{ISBN|978-3-476-01985-1}} (paper)
* [[Michael Löwy|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]]. {{ISBN|978-3-86599-328-1}}
* {{Cite journal | last = Marder | first = Elissa | title = Inhuman beauty: Baudelaire's bad sex | journal = [[Differences (journal)|differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies]] | volume = 27 | issue = 1 | pages = 1&ndash;24 | publisher = [[Duke University Press]] | doi = 10.1215/10407391-3522733 | date = May 2016 | doi-access = free }}
* Menke, Bettine. (2010). ''Das Trauerspiel-Buch. Der Souverän – das Trauerspiel – Konstellationen – Ruinen.'' Bielefeld: {{ill|Transcript Verlag|de}}. {{ISBN|978-3-89942-634-2}}.
* Missac, Pierre (1996). [https://web.archive.org/web/20080520160350/http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3691 ''Walter Benjamin's Passages.''] Cambridge: MIT Press. {{ISBN|978-0-262-13305-0}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-262-63175-4}} (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. 
* [[Catherine Perret|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. {{ISBN|978-2-252-03591-7}}
* Pignotti, Sandro (2009). ''Walter Benjamin – Judentum und Literatur. Tradition, Ursprung, Lehre mit einer kurzen Geschichte des Zionismus.'' Rombach, Freiburg {{ISBN|978-3-7930-9547-7}}
* Plate, S. Brent (2004). ''Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics''. London: Routledge. {{ISBN|978-0-415-96992-5}}
* Recki, Birgit (1988). Aura und Autonomie. Zur Subjektivität der Kunst bei Walter Benjamin und Theodor W. Adorno. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann {{ISBN|3-88479-361-6}} 
* 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. {{ISBN|3-930370-00-X}}
* 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. {{ISBN|3-8053-1865-0}}
* Scheurmann, Konrad (1994) ''Passages Dani Karavan: An Environment in Remembrance of Walter Benjamin Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.'' Bonn: AsKI e.V. {{ISBN|3-930370-01-8}}
* Schiavoni, Giulio. (2001). ''Walter Benjamin: Il figlio della felicità. Un percorso biografico e concettuale.'' Turin: [[Giulio Einaudi|Giulio Einaudi Editore]]. {{ISBN|88-06-15729-9}}
* [[Gershom Scholem|Scholem, Gershom]]. (2003). ''Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship.'' Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: New York Review Books. {{ISBN|1-59017-032-6}}
* Steinberg, Michael P., ed. (1996). ''Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History.'' Ithaca: Cornell University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8014-3135-7}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|978-0-8014-8257-1}} (paper)
* Steiner, Uwe. (2010). ''Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to his Work and Thought.'' Trans. Michael Winkler. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|978-0-226-77221-9}}
* Singh, Iona (2012) ''Vermeer, Materialism and the Transcendental in Art, from Color, Facture, Art & Design''. Hampshire: Zero Books {{ISBN|978-1-78099-629-5}}
* Taussig, Michael. (2006). ''Walter Benjamin's Grave.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|978-0-226-79004-6}}.
* Tedman, Gary. (2012). ''the Art Aesthetic State Apparatuses - from Aesthetics & Alienation''. Hampshire : Zero Books. {{ISBN|978-1-78099-301-0}}.
* Weber, Samuel. (2008). ''[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674046061 Benjamin's -abilities.]'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|0-674-02837-6}} (cloth) – {{ISBN|0-674-04606-4}} (paper)
* [[Sigrid Weigel|Weigel, Sigrid]]. (2013). ''Walter Benjamin. Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy''. Transl. by Chadwick Truscott Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-804-78059-9}}
* Witte, Bernd. (1996). ''Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography''. New York: Verso. {{ISBN|978-1-85984-967-5}}
* Wizisla, Erdmut. 2009. ''{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20110614212456/http://www.librislondon.co.uk/books/1870352785.html Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht — The Story of a Friendship]}}''. Translated by Christine Shuttleworth. London / New Haven: Libris / Yale University Press. {{ISBN|978-1-870352-78-9}} [Contains a complete translation of the newly discovered Minutes of the meetings around the putative journal ''Krise und Kritik'' (1931)].
* [[Richard Wolin|Wolin, Richard]], ''Telos'' 43, ''An Aesthetic of Redemption: Benjamin's Path to Trauerspiel''. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Spring 1980. ([http://www.telospress.com Telos Press]).
* [[Richard Wolin|Wolin, Richard]], ''Telos'' 53, ''The Benjamin-Congress: Frankfurt (July 13, 1982)''. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Fall 1982. ([http://www.telospress.com Telos Press]).
{{refend}}

=== In other media ===
* ''[[Transatlantic (TV series)|Transatlantic]]'' (2023 TV series)
* ''[[Les Unwanted de Europa]]'' (2018 film on Benjamin's last days)
* [https://www.tenk.ca/en/documentaires/carlos-ferrand/13-a-ludodrama-about-walter-benjamin ''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 ==
{{wikiquote}}
{{commons category}}
* {{OL author}}
* [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/index.htm Walter Benjamin Archive] at [[Marxists Internet Archive]]
* [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/ "Walter Benjamin"] at the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050218114417/http://www.iwbg.uni-duesseldorf.de/Wer_wir_sind_english The Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft] (in English and German) at [[Internet Archive]]
* [https://t.me/radio_benjamin "Radio Benjamin". Telegram channel of modern Russian philosopher Igor Chubarov] (in Russian)

{{Continental philosophy}}
{{Aesthetics}}
{{Authority control}}

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