In popular culture and left journalism he often appears as an exemplar whose experience is representative of the tragedy of German-Jewish intellectuals under the Third Reich.[12]
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thoughtScholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher",[13] while his younger colleagues Arendt[14] and Adorno[15] contend that he was "not a philosopher".[14][15] Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction".[13] Benjamin himself considered his research to betheological,[16] though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.[14][16]
He was associated with theFrankfurt School and also maintained formative relationships with thinkers and cultural figures such asplaywrightBertolt Brecht (friend),Martin Buber (an early impresario in his career), Nazi constitutionalistCarl Schmitt (a rival), and many others.[17] He was related to Germanpolitical theorist and philosopherHannah Arendt through her first marriage, though his friendship with her flowered in Paris after she separated from her husband (Benjamin’s cousinGünther Anders). Both Arendt and Anders were students ofMartin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.[18]
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 theThird Reich.[19] Having remained in Europe until it was too late, asCynthia Ozick puts it, Benjamin took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew.[8] "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.[20]
Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.[21] Some German readers and academics encountered Benjamin after his Complete Works began to be released bySuhrkamp Verlag in 1955, but global acclaim came to him when his works were translated into English and introduced to a reading public in theAnglosphere by Hannah Arendt in 1968.[22]
Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) andDora (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilatedAshkenazi Jews inBerlin, then the capital of theGerman Empire. Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany,[23] where he worked as an antiques trader and art dealer; marrying Pauline Schönflies.[23] He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks.[23]
In 1901, eight-year-old Walter was enrolled at the Kaiser Friedrich School inCharlottenburg; 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,[25] part of theGerman rural boarding school movement in theThuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School.[7]
In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at theUniversity of Freiburg, but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at theUniversity of Berlin to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure toZionism, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of "cultural Zionism"—an attitude that recognized and promotedJudaism andJewish 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."[26] This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong.[27]
It was as a speaker and debater in the milieu of theGustav Wyneken'sGerman Youth Movement that Benjamin was first encountered byGershom Scholem and laterMartin Buber although he had parted ways with the youth group before they had become properly acquainted.[28] Elected president of theFreie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change while working alongside Wyneken at the legendary and controversial youth magazineDer 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.[29][30] When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures ofHeinrich Rickert; at that time he traveled to France and Italy.
Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak ofWorld War I in August 1914 was rejected by the army.[31] Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription,[31][32] allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poetCharles 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.[32]
The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at theUniversity of Munich, where he metRainer Maria Rilke[33] 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 theGenesis".[34][35] In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-centuryRomantic German poetFriedrich Hölderlin.[36]
In 1917 Benjamin transferred to theUniversity of Bern; there he metErnst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak[37] (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned hisPhDsumma cum laude with the dissertationDer Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism).[38][39]
For hispostdoctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed byMartin Heidegger in the latter's own postdoctoral project (Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning).[40] 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 ofDuns 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".[32] After Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication,[41][42] 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.[32]
Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin and resided with his parents. In 1921 he published the essay "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Toward the Critique of Violence"). At this time Benjamin first became socially acquainted withLeo Strauss, and he remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life.[43][44][45]
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 ofinterwar Berlin andParis. 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 theinterwar-period inWeimar Germany and interpreted those events in his writing.
He was in the crowd atthe conference whereKurt Gödel first described theincompleteness theorem.[46] He once took a class on theAncient Mayans fromRainer Maria Rilke.[33] 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 theBerlin cabaret theater scene writer and directorBertolt Brecht.Martin Buber took an interest in Benjamin, but Benjamin declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too esoteric.[47] Nevertheless, Buber financed Benjamin's trip to Moscow and promoted his career in other ways. Buber commissioned Benjamin to write an article Moscow for hisDie Kreatur, though Benjamin missed his deadline for the delivery of this piece by several years.
Benjamin was a close colleague ofErnst Bloch while Bloch was writing theSpirit of Utopia and maintained a relationship with him until the late 20's that Bloch later described as "almost too close."[48] An untitled scrap omitted from Benjamin's book review of Bloch'sSpirit 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.[49] It was Bloch's commission that inspired Benjamin's work onthe theory of categories, according to Scholem.[44] This was to be a consequential theme throughout his career.
One of Benjamin's high-school best friends (also a German Jew) killed himself using gas at the outbreak of the first World War; another was one of the Jewish Liaisons who took Nazi diplomats on a tour of Palestine. This happened while the Third Reich was preparing the European Zionists to believe that Europe's Jews would be forcibly emigrated from the Reich, to deflect attention from the looming possibility of the strategy that was ultimately adopted:mass extermination in the death camps.[50][51] 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 calledGenizah.[52][53] These were created when the books flooded intoMandatory Palestine during the period leading up to, coinciding with, and immediately following theHolocaust.[54][52][53][55]
In 1923, when theInstitute for Social Research was founded, later to become home to theFrankfurt School, Benjamin publishedCharles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens. At this time he became acquainted withTheodor Adorno and befriendedGeorg Lukács, whoseThe 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 1924Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in theNeue Deutsche Beiträge magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("Goethe'sElective Affinities"), about Goethe's third novel,Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). According to literary critic Burkhardt Lindner, the essay forms the "third major philosophical-aesthetic treatise of the early work" alongside the PhD dissertation and thehabilitation 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.[56]
Likewise, according toHannah Arendt, it was his essay on Goethe that ruined Benjamin's only chance of a university career.[57] 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.[57] As so often in Benjamin's writings, his study of Goethe'sElective Affinities was marked by polemics and the theme of his assault in this work concernedFriedrich Gundolf's Goethe book. Gundolf was the most prominent and able academic member of the(Stefan) George-Kreis--a cult of post-symbolist, romantic nationalist poets with a mystically conservative, medievalist bent.[57] 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 greetedthe Nazi regime) this group's commitment to particular archaic styles anticipated the aesthetics offascism.[58]
Later that year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island ofCapri; Benjamin wroteUrsprung 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'sHistory and Class Consciousness (1923). He also met the Latvian Bolshevik and actressAsja Lācis, then residing in Moscow; he became her lover and she was a lasting intellectual influence on him.[59]
A year later, in 1925, Benjamin withdrewThe Origin of German Tragic Drama as his possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at theUniversity of Frankfurt am Main at Frankfurt am Main, fearing its possible rejection.[60] The work was a study in which he sought to "save" the category ofallegory. It proved too unorthodox and abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of the humanities faculty, such asHans Cornelius.[61]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 theInstitute for Social Research and is best remembered as the co-author of Benjamin's closest discipleTheodor Adorno's magnum opus, theDialectic of the Enlightenment (a book which cribs heavily from Benjamin's unpublished, esoteric writings in many of its most important passages).[62][63] 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.[62][63] That is to say: His committee informed him that he will not be accepted as an academic instructor in the German university system.[62][63]
A diagram of the internecine dynamics of Benjamin'shabilitation committee's rejection of his work bear recollection here, as they determine something of the character of his later career and ultimate legacy.[62][63]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.[62][63] Adorno's 1931 and 1932 seminars, delivered at Frankfurt University, devoted themselves to a close reading of theOrigins of German Tragic Drama. Adorno was still teaching this class on theOrigins of German Tragic Drama during the winter semester thatAdolf 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.[62][63]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 thebon mot, "One cannot habilitate intellect."[62][63]
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.[61] Working withFranz Hessel he translated the first volumes ofMarcel Proust'sÀ la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time). The next year, 1926, he began writing for the German newspapersFrankfurter Zeitung andDie 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[64] to meet Lācis and found her ill in a sanatorium.[65]
During his stay in Moscow, he was asked by the editorial board of theGreat Soviet Encyclopedia to write an article on Goethe for the first edition of the encyclopedia. Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, with reviewerAnatoly Lunacharsky (then thePeople's Commissar of Education) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic",[66] 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.[67][68]
In 1927, he beganDas Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), his uncompletedmagnum 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 publishedEinbahnstraße (One-Way Street), and a revision of his habilitation thesisUrsprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama). In 1929 Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant toBertolt Brecht, socially presented the intellectuals to each other. In that time, Benjamin also briefly embarked upon an academic career, as an instructor at theUniversity of Heidelberg.
In 1932, during the turmoil precedingAdolf Hitler's assumption of the office ofChancellor of Germany, Benjamin left Germany temporarily for the Spanish island ofIbiza where he stayed for some months; he then moved toNice, where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the sociopolitical and cultural significance of theReichstag fire (27 February 1933) as thede facto Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequentpersecution of the Jews, he permanently left Berlin and Germany in September. He moved to Paris, but before doing so he sought shelter inSvendborg, at Bertolt Brecht's house, and atSanremo, where his ex-wife Dora lived.
As he ran out of money, Benjamin collaborated withMax 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 befriendedHannah Arendt, novelistHermann Hesse, and composerKurt 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 theZeitschrift für Sozialforschung journal of the Institute for Social Research.[69] 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".[70]
Walter Benjamin's Paris apartment at 10rue Dombasle [fr] (1938–1940)
In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), metGeorges Bataille (to whom he later entrusted theArcades Project manuscript), and joined theCollege of Sociology (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.")[71] In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark.[72] 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 nearNevers, in centralBurgundy.[73][74]
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 theWehrmacht was pushing back theFrench Army, on 13 June Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town ofLourdes, 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 theGestapo, Benjamin planned to travel to the U.S. from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach viaFrancoist Spain, then ostensibly a neutral country.
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 ofPortbou, inCatalonia 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 ofmorphine tablets that night, while staying at theHotel de Francia; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the date of death.[7][75][76][77][78] Benjamin's colleagueArthur Koestler, also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but survived.[79] Benjamin's brother Georg was killed at theMauthausen-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 reachedLisbon on 30 September.Arendt, who crossed the French-Spanish border at Portbou a few months later, passed the manuscript ofTheses to Adorno. Another completed manuscript, which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered.[80]
Paul Klee's 1920 paintingAngelus Novus, which Benjamin bought in 1921 and compared to "the angel of history"
In addition to his lifelong dialogue in letters withGershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin maintained an intense correspondence withTheodor Adorno andBertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by theFrankfurt School under the direction of Adorno andHorkheimer, even from their New York City residence. At other times he received funding from Hebrew University or from funds made available byMartin Buber and his publishing associates includingSalman Schocken.
The dynamism or conflict between these competing influences—Brecht's Marxism, Adorno'scritical theory, Scholem's Jewish mysticism—were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved. Moreover, the criticPaul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin's writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition; the exemplary synthesis is "Theses on the Philosophy of History". At least one scholar,historian of religionJason Josephson-Storm, has argued that Benjamin's diverse interests may be understood in part by understanding the influence ofWestern Esotericism on Benjamin.[81] Some of Benjamin's key ideas were adapted from occultists andNew Age figures includingEric Gutkind andLudwig Klages, and his interest in esotericism is known to have extended far beyond the JewishKabbalah.[82] 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 ofKarl Korsch's interpretation ofCapital to understanding Benjamin's engagement withMarxism in later works like theArcades. Karl Korsch'sKarl Marx, which was "one of Benjamin's main sources [on]... Marxism," introduced him "to an advanced understanding of Marxism."[83][84]
"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, publishedTheses in Benjamin's memory in 1942. Margaret Cohen writes in theCambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin:
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 astikkun. 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 theIdea of Progress in the present with the apparent chaos of the past:
AKlee painting namedAngelus 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 theMessiah provides a final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, of attempts to determine the year when the Messiah would come into the world, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter".
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Perhaps Walter Benjamin's best-known essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," identifies the perceptual shift that takes place when technological advancements emphasize speed and reproducibility.[85] 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.[85] 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.[85]
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 theCounter-Reformation (1545–1648). Benjamin presented the work to the University of Frankfurt in 1925 as thepostdoctoral dissertation meant to earn him the habilitation (qualification) to become a university instructor in Germany.
Professor Schultz of the University of Frankfurt foundThe Origin of German Tragic Drama inappropriate for hisGermanistik department (Department of German Language and Literature), and passed it to the Department ofAesthetics, the readers of which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work.[61] The university officials recommended that Benjamin withdrawUrsprung des deutschen Trauerspiels as a habilitation thesis to avoid formal rejection and public embarrassment.[60] He heeded the advice, and three years later, in 1928, he publishedThe Origin of German Tragic Drama as a book.[86]
Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928) is a series of meditations written primarily during the same phase asThe Origin of German Tragic Drama, after Benjamin had metAsja 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 novelHundred Headless Women byMax Ernst,[87] or toWalter Ruttman'sThe Weekend (an early sound collage film).[87] 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 thefeuilleton 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."[87]
Written contemporaneously with Martin Heidegger'sBeing & Time, Benjamin's work from this period explores much of the same territory: formally in his "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" toThe Origin of German Tragic Drama, and as sketches, allusions and asides inOne Way Street.[88]
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."[91] 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.[91]
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".[92] 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 useintertexts 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 amodernist 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.
Since the publication ofSchriften (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.[93] In 1968, the firstInternationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft was established by theGerman thinker, poet and artistNatias 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.[94] The members felt liberated to take Benjamin's ideas as a welcome touchstone for social change.[95]
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.[96]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
In 2017 Walter Benjamin'sArcades Project was reinterpreted in an exhibition curated byJens Hoffman, held at theJewish 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.[98]
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) where Benjamin lived in 1938–1940.
Close byKurfürstendamm, in the district ofCharlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, a town square created byHans Kollhoff in 2001 was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz".[101] There is a memorial sculpture by the artistDani Karavan at Portbou, where Walter Benjamin ended his life. It was commissioned to mark 50 years since his death.[102]
"Theorien des deutschen Faschismus.” (“Theories of German Fascism,” 1930) First published as "Theorien des deutschen Faschismus. Zu der Sammelschrift 'Krieg und Krieger' herausgegeben vonErnst Jünger," Die Gesellschaft 7 vol. 2, (1930), 32-41.
"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 toGershom Scholem. Both of these are collected in the anthologyIlluminations. 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.’
"Der Erzähler" ("The Storyteller", 1936 was first published inOrient 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 theZeitschrift für Sozialforschung two years later. Not much attended to compared to Benjamin's other major works, it contains the skeleton and many of the crucial phrases later made famous in his"Theses...").
Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900, 1938)
^Erasmus: Speculum Scientarium,25, p. 162: "the different versions of Marxist hermeneutics by the examples of Walter Benjamin'sOrigins of the German Tragedy [sic], ... and also by Ernst Bloch'sHope the Principle [sic]."
^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.]
^abOzick, Cynthia (1983). "The Magisterial Reach of Gershom Scholem".Art & Ardor. Random House. pp. 145–147.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Scholem, Gershom (1972).Major trends in Jewish mysticism (6. print ed.). New York: Schocken Books.ISBN978-0-8052-0005-8.
^Benjamin, Walter; Scholem, Gershom; Smith, Gary; Scholem, Gershom; Benjamin, Walter (1989).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940. New York: Schocken Books.ISBN978-0-8052-4065-8.
^abBenjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). ""Letter to (publisher) Max Rychner, 7 March 1931"". In Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 371–373.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Benjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 82, 168, 172,359–60, 365, 372, 571.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Arendt, Hannah; Scholem, Gershom Gerhard; Knott, Marie Luise (2017). "Second letter from Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem: Oct. 21st, 1940".The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago press. p. 4.ISBN978-0-226-92451-9.
^Benjamin, Walter (1999). "The Story of Old Benjamin by Lisa Fittko".The arcades project. Internet Archive. Cambridge, MA. : Belknap Press. p. 953.ISBN978-0-674-04326-8.
^Benjamin, Walter; Jephcott, Edmund (2007). "Introduction by Peter Demetz". In Demetz, Peter (ed.).Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings. New York, NY: Schocken. pp. vii–xlii.ISBN978-0-8052-0802-3.
^Benjamin, Walter (1955).Gesammelte Schriften II (in German). Suhrkamp. p. 839.
^Witte, Bernd. (1996)Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Verso. pp. 26–27
^Scholem, Gershom (1988).Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. New York: Schocken. pp. 3–5, 7, 13.ISBN0-8052-0870-4.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 4.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Eiland, Howard; Jennings, Michael W (2014).Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.ISBN978-0-674-05186-7. Chapter II: 'Metaphysics of Youth' (Berlin and Freiburg: 1912–1914).
^abJay, Martin (1999). "Walter Benjamin, Remembrance, and the First World War".Review of Japanese Culture and Society. 11/12:18–31.ISSN0913-4700.JSTOR42800179.
^abcdEilenberger, Wolfram (2020).Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy. Shaun Whiteside. New York: Penguin Press. pp. 91–94.ISBN978-0-525-55966-5.OCLC1127067361.
^abScholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 33.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Benjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). "Letter to Scholem November 11th, 1916". In Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press. p. 81.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Witte, Bernd (1985).Walter Benjamin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten [W. Benjamin with self-testimonies and photo documents] (in German). Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. p. 28.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 14.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 20.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Benjamin, Walter; Jennings, Michael W.; Eiland, Howard; Smith, Gary; Livingstone, Rodney (2005). "Curriculum Vitae (1)".Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press. p. 422.ISBN978-0-674-01588-3.
^Benjamin, Walter; Jennings, Michael W.; Eiland, Howard; Smith, Gary; Livingstone, Rodney (2005). "The Concept of Art Criticism in german Romanticism".Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press. pp. 116–200.ISBN978-0-674-01588-3.
^Benjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Benjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 167–169.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Eilenberger, Wolfram (2020).Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy. Translated by Whiteside, Shaun. New York: Penguin Press. p. 92.ISBN978-0-525-55966-5.
^Jewish philosophy and the crisis of modernity (SUNY 1997),Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish thinker, Kenneth Hart Green, Leo Strauss, page 55
^abScholem, Gershom. 1981. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn, page 201, page 79
^The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–40, New York 1989, page 155–58
^Edmonds, David (2020).The Murder of Professor Schlick: Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. Princeton. pp. 97–98.ISBN978-0-691-16490-8.
^Benjamin, Walter; Benjamin, Walter (2012). "Letter to Martin Buber, July 1916". In Scholem, Gershom (ed.).The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940. Chicago, Ill London: Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 79–81.ISBN978-0-226-04238-1.
^Bloch, Ernst (1991). ""Recollections of Watler Benjamin"". In Smith, Gary (ed.).On Walter Benjamin: critical essays and recollections. Studies in contemporary German social thought (1. paperback ed., 3. print ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pr. p. 338.ISBN978-0-262-19268-2.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 91.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Scholem, Gershom (1969).The Story of a Friendship. Schocken. pp. 14–15.
^abScholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^abScholem, Gershom (1972).Major trends in Jewish mysticism (6. print ed.). New York: Schocken Books.ISBN978-0-8052-0005-8.
^Scholem, Gershom; Zohn, Harry; Idel, Mosheh; Scholem, Gershom (2012).From Berlin to Jerusalem: memories of my youth. Autobiography Jewish studies. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books.ISBN978-1-58988-073-3.
^Arendt, Hannah; Scholem, Gershom Gerhard; Knott, Marie Luise (2017).The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago press.ISBN978-0-226-92451-9.
^Lindner, Burkhardt (2011).Benjamin Handbook. Leben - Werk - Wirkung [Benjamin handbook. Life - work - effect] (in German). Stuttgart: Metzler. pp. 472–493.
^abcArendt, Hannah (1969).Illuminations. Essays and Reflections. New York:Schocken Books. pp. 8–9.
^Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund; Benjamin, Walter; Bloch, Ernst; Brecht, Bertolt; Lukacs, György (2007).Aesthetics and politics. Radical thinkers. London: Verso.ISBN978-1-84467-570-8.
^abJane 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."
^abcJay, Martin (1996).The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. University of California Press. pp. 199–215.ISBN0520917510.
^abcdefgSteiner, George; Benjamin, Walter (1928). "George Steiner's Introduction to Walter Benjamin's 'Origin of German Tragic Drama'".The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Verso. pp. 7–27.
^Benjamin, Walter (1968). "The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction".Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. pp. 217–253.
^Nguyen, Duy Lap (2022).Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy. London: Bloomsbury academic. pp. 216–223.
^Scholem, Gershom; Scholem, Gershom (1982).Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship. London: Faber and Faber. p. 216.ISBN978-0-571-11970-7.
^Arendt, Hannah; Scholem, Gershom Gerhard; Knott, Marie Luise (2017). "Letter 4 (Arendt to Scholem, 17 Oct. 1941".The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago press. pp. 5–9.ISBN978-0-226-92451-9.
^Eiland, Howard; Jennings, Michael William (2014). "'The Angel of History': Paris, Nevers, Port Bou".Walter Benjamin: a critical life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 654–755.ISBN978-0-674-05186-7.
^Arendt, Hannah (1968). "Introduction". In Walter Benjamin (ed.).Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. pp. 23–24.
^Jay, MartinThe Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950.
^Leslie, Esther (2000)."Benjamin's Finale".Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. Modern European Thinkers. Pluto Press. p. 215.ISBN978-0-7453-1568-3. RetrievedAugust 28, 2009.
^"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, "Did The Death Of Communism Take Koestler And Other Literary Figures With It?" Huffington Post, 28 March 2010, URL retrieved 15 March 2012.
^Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2017).The myth of disenchantment: magic, modernity, and the birth of the human sciences. Chicago: The university of Chicago press. pp. 226–236.ISBN978-0-226-40322-9.
^Introducing Walter Benjamin, Howard Cargill, Alex Coles, Andrey Klimowski, 1998, p. 112
^abcBenjamin, Walter (2016).One-way street. E. F. N. Jephcott, Michael William Jennings, Greil Marcus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. xii, xix, 1, 2.ISBN978-0-674-54590-8.OCLC947118942.
^Caves, R. W. (2004).Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 40.
^Buck-Morss, Susan.The Dialectics of Seeing. The MIT Press, 1991, p. 5.
^abScholem, Gershom (2012). "Walter Benjamin and His Angel".On Jews and Judaism in crisis : selected essays. Werner J. Dannhauser (1st ed.). Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books. pp. 51–70.ISBN978-1-58988-074-0.OCLC709681212.
Victor Malsey, Uwe Raseh, Peter Rautmann, Nicolas Schalz, Rosi Huhn,Passages. D'après Walter Benjamin /Passagen. Nach Walter Benjamin. Mainz: Herman Schmidt, 1992.ISBN3-87439-251-1
Caygill, Howard. (1998)Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience. London: Routledge.
de Man, Paul. (1986)."'Conclusions': Walter Benjamin's 'Task of the Translator'", inThe Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 73–105.ISBN0-8166-1294-3
Eiland, Howard, and Michael W. Jennings. (2014).Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.ISBN978-0-674-05186-7
Eilenberger, Wolfram (2020).Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy. New York: Penguin Press.ISBN978-0-5255-5966-5 (cloth)
Gandler, Stefan (2010). "The Concept of History in Walter Benjamin's Critical Theory", inRadical Philosophy Review, San Francisco, CA, Vol. 13, Nr. 1, pp. 19–42.ISSN1388-4441.
Jacobson, Eric. (2003).Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. New York: Columbia University Press,ISBN978-0-231-12657-1, S. 352ff.
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.ISBN978-3-476-01985-1 (paper)
Löwy, Michael. (2005).Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History.' Trans. Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso.
Marchesoni, Stefano. (2016).Walter Benjamins Konzept des Eingedenkens. Über Genese und Semantik einer Denkfigur. Berlin:Kadmos Verlag.ISBN978-3-86599-328-1
Neutert, Natias :Mit Walter Benjamin! Poeto-philosophisches Manifest zur Gründung der Internationalen Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft. Lüdke Verlag, Hamburg 1968.
Nguyen, Duy Lap. (2022).Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy : A New Historical Materialism. London UK: Bloomsbury Academic.
Perret, Catherine "Walter Benjamin sans destin", Ed. La Différence, Paris, 1992, rééd. revue et augmentée d'une préface, Bruxelles, éd. La Lettre volée, 2007.
Perrier, Florent, ed., Palmier, Jean-Michel (Author), Marc Jimenez (Preface). (2006)Walter Benjamin. Le chiffonnier, l'Ange et le Petit Bossu. Paris: Klincksieck.ISBN978-2-252-03591-7
Pignotti, Sandro (2009).Walter Benjamin – Judentum und Literatur. Tradition, Ursprung, Lehre mit einer kurzen Geschichte des Zionismus. Rombach, FreiburgISBN978-3-7930-9547-7
Plate, S. Brent (2004).Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics. London: Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-96992-5
Recki, Birgit (1988). Aura und Autonomie. Zur Subjektivität der Kunst bei Walter Benjamin und Theodor W. Adorno. Würzburg: Königshausen und NeumannISBN3-88479-361-6
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.ISBN3-930370-00-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.ISBN3-8053-1865-0
Scheurmann, Konrad (1994)Passages Dani Karavan: An Environment in Remembrance of Walter Benjamin Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Bonn: AsKI e.V.ISBN3-930370-01-8
Scholem, Gershom. (2003).Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: New York Review Books.ISBN1-59017-032-6
Steinberg, Michael P., ed. (1996).Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.ISBN978-0-8014-3135-7 (cloth) –ISBN978-0-8014-8257-1 (paper)
Steiner, Uwe. (2010).Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to his Work and Thought. Trans. Michael Winkler. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-77221-9
Singh, Iona (2012)Vermeer, Materialism and the Transcendental in Art, from Color, Facture, Art & Design. Hampshire: Zero BooksISBN978-1-78099-629-5
Taussig, Michael. (2006).Walter Benjamin's Grave. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-79004-6.
Tedman, Gary. (2012).the Art Aesthetic State Apparatuses - from Aesthetics & Alienation. Hampshire : Zero Books.ISBN978-1-78099-301-0.
Weigel, Sigrid. (2013).Walter Benjamin. Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy. Transl. by Chadwick Truscott Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.ISBN978-0-804-78059-9
Witte, Bernd. (1996).Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Verso.ISBN978-1-85984-967-5
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