Walter Benjamin - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Life

“Deprived Thinker”, it did not exert within the framework of the university, even if it however tried without success to integrate this one for financial reasons. He almost did not publish anything of alive sound, his incomes consisting primarily of a paternal revenue. He was near to Theodor Adorno.

Walter Benjamin is born with Berlin parents Juif S. His father was banker, then antique dealer. He passes his childhood in this city. For health reasons, it carries out 1904 with 1907 a stay in the countryside, with Haubinda, in Thuringe, where it is subject to the influence of Gustav Wineken, inspirer of the republican movement “Freien Studentenschaft”.

In 1910, it writes tests in Der Anfang , the publication of this movement under the pseudo “Ardor”. In 1912, it travels in Italy and is registered at the university with Berlin and Freiburg-in-Brisgau for studies of Philosophie. In 1914, he becomes president of “Freien Studentenschaft” then, because of dissensions, withdraws activities of the group, including review Der Anfang . The suicide of a couple of friends marks it deeply. It becomes engaged and begins the translation of the Parisian Tableaux of Charles Baudelaire. In 1915, Gustav Wineken publishes a text encouraging German youth to serve its fatherland. Walter Benjamin writes to him to mean his dissension to him and breaks definitively with him. He meets Werner Kraft. In 1916 it breaks its engagement to live with Dora Pollack, wife of max Pollack, which she leaves.

In 1917, it receives an order of mobilization, but manages to get a doctor's certificate which delays its incorporation. It Marie with Gilded Pollack, and spends some time with her in Sanatorium to Dachau, then in Suisse. It is registered with the Université of Bern. It begins a thesis on art the Critic to the romantic time. In 1918, it has a son, Stephan. It completes the drafting of its thesis, constant at the university of Bern. It continues then its translations of Baudelaire.

In 1919, it meets Ernst Bloch. In 1920 it moves for financial reasons with Berlin with his wife and her son. In 1921, it separates from his wife, and lives with Heidelberg and Berlin. In 1922, with Heidelberg, it endeavors to obtain an enabling enabling him to teach at the university. In 1923, it again fails in its attempt to be entitled at the university, and meets Adorno. His/her father has large financial problems which compromise the assistance that it provides him.

In 1924, it carries out at the same time as Ernst Bloch a stay with Capri. It becomes acquainted with Asja Lascis, communist Latvian who initiates it with the Marxisme. In 1925, it gives up its enabling.

In 1926, it remains in France, with Paris and in the Var, like with Monaco. It translates Proust. With died of his father, it makes a passage to Berlin, returns in France, then share for Moscow. In 1927, it returns to Paris and finishes the translation of In the shade of the young girls in flowers . In 1933, it emigrates with Paris, and tries to leave the Europe for the the United States of America in 1940.

Tragic death of Walter Benjamin

One day before the entry of the German army in Paris, Benjamin leaves the capital and goes to Lourdes. From there it leaves to Marseilles and finally arrives at Port-Vendres on September 25th, 1940 with the intention to flee in Spain.

Arrived in the small commune of the the Eastern Pyrenees, it is made known at Hans and LISA Fittko, two anti-nazis German who can make him cross the border clandestinely. In spite of its age (Walter Benjamin has forty-eight years) and its health issues, the philosopher and two other candidates with the exile, Henny Gurland and his/her Jose son, led by LISA, arrive at the end of ten hour to Portbou. But the September 26th 1940, the night of its arrival in Spain, Walter Benjamin commits suicide by absorbing an amount mortal of Morphine.

According to LISA Fittko, the Spanish authorities warned the three runaways that a new directive of the Spanish government recommended taken back refugees in France. Benjamin would not have supported the news - makes the new regulation of it will never be applied… and undoubtedly was already cancelled when it gave itself death.

The papers contained in the leather towel of Benjamin who contained, said it, a manuscript “more important than its life”, were not found even if they were indexed like bundle of manuscript in the handrail of the police force of Portbou. The philosopher also wrote a letter of good-bye to Theodor W. Adorno, dictated with his companion of escape Henny Gurland.

Benjamin is buried with the cemetery of Portbou. A work commemorative of the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan entitled Passages was set up in homage to the philosopher in the small Catalan port. Its death is evoked in the opera Shadowtime (music of Brian Ferneyhough, booklet of Charles Bernstein).

Other assumptions were put forth about its death:

Who killed Walter Benjamin… (73 min. Spain, Germany, the Netherlands), a documentary film of David Mauas on the circumstances of died of Walter Benjamin to Bou Port presented the thesis according to which he would have been assassinated by fascistic .
According to Stephen Schwartz, it would have been assassinated by agents with the pay of Stalin.

The concept of will have

Walter Benjamin introduces the term of will have in 1931 in his test " Little story of the photographie" (followed into 1936 of the Work of art at the time of its technical reproducibility ), to characterize the specificity of the work of art which is single, related to a precise place and which fits in the Histoire. It defines will have it like “demonstration of a distance whatever its proximity” ( einmalige Erscheinung einer Ferne, so nah sy auch center mag ). To illustrate its matter, it gives the example of an observer admiring a chain of Montagne S one day of be. The Sentiment which it feels at this time could not be reproduced, because it is impossible to reproduce this moment. The inaccessibility of the work of art is explained for him its origins in magic rites and later monk. The last traces of its ritual origins are visible in the movement of art for Article.

Technical reproducibility has as a consequence the loss of will have, because the copy acquires an autonomy with respect to the original by the fact that work is placed in new contexts, that it becomes possible to change point of view, to operate enlargements. In more the copy goes towards the observer, becomes accessible in new situations and took out of any historical and space context. Thus work becomes a commercial object.

Its writings are used today by those which study the popular culture. Indeed, contrary to Adorno, Benjamin allots a positive role to aspects of the Mass culture, and does not reduce it like Adorno to pure produced of false conscience.

Posterity

Hannah Arendt wrote of it a critical biography, published in The Newyorker in 1968, then in foreword of the Illuminations the same year.

Principal works

the Work of art at the time of its technical reproducibility
One way, preceded by a Berliner childhood
Paris, capital of the XIXe century
the book of the passages (fragments)
Charles Baudelaire
Origin of the drama German baroque
the storyteller. Reflection on the work of Nicolas Leskov (sometimes translated by: the narrator )
Newspaper of Moscow
Illuminations
Reflections
Little story of photography (1931)

Available

"" Correspondence Gershom Scholem, Theodor W. Adorno " , ED.: Montaigne sapwood, 1992, ISBN 2700701585

" correspondence (1930-1940) Walter Benjamin and Gretel Adorno, edition established by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, translated from German by Christoph David, ED: the walker, 2007.

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