People

Walter Benjamin 1892-1940   - Germany, France

It is said that Walter Benjamin, one of the most influential cultural theorists in the Marxist tradition, did not research Karl Marx's writings until the final decade of his tragically abbreviated life. Benjamin was born in Berlin to a wealthy Jewish family. His studies at Freiburg, Munich, Berlin, and Berne resulted in a doctorate in 1919, but his dissertation on German tragic drama--a brilliant but unorthodox performance completed when he was thirty-three--was rejected by the University of Frankfurt. With a university career closed to him, Benjamin turned to journalism.

From 1925 to 1933, he made his living mainly with his pen and became friendly with a number of left-wing intellectuals. When the Nazi seizure of power drove him from Berlin in 1933, he immigrated to Paris and eked out a living through commissions from the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He wrote some of his most admired work during these years of exile, but in 1940 he committed suicide in Port Bou, Spain, in the mistaken belief that his plan to emigrate to America had been thwarted and that he would have to return to Nazi-occupied France.  http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/critical/benjamin.htm

Encyclopedia Entries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

Encyclopedia of Marxism

The Free Dictionary

Columbia Encyclopedia Walter Benjamin

Columbia Encyclopedia Frankfort School

Questions of 

Reading

Illuminations (1969)

The Origin of German Drama (1977)

Reflections (1978)

Moscow Diary (1986)

The Arcades Project (1999)

See collections of his essays edited by H. Arendt (1968, 1978);

 The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940 (1966, tr. 1994) edited by Manfred R. and Evelyn M. Jacobson;

Writing available on the net

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin - Hauptzüge der zweiten Haschisch-Impression

 On the Concept of History  (1940)

Myslowitz-Braunschweig-Marseilles: [1930]

Sobre La Perception: Spanish Translation of Benjamin's "Über die Wahrnehmung," ["On Perception"](Gesammelte Schriften, Bd VI, Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt a. M. 1986, S. 33 - 38. ) Translated by Omar Rosas (Bogata

Commentaries

Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft

The Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate

PopCultures.com | Theorists and Critics | Walter Benjamin

 Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship (1981) by G. Scholem; studies by R. Wolin (1982), S. Handelman (1991), and B. Witte (1991); essays by G. Scholem (1965, 1981).

Quotations

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable."

--Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," (Spring, 1940) trans. Harry Zohn.