Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, the brief essay was written by Benjamin shortly before he attempted to escape from Vichy France, where French collaborationist government officials were handing over Jewish refugees like Benjamin to the Nazi Gestapo. [2] Theses is the last major work Benjamin completed before fleeing to Spain where, fearing Nazi capture, he died by suicide on 26 September 1940. [3] Summary [ edit ]

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 Berlin and Paris. Acquaintance with the critic 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 improbably many of the most important events within the intellectual ferment of the interwar-period in Weimar Germany and to interpret those events with penetrating, sometimes prophetic, insight. Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [The Origin of German Tragedy], Berlin, 1928; new ed., ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963; 2000, 240 pp. [1] [2] He was in the crowd at the conference where Kurt Gödel first described the incompleteness theorem. [38] He once took a class on the Ancient Mayans from Rainer Maria Rilke. [25] He attended the same seminar as Martin 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 and frequent house-guest of Bertolt Brecht's (the most innovative writer and director of the Berlin theater scene, memorably mythologized in the musical Cabaret). Martin Buber took an interest in Benjamin, but the younger author declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too exoteric. [39] For his postdoctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by Heidegger in the latter's own postdoctoral project ( Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning). [32] 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". [24] After Gershom Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication, [33] [34] Benjamin seems 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. [24] Incidentally, at that time Heidegger was soon to embark on a love affair with Hannah Arendt, later related to Benjamin through marriage to his cousin Günther Anders.

Literary and Critical Theory

Band 16: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, ed. Burkhardt Lindner, 2013, 722 pp. [42] Contents.

Der Sürrealismus: Die letzte Momentaufnahme der europäischen Intelligenz", Literarischen Welt, Feb 1929; repr. in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, II/1, 1977, pp 295-310. (German) In 1902, ten-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, a boarding school in the Thuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School. [8] Kratkaya istoriya fotografii", trans. S.A. Romashko, in Benjamin, Proizvedenie iskusstva v epokhu ego tekhnicheskoy vosproizvodimosti. Izbrannye esse, Moscow: Medium, 1996, pp 66-91, n229-231. (Russian) Kairos - Schriften zur Philosophie, ed. Ralf Konersmann, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007, 355 pp. [34] Erasmus: Speculum Scienta

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Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit - und weitere Dokumente, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007, 254 pp. [31] Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften 1, ed. Siegfried Unseld, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961; 2001, 432 pp. [10] The subject and themes of Benjamin's essay: the aura of a work of art; the artistic authenticity of the artefact; its cultural authority; and the aestheticization of politics for the production of art, became resources for research in the fields of art history and architectural theory, cultural studies, and media theory. [3]