Benjamin, Walter

Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940, German essayist and critic. He is known for his synthesis of eccentric Marxist theory and Jewish messianism. In particular, his essays on Charles Baudelaire and Franz Kafka as well as his speculation on symbolism, allegory, and the function of art in a mechanical age have profoundly affected contemporary criticism. Benjamin was influenced by his close friendship with the historian of Jewish mysticism Gershom Gerhard Scholem. In 1933, he moved to France because of the rise of the Nazis. When the Nazis invaded France, he fled to Spain, was denied entry, and committed suicide.

Bibliography

See collections of his essays edited by H. Arendt (1968, 1978); his Moscow Diary (1986); The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940 (1966, tr. 1994) edited by Manfred R. and Evelyn M. Jacobson; 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).

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Benjamin, Walter

(born July 15, 1892, Berlin, Ger.—died Sept. 27?, 1940, near Port-Bou, Spain) German literary critic. Born into a prosperous Jewish family, Benjamin studied philosophy and worked as a literary critic and translator in Berlin from 1920 until 1933, when he fled to France to avoid persecution. The Nazi takeover of France led him to flee again in 1940; he committed suicide at the Spanish border on hearing that he would be turned over to the Gestapo. Posthumous publication of his essays has won him a reputation as the leading German literary critic of the first half of the 20th century; he was also one of the first serious writers about film and photography. His independence and originality are evident in the essays collected in Illuminations (1961) and Reflections (1979). His writings on art reflect his reading of Karl Marx and his friendships with Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno.

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Benjamin, Walter 

Born July 15, 1892, in Berlin; died Sept. 27, 1940. German philosopher, sociologist, and literary critic.

Benjamin lived in Berlin until 1933, when he emigrated to Paris. During an attempt to escape from occupied France he was detained at the Spanish border, where he committed suicide. Characteristic of Benjamin’s thought was the rejection of abstract schematization and a return to the historical concreteness of the individual and the particular; both qualities are evident in his philosophical and historical work Origins of German Tragedy (1928), his numerous essays (for example, “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century”), and his articles. He was one of the first to give a sociological analysis of the changes in social functions and in the meaning of a work of art related to its mass reproduction by technical means and the loss of its “aura”—the aureole of uniqueness and inimitability. Benjamin was a major influence on T. Adorno and his school.

WORKS

Schriften, vols. 1–2. Frankfurt am Main, 1955.
Ausgewaáhlte Schriften, vols. 1–2. Frankfurt am Main, 1961–66.

REFERENCES

Tiedemann, R. Studien zur Philosophie W. Benjamins. Frankfurt am Main, 1965. (Includes bibliography.)
Uber W. Benjamin. Frankfurt am Main, 1968.

A. V. MIKHAILOV