Walter Benjamin (July 15, 1892-September 27, 1940) was a German Jewish Marxist literary critic and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and the Jewish mysticism of Gershom Scholem.

Life and work

Benjamin was known during his life lastly for his philosophical essays and as a critic. As a sociological and cultural critic he combined ideas of Jewish mysticism with historical materialism in a body of work which was an entirely novel contribution to Marxist philosophy and aesthetic theory. As a literary scholar, he translated texts written by Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire, and Benjamin's essay "The Task of the Translator" is one of the best-known theoretical texts about translation.

His most important writings were:

• "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" (Goethe's Elective Affinities / 1922),
• Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Origin Of German Tragic Drama / 1928),
• Einbahnstraße (One Way
  
  
  
  Street / 1928),
• Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction / 1936),
• Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood around 1900 / 1950, published posthumously),
• Über den Begriff der Geschichte (On the Concept of History (Theses on the Philosophy of History) / 1939, published posthumously).
• "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" (The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire / 1938)

The Passagenwerk or "Arcades Project," Benjamin's lifelong project, was to be an enormous collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century, especially concerned with the roofed outdoor "arcades" which created the city's distinctive street life and culture of flânerie. The project, which many scholars believe might have become one of the great texts of 20th-century cultural criticism, was never completed; it has been posthumously edited and published in many languages in its unfinished form.

Benjamin corresponded extensively with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht and occasionally received funding from the Frankfurt School under Adorno's and Horkheimer's direction. The competing influences of Brecht's Marxism (and secondarily

In the ninth thesis of the essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History" Benjamin interpreted a painting by the Swiss modernist painter Paul Klee. Benjamin focused on epistemology, theory of language, allegory, and the philosophy of history. Furthermore, he wrote essays on Baudelaire, Kafka, Proust, and Brecht.

Benjamin allegedly committed suicide in Port Bou at the Spanish-French border, while attempting to escape from the Nazis, when it appeared that his party would be denied passage across the border to freedom. The rest of the group was allowed to cross the border the next day, possibly because their desperation was made clear by Benjamin's suicide. A completed manuscript which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, which some critics speculate was his "Arcades Project" in a final form, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered. He was brother-in-law to Hilde Benjamin.

Bibliography

Many of Benjamin's writings have been translated into English.

• Illuminations. ISBN 0805202412.
• Reflections. ISBN 080520802X.
• Selected Writings in four volumes, from Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674945859 (vol. 1), ISBN 0674945867 (vol. 2), ISBN 0674008960 (vol. 3), ISBN 0674010760 (vol. 4).
• The Arcades Project. ISBN 0674008022.

References

• Jennings, Michael Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism ISBN 0-8014-2006-7
• Witte, Bernd; Translated by Rolleston, James Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography ISBN 0-8143-2017-1

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