Editing Walter Benjamin (section)

== Life ==
{{Frankfurt School}}

=== Early life and education ===
Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and [[Dora Benjamin|Dora]] (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated [[Ashkenazi Jews]] in [[Berlin]], then the capital of the [[German Empire]]. Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany,<ref name=":5" /> where he worked as an antiques trader; he later married Pauline Schönflies.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |date=1982 |title=Ahnen und Verwandten Walter Benjamins |url=https://www.academia.edu/44509105 |journal=Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts |volume=61 |pages=29–55}}</ref> He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks.<ref name=":5" /> 

Walter's uncle, [[William Stern (psychologist)|William Stern]], was a prominent German [[child psychology|child psychologist]] who developed the concept of the [[intelligence quotient]] (IQ).<ref name=":5" /> He also had a cousin, [[Günther Anders]],<ref name=":5" /> a German philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under [[Edmund Husserl]] and [[Martin Heidegger]]. Through his mother, Walter's great-uncle was the classical archaeologist [[Gustav Hirschfeld]].<ref name=":5" /><ref>Howard Eiland, ''Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life'', Harvard University Press (2014), p. 20</ref>

In 1901, eight-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 [[Thuringia]]n countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School.<ref name="Witte" />

In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the [[University of Freiburg]], but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]] to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to [[Zionism]], which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of "[[cultural Zionism]]"{{mdash}}an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and [[Jewish ethics|Jewish values]]. In Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active ... For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |title=Gesammelte Schriften II |publisher=Suhrkamp |year=1955 |pages=839 |language=German}}</ref> This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong.<ref>Witte, Bernd. (1996) ''Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography''. New York: Verso. pp. 26–27</ref>

It was as a speaker and debater in the milieu of the [[Gustav Wyneken]]'s [[German Youth Movement]] that Benjamin was first encountered by [[Gershom Scholem]] and later [[Martin Buber]] although he had parted ways with the youth group before they had become properly acquainted.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship |publisher=Schocken |year=1988 |isbn=0-8052-0870-4 |location=New York |pages=3–5, 7, 13}}</ref> Elected president of the ''Freie Studentenschaft'' (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change while working alongside Wyneken at the legendary and controversial youth magazine ''Der Anfang'' (The beginning), that was banned in all schools in Bavaria. Wyneken's thesis that a new youth must pave the way for revolutionary cultural change became the main theme of all of Benjamin's publications at that time.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life |last1=Eiland |last2=Jennings |first1=Howard |first2=Michael W |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA and London |date=2014 |isbn=978-0-674-05186-7}} Chapter II: 'Metaphysics of Youth' (Berlin and Freiburg: 1912–1914).</ref> When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures of [[Heinrich Rickert]]; at that time he traveled to France and Italy.

Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak of [[World War I]] in August 1914 was rejected by the army.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Jay|first=Martin|date=1999|title=Walter Benjamin, Remembrance, and the First World War|journal=Review of Japanese Culture and Society|volume=11/12|pages=18–31|issn=0913-4700|jstor=42800179}}</ref> Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription,<ref name=":1" /><ref name=Eberg2018>{{Cite book|last=Eilenberger|first=Wolfram|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1127067361|title=Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy|date=2020|others=Shaun Whiteside|isbn=978-0-525-55966-5|publisher=Penguin Press |location=New York|pages=91–94|oclc=1127067361}}</ref> allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poet [[Charles Baudelaire]]. His conspicuous refuge in Switzerland on dubious medical grounds was a likely factor in his ongoing challenges in obtaining academic employment after the war.<ref name=Eberg2018/>

The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the [[University of Munich]], where he met [[Rainer Maria Rilke]]<ref name="Faber and Faber">{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=33}}</ref> and Scholem; the latter became a friend. Intensive discussions with Scholem about Judaism and Jewish mysticism gave the impetus for the 1916 text (surviving as a manuscript) ''Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen'' ("[[On Language as Such and on the Language of Man]]"), which, as Benjamin said to Scholem , "has an immanent relationship to Judaism and to the first chapter of the [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]]".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=81 |chapter=Letter to Scholem November 11th, 1916}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Walter Benjamin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten |trans-title=W. Benjamin with self-testimonies and photo documents |last=Witte |first=Bernd |publisher=Rowohlt |location=Reinbek bei Hamburg |date=1985 |page=28 |language=de}}</ref> In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century [[Romanticism|Romantic]] German poet [[Friedrich Hölderlin]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=14}}</ref>

In 1917 Benjamin transferred to the [[University of Bern]]; there he met [[Ernst Bloch]], and Dora Sophie Pollak<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=20}}</ref> (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his [[PhD]] ''[[summa cum laude]]'' with the dissertation ''Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik'' (''The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism'').<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael W. |last3=Eiland |first3=Howard |last4=Smith |first4=Gary |last5=Livingstone |first5=Rodney |date=2005 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-674-01588-3 |edition= |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=422 |chapter=Curriculum Vitae (1)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=Selected writings. 2,1: Vol. 2, part 1, 1927-1930 / Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael W. |last3=Eiland |first3=Howard |last4=Smith |first4=Gary |last5=Livingstone |first5=Rodney |date=2005 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-674-01588-3 |edition= |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=116–200 |chapter=The Concept of Art Criticism in german Romanticism}}</ref>

For his [[postdoctoral]] thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by [[Martin Heidegger]] in the latter's own postdoctoral project (''Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning'').<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London}}</ref> 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".<ref name="Eberg2018" /> After Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=167–169}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Eilenberger |first=Wolfram |title=Time of the magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the decade that reinvented philosophy |date=2020 |publisher=Penguin Press |isbn=978-0-525-55966-5 |location=New York |pages=92 |translator-last=Whiteside |translator-first=Shaun}}</ref> Benjamin seemed 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.<ref name="Eberg2018"/>

Later, unable to support himself and family, Benjamin returned to Berlin and resided with his parents. In 1921 he published the essay "[[Critique of Violence|Zur Kritik der Gewalt]]" ("Toward the Critique of Violence"). At this time Benjamin first became socially acquainted with [[Leo Strauss]], and he remained an admirer of Strauss and his work throughout his life.<ref>''Jewish philosophy and the crisis of modernity'' (SUNY 1997), ''Leo Strauss as a Modern Jewish thinker'', Kenneth Hart Green, Leo Strauss, page 55</ref><ref name=":3">Scholem, Gershom. 1981. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn, page 201, page 79</ref><ref>''The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–40'', New York 1989, page 155–58</ref>

=== Friendships ===
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 period|interwar Berlin]] and [[Interwar France|Paris]]. Acquaintance with Walter Benjamin 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 many of the most important events within the intellectual ferment of the [[Interwar period|interwar-period]] in [[Weimar Republic|Weimar Germany]] and interpreted those events in his writing.

He was in the crowd at [[Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences|the conference]] where [[Kurt Gödel]] first described the [[Gödel's incompleteness theorems|incompleteness theorem]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Edmonds |first=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |publisher=Princeton |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-691-16490-8 |pages=97–98}}</ref> He once took a class on the [[Maya civilization|Ancient Mayans]] from Rilke.<ref name="Faber and Faber"/> He attended the same seminar as 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, favorable critic and promoter as well as a frequent house-guest of the [[Weimar culture|Berlin cabaret theater scene]] writer and director [[Bertolt Brecht]]. [[Martin Buber]] took an interest in Benjamin, but Benjamin declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too esoteric.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910 - 1940 |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |date=2012 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-04238-1 |editor-last=Scholem |editor-first=Gershom |edition= |location=Chicago, Ill London |pages=79–81 |chapter=Letter to Martin Buber, July 1916}}</ref> Nevertheless, Buber financed Benjamin's trip to Moscow and promoted his career in other ways. Buber commissioned Benjamin to write an article Moscow for his ''Die Kreatur,'' though Benjamin missed his deadline for the delivery of this piece by several years. 

Benjamin was a close colleague of [[Ernst Bloch]] while Bloch was writing the ''Spirit of Utopia'' and maintained a relationship with him until the late 20's that Bloch later described as "almost too close."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bloch |first=Ernst |title=On Walter Benjamin: critical essays and recollections |date=1991 |publisher=MIT Pr |isbn=978-0-262-19268-2 |editor-last=Smith |editor-first=Gary |edition=1. paperback ed., 3. print |series=Studies in contemporary German social thought |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=338 |chapter="Recollections of Watler Benjamin"}}</ref> An untitled scrap omitted from Benjamin's book review of Bloch's ''Spirit of Utopia'' which remained unpublished during Benjamin's lifetime (later anthologized under the title "Theologico-Political Fragment") is now perhaps better remembered than the larger work it cites as an authority for its mystical reflections.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=91}}</ref> It was Bloch's commission that inspired Benjamin's work on [[Category of being|the theory of categories]], according to Scholem.<ref name=":3" /> This was to be a consequential theme throughout his career.

One of Benjamin's high-school best friends (also a German Jew) killed himself using gas at the outbreak of the first World War; another was one of the Jewish Liaisons who took Nazi diplomats on a tour of Palestine. This happened while the Third Reich was preparing the European Zionists to believe that Europe's Jews would be forcibly emigrated from the Reich, to deflect attention from the looming possibility of the strategy that was ultimately adopted: [[The Holocaust|mass extermination in the death camps]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=The Story of a Friendship |publisher=Schocken |year=1969 |pages=14–15}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Mandel |first=Jonah |date= |title=When a Nazi Toured the Holy Land |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-a-nazi-toured-the-holy-land-to-find-a-solution-for-the-jewish-problem/ |website=Times of Israel}}</ref> Scholem, Benjamin's oldest friend, and the sole executor of his literary estate, would resurrect the canonical books of the Kabbalah from private libraries and ancient document dumps called [[Genizah]].<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last=Scholem |first=Gershom |title=Major trends in Jewish mysticism |date=1972 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0-8052-0005-8 |edition=6. print |location=New York}}</ref> These were created when the books flooded into [[Mandatory Palestine]] during the period leading up to, coinciding with, and immediately following the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=From Berlin to Jerusalem: memories of my youth |last2=Zohn |first2=Harry |last3=Idel |first3=Mosheh |last4=Scholem |first4=Gershom |date=2012 |publisher=Paul Dry Books |isbn=978-1-58988-073-3 |edition= |series=Autobiography Jewish studies |location=Philadelphia}}</ref><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom Gerhard |last3=Knott |first3=Marie Luise |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-92451-9 |location=Chicago (Ill.)}}</ref>

=== Career ===
In 1923, when the [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]] was founded, later to become home to the [[Frankfurt School]], Benjamin published ''Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens''. At this time he became acquainted with [[Theodor Adorno]] and befriended [[Georg Lukács]], whose ''The Theory of the Novel'' (1920) influenced him. Meanwhile, [[inflation in the Weimar Republic]] after the war made it difficult for Emil Benjamin to continue supporting his son's family. At the end of 1923 Scholem emigrated to Palestine, then under a British mandate; despite repeated invitations, he failed to persuade Benjamin (and family) to leave the continent for the Middle East.

In 1924 [[Hugo von Hofmannsthal]], in the ''Neue Deutsche Beiträge'' magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("[[Goethe]]'s [[Elective Affinities]]"), about Goethe's third novel, ''[[Elective Affinities|Die Wahlverwandtschaften]]'' (1809). According to literary critic Burkhardt Lindner, the essay forms the "third major philosophical-aesthetic treatise of the early work" alongside the PhD dissertation and the [[habilitation thesis]]. It has often been linked to the breakup of his marriage. The dedication to Julia Cohn, whom he had courted in vain at the time, suggests this.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Benjamin Handbook. Leben - Werk - Wirkung |trans-title=Benjamin handbook. Life - work - effect |last=Lindner |first=Burkhardt |publisher=Metzler |location=Stuttgart |date=2011 |pages=472–493 |language=de}}</ref>

Likewise, according to [[Hannah Arendt]], it was his essay on Goethe that ruined Benjamin's only chance of a university career.<ref name=":14" /> Benjamin's Goethe monograph is partly a meditation on the form 'free-love' that the Benjamins were experimenting with in their marriage at this time, amongst other things. But this was only tangential to the issue that led to the controversy to which Arendt refers. His mistake (per Arendt) was killing a sacred cow from amongst the academic establishment.<ref name=":14" /> As so often in Benjamin's writings, his study of Goethe's ''Elective Affinities'' was marked by polemics and the theme of his assault in this work concerned [[Friedrich Gundolf]]'s Goethe book. Gundolf was the most prominent and able academic member of the [[George-Kreis|(Stefan) George-Kreis]]--a cult of post-symbolist, romantic nationalist poets with a mystically conservative, medievalist bent.<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |title=Illuminations. Essays and Reflections |last=Arendt |first=Hannah |publisher=[[Schocken Books]] |location=New York |date=1969 |pages=8–9}}</ref> Elsewhere, in the anonymity of his private epistolary writings, Benjamin explicitly points out how (regardless of the ultimate horror, withdrawal and rejection with which members of the circle greeted [[Nazi Germany|the Nazi regime]]) this group's commitment to particular archaic styles anticipated the aesthetics of [[fascism]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Adorno |first1=Theodor Wiesengrund |title=Aesthetics and politics |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |last3=Bloch |first3=Ernst |last4=Brecht |first4=Bertolt |last5=Lukacs |first5=György |date=2007 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-84467-570-8 |series=Radical thinkers |location=London}}</ref>

Later that year Benjamin and Bloch resided on the Italian island of [[Capri]]; Benjamin wrote ''Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels'' (''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama]]'') as a habilitation thesis meant to qualify him as a tenured university professor in Germany.

At Bloch's suggestion, he read Lukács's ''[[History and Class Consciousness]]'' (1923). He also met the Latvian Bolshevik and actress [[Asja Lācis]], then residing in Moscow; he became her lover and she was a lasting intellectual influence on him.<ref>[[Mark Lilla]], "The Riddle of Walter Benjamin" in ''[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/05/25/the-riddle-of-walter-benjamin/ The New York Review of Books]'', May 25, 1995.</ref>

A year later, in 1925, Benjamin withdrew ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' as his possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at the [[University of Frankfurt am Main]] at Frankfurt am Main, fearing its possible rejection.<ref name="BL">Jane O. Newman, ''Benjamin's Library: Modernity, Nation, and the Baroque'', Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 28: "university officials in Frankfurt recommended that Benjamin withdraw the work from consideration as his Habilitation."</ref> The work was a study in which he sought to "save" the category of [[allegory]]. It proved too unorthodox and abstruse for its examiners, who included prominent members of the humanities faculty, such as [[Hans Cornelius]].<ref name="Baroque">{{Cite book |title=The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 |last=Jay |first=Martin |publisher=University of California Press |date=1996 |pages=199–215 |isbn=0520917510}}</ref> [[Max Horkheimer]] also sat on the panel of examiners who rejected Benjamin's thesis. Horkheimer later serves as both patron and promoter of Benjamin's work at the [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]] and is best remembered as the co-author of Benjamin's closest disciple [[Theodor W. Adorno|Theodor Adorno]]'s magnum opus, the ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment|Dialectic of the Enlightenment]]'' (a book which cribs heavily from Benjamin's unpublished, esoteric writings in many of its most important passages).<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last1=Steiner |first1=George |title=The Origin of German Tragic Drama |last2=Benjamin |first2=Walter |publisher=Verso |year=1928 |publication-date=1928 |pages=7–27 |chapter=George Steiner's Introduction to Walter Benjamin's 'Origin of German Tragic Drama'}}</ref><ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Müller-Doohm |first=Stefan |title=Adorno: a biography |date=2009 |publisher=Polity Press |isbn=978-0-7456-3109-7 |edition= |location=Cambridge, UK}}</ref> In the case of Benjamin's habilitation, however, Horkheimer presents a united front with Cornelius and Professor Schultz in asking Benjamin to withdraw his application for the habilitation to avoid disgrace on the occasion of the examination.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> That is to say: His committee informed him that he will not be accepted as an academic instructor in the German university system.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> 

A diagram of the internecine dynamics of Benjamin's ''habilitation'' committee's rejection of his work bear recollection here, as they determine something of the character of his later career and ultimate legacy.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> [[Hans Cornelius]] had been Adorno's mentor in the institutional context of the university, whereas once Adorno started actually teaching as a professor at the University of Frankfurt, he devoted his seminars to Benjamin's rejected work.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> Adorno's 1931 and 1932 seminars, delivered at Frankfurt University, devoted themselves to a close reading of the ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama|Origins of German Tragic Drama]]''. Adorno was still teaching this class on the ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama|Origins of German Tragic Drama]]'' during the winter semester that [[Adolf Hitler]] came to power, although at that time it was not listed in the course catalog--whereas Adorno's academic mentor Cornelius, who had rejected this thesis, is today remembered primarily because of his rejection of Benjamin's habilitation.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" /> [[Max Horkheimer|Horkheimer]] becomes a footnote to the career of Benjamin's apprentice. Schultz--the other member of Benjamin's committee who seems to have directed him to the subject of Baroque drama in the first place, only to reject the thesis that derived from this recommendation--is virtually altogether forgotten. The episode in the history of the German academy is immortalized in the ''bon mot'', "One cannot habilitate intellect."<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

This failure resulted in his father's refusal to continue to support him financially, so that Benjamin was forced to make ends meet as a professional critic and occasional translator.<ref name="Baroque" /> Working with [[Franz Hessel]] he translated the first volumes of [[Marcel Proust]]'s ''À la Recherche du Temps Perdu'' (''In Search of Lost Time''). The next year, 1926, he began writing for the German newspapers ''[[Frankfurter Zeitung]]'' and ''Die Literarische Welt'' (The Literary World); that paid enough for him to reside in Paris for some months. In December 1926, the year his father died, Benjamin went to Moscow<ref>Seits, Irina S. [https://actual-art.spbu.ru/en/publications/archive/vol-8/art-theory/10671.html Invisible Avant-Garde and Absent Revolution: Walter Benjamin's New Optics for Moscow Urban Space of the 1920s], in ''Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles, vol. 8.'' St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2018, pp. 575–582. ISSN 2312-2129.</ref> to meet Lācis and found her ill in a sanatorium.<ref>''Moscow Diary''</ref>

During his stay in Moscow, he was asked by the editorial board of the [[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] to write an article on Goethe for the first edition of the encyclopedia. Benjamin's article was ultimately rejected, with reviewer [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]] (then the [[People's Commissariat for Education|People's Commissar of Education]]) characterizing it as "non-encyclopedic",<ref>{{Cite book|title=On Literature and Art|last=Lunacharsky|first=Anatoly|author-link=Anatoly Lunacharsky|year=1929|chapter=On Walter Benjamin's Goethe article|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lunachar/works/benjamin.htm|publisher=Progress Publishers|publication-place=Moscow|translator-last=P.|translator-first=Anton}}</ref> and only a small part of the text prepared by Benjamin was included in the encyclopedia. During Benjamin's lifetime, the article was not published in its entirety. A Russian translation of the article was published in the Russian edition of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in 1996.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://knigogid.com/books/dokumentalnye-knigi/biografii-i-memuary/page-48-36991-valter-benyamin-moskovskii-dnevnik.html |title=Вальтер Беньямин - Московский дневник » Страница 48 » Книги читать онлайн бесплатно без регистрации |publisher=Knigogid.com |date= |accessdate=2022-03-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://vk.com/doc5787984_441044913?hash=eef7a1a58fb5526d27&dl=0d92c414ce65478520 |title=(1996, Вальтер Беньямин) Произведение искусства в эпоху его технической воспроизводимости.pdf |publisher=Vk.com |date= |accessdate=2022-03-16}}</ref>

In 1927, he began ''[[The Arcades Project|Das Passagen-Werk]]'' (''The Arcades Project''), his uncompleted ''magnum opus'', a study of 19th-century Parisian life. The same year, he saw Scholem in Berlin, for the last time, and considered emigrating from Germany to Palestine. In 1928, he and Dora separated (they divorced two years later, in 1930); in the same year he published ''Einbahnstraße'' (''One-Way Street''), and a revision of his habilitation thesis ''Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels'' (''The Origin of German Tragic Drama''). In 1929 Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant to [[Bertolt Brecht]], socially presented the intellectuals to each other. In that time, Benjamin also briefly embarked upon an academic career, as an instructor at the [[University of Heidelberg]].

=== Exile and death ===
[[File:BenjaminBnF.jpg|alt= Walter Benjamin's membership card for the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1940).|thumb|257x257px|Walter Benjamin's membership card for the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]] (1940)]]
In 1932, during the turmoil preceding [[Adolf Hitler]]'s assumption of the office of [[Chancellor of Germany]], Benjamin left Germany temporarily for the Spanish island of [[Ibiza]] where he stayed for some months; he then moved to [[Nice]], where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the sociopolitical and cultural significance of the [[Reichstag fire]] (27 February 1933) as the ''de facto'' Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequent [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|persecution of the Jews]], he left Berlin and Germany for good in September. He moved to Paris, but before doing so he sought shelter in [[Svendborg]], at Bertolt Brecht's house, and at [[Sanremo]], where his ex-wife Dora lived.

As he ran out of money, Benjamin collaborated with [[Max Horkheimer]], and received funds from the Institute for Social Research, later going permanently into exile. In Paris, he met other refugee German artists and intellectuals; he befriended [[Hannah Arendt]], novelist [[Hermann Hesse]], and composer [[Kurt Weill]]. In 1936, a first version of "[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]" (originally written in German in 1935) was published in French ("L'œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction méchanisée") by Max Horkheimer in the ''Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung'' journal of the Institute for Social Research.<ref>{{Cite book |last=various |url=http://archive.org/details/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung5.Jg |title=Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 5. Jg |pages=40–68 |language=german}}</ref> It was a critique of the authenticity of mass-produced art; he wrote that a mechanically produced copy of an artwork can be taken somewhere the original could never have gone, arguing that the presence of the original is "prerequisite to the concept of authenticity".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Benjamin|first=Walter|date=1968|chapter=The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction|title=Illuminations: Essays and Reflections|pages=217–253}}</ref> [[File:Benjamin's apartment in Paris (fot. Mateusz Palka).jpg|thumb|342x342px|Walter Benjamin's Paris apartment at 10 {{Interlanguage link|Rue Dombasle (Paris)|lt=rue Dombasle|fr|Rue Dombasle (Paris)}} (1938–1940)]] In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), met [[Georges Bataille]] (to whom he later entrusted the ''Arcades Project'' manuscript), and joined the [[College of Sociology]] (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.")<ref>{{Cite book | last = Nguyen | first = Duy Lap | title = Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy.| location = London | publisher = Bloomsbury academic | date = 2022 |pages = 216–223}}</ref> In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Scholem |first1=Gershom |title=Walter Benjamin: the story of a friendship |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom |date=1982 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-11970-7 |location=London |pages=216}}</ref> Meanwhile, the Nazi régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; now a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French government and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp near [[Nevers]], in central [[Burgundy (French region)|Burgundy]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem |last2=Scholem |first2=Gershom Gerhard |last3=Knott |first3=Marie Luise |date=2017 |publisher=University of Chicago press |isbn=978-0-226-92451-9 |location=Chicago (Ill.) |pages=5–9 |chapter=Letter 4 (Arendt to Scholem, 17 Oct. 1941}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Eiland |first1=Howard |title=Walter Benjamin: a critical life |last2=Jennings |first2=Michael William |date=2014 |publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-05186-7 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |pages=654–755 |chapter='The Angel of History': Paris, Nevers, Port Bou}}</ref>

Returning to Paris in January 1940, he drafted "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("On the Concept of History", later published as "[[Theses on the Philosophy of History]]"). While the [[Wehrmacht]] was pushing back the [[French Army]], on 13 June Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town of [[Lourdes]], just a day before the Germans entered the capital with orders to arrest him at his flat. In August, he obtained a travel visa to the U.S. that Horkheimer had negotiated for him. In eluding the [[Gestapo]], Benjamin planned to travel to the U.S. from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach via [[Francoist Spain]], then ostensibly a neutral country.

[[File:Grab Walter Benjamin.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Walter Benjamin's grave in Portbou. The epitaph in German, repeated in Catalan, quotes from Section 7 of "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"]]The historical record indicates that he safely crossed the French–Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of [[Portbou]], in [[Catalonia]] on 25 September 1940. The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined. They were told by the Spanish police that they would be deported back to France the next day, which would have thwarted Benjamin's plans to travel to the United States. Expecting repatriation to Nazi hands, Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of [[morphine]] tablets that night, while staying at the ''Hotel de Francia''; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the date of death.<ref name="Witte"/><ref>{{Cite book|last=Arendt|editor=Walter Benjamin|first=Hannah|date=1968|chapter=Introduction|title=Illuminations: Essays and Reflections|pages=23–24}}</ref><ref>Jay, Martin ''The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950''.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Leslie|first=Esther|title=Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FXUN34lH-jgC&pg=PA215|access-date=August 28, 2009|series=Modern European Thinkers|year=2000|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=978-0-7453-1568-3|page=215|chapter=Benjamin's Finale}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Lester|first=David|title=Suicide and the Holocaust|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R1nkj-xSzYgC&pg=PA74|access-date=August 28, 2009|year=2005|publisher=Nova Publishers|isbn=978-1-59454-427-9|page=74|chapter=Suicide to Escape Capture: Cases}}</ref> Benjamin's colleague [[Arthur Koestler]], also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but survived.<ref>"Afraid of being caught by the Gestapo while fleeing France, [Koestler] borrowed suicide pills from Walter Benjamin. He took them several weeks later when it seemed he would be unable to get out of Lisbon, but didn't die." [[Anne Applebaum]], "[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/26/did-the-death-of-communis_n_435939.html Did The Death Of Communism Take Koestler And Other Literary Figures With It?]" Huffington Post, 28 March 2010, URL retrieved 15 March 2012.</ref> Benjamin's brother Georg was killed at the [[Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp]] in 1942.

The others in his party were allowed passage the next day (maybe because Benjamin's suicide shocked Spanish officials), and safely reached [[Lisbon]] on 30 September. [[Hannah Arendt|Arendt]], who crossed the French-Spanish border at Portbou a few months later, passed the manuscript of ''Theses'' to Adorno. Another completed manuscript, which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered.<ref>{{cite web |last1=van Straten |first1=Giorgio |title=Lost in migration |url=https://aeon.co/essays/what-happened-to-walter-benjamins-precious-black-suitcase |website=aeon.co |access-date=4 April 2019}}</ref>