Editing Walter Benjamin (section)

=== 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>