Editing Walter Benjamin (section)

=== 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]].