Editing Walter Benjamin (section)

=== 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>