“has an immanent relationship to Judaism and to the first chapter of the Genesis”
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Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western Marxism, and post-Kantianism, he made contributions to the philosophy of history, metaphysics, historical materialism, criticism, and aesthetics, and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on…
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culture · German cultural critic, philosopher and social critic (1892–1940) · philosopher · writer · translator · essayist · literary critic · sociologist · art critic · literary historian · librettist · also Walter Benjamin, Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin, Benjamin
Born 15 July 1892 · Died 26 September 1940 · Q61078
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2026· 4 entries
UNSAM: » Ciclos – Walter Benjamin y la teoría crítica.
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El diario de Tandil: Taller sobre Walter Benjamin a cargo del profesor Víctor Torres
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La Crónica de Hoy: ¿Hay esperanza? El Anticristo... y el mesías que nos podrá salvar: Walter Benjamin y la disputa por la historia
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2025· 1 entry
Libcom: Walter Benjamin
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2022· 1 entry
Igor Chubarov, a modern Russian philosopher, specialist in media studies and translator of Benjamin's works into Russian, created the Russian-language Telegram channel "Radio Benjamin"
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2021· 1 entry
Hyperallergic: A Deep Dive Into Walter Benjamin
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2020· 2 entries
CU Boulder News & Events: Walter Benjamin: Critique, Aesthetics, Politics
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CounterPunch: Walter Benjamin, the Jewish Question and Theses on the Philosophy of History
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2017· 3 entries
Hyperallergic: Walter Benjamin on How to Stop Worrying and Love Late Capitalism
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The Guardian: Why it’s fashionable to quote Walter Benjamin
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Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project was reinterpreted in an exhibition curated by Jens Hoffman, held at the Jewish Museum in New York City
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2016· 1 entry
The Guardian: The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin review – a master thinker's fiction
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2015· 1 entry
The Guardian: Kenneth Goldsmith interview: ‘I wanted to take Walter Benjamin off the pedestal and on to the coffee table’
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2014· 1 entry
Wall Street Journal: Book Review: 'Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life' by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings
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2008· 1 entry
The Nation: Walter Benjamin Forever: A Critic’s Coveted Afterlife
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2003· 1 entry
Publishers Weekly: WALTER BENJAMIN: Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938–1940
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2001· 1 entry
Was named "Walter-Benjamin-Platz"
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2000· 1 entry
Researches and discusses the imperative that Benjamin formulated in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest the tradition away from a conformism that is about to ov
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1968· 1 entry
The first Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft was established by the German thinker, poet and artist Natias Neutert, as a free association of philosophers, writers, artists, media theoreticians and editors
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1955· 1 entry
But global acclaim came to him when his works were translated into English and introduced to a reading public in the Anglosphere by Arendt in 1968
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1940· 11 entries
Died 1940-09-26.
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“A informação só tem valor no momento em que é nova.”
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“Theses on the Philosophy of History”
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At the age of 48, Benjamin died during his flight into exile at Portbou on the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich
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“O tédio é um tecido cinzento e quente, forrado por dentro com a seda das cores mais variadas e vibrantes. Nele nós nos enrolamos quando sonhamos.”
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“(O narrador) sabe dar conselhos: não para alguns casos, como o provérbio, mas para muitos casos, como o sábio. Pois pode recorrer ao acervo de toda uma vida (uma vida que não inclui apenas a própria experiência, mas em grande parte a experiência alheia. O narrador assimila à sua substância mais íntima aquilo que sabe por ouvir dizer).”
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“Se imprime na narrativa a marca do narrador, como a mão do oleiro na argila do vaso. Os narradores gostam de começar sua história com uma descrição das circunstâncias em que foram informados dos fatos que vão contar a seguir, a menos que prefiram atribuir essa história a uma experiência autobiográfica.”
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“Contar histórias sempre foi a arte de contá-las de novo, e ela se perde quando as histórias não são mais conservadas. Ela se perde porque ninguém mais fia ou tece enquanto ouve a história.”
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“A arte de narrar está em vias de extinção. São cada vez mais raras as pessoas que sabem narrar devidamente.”
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“Wnętrze jest dla człowieka prywatnego całym wszechświatem. Gromadzi w nim wszystko, co dalekie i przeszłe. Jego salon to loża w teatrze świata.”
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“Niezniszczalność najwyższego życia we wszystkich rzeczach.”
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1938· 2 entries
Paid his last visit to Brecht in Denmark
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“Franz Kafka: Building the Great Wall of China”
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1937· 1 entry
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 o
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1936· 1 entry
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 Horkheimer in the Ze
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1935· 2 entries
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
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Benjamin described his undertaking as a philosophical utilization and simultaneous sublation of the Surrealist inheritance
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1933· 1 entry
Career landmark: Nazi book burnings.
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1932· 1 entry
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, whe
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1931· 1 entry
A commentary on Max Brod's biography of Kafka in 1937, and carried on a correspondence about Kafka with Scholem and Adorno
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1929· 2 entries
Berlin, Lācis, then an assistant to Bertolt Brecht, socially presented the intellectuals to each other
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Benjamin published “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” in Die literarische Welt
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1928· 2 entries
Published The Origin of German Tragic Drama as a book
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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 G
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1927· 1 entry
Began Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), his uncompleted magnum opus, a study of 19th-century Parisian life
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1926· 1 entry
And put it out the same year that his failed thesis was published
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1925· 2 entries
As the postdoctoral dissertation meant to earn him the habilitation (qualification) to become a university instructor in Germany
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Benjamin withdrew The Origin of German Tragic Drama as his possible qualification for the habilitation teaching credential at the University of Frankfurt am Main, fearing its possible rejection
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1924· 1 entry
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in the Neue Deutsche Beiträge magazine, published Benjamin's "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("Goethe's Elective Affinities"), about Goethe's third novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809)
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1923· 1 entry
When the Institute for Social Research was founded, later to become home to the Frankfurt School, Benjamin published Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens
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1921· 1 entry
Published the essay "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Toward the Critique of Violence")
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1920· 1 entry
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)
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1919· 1 entry
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)
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1917· 1 entry
Benjamin transferred to the University of Bern; there he met Ernst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner), whom he married
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1916· 1 entry
“On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”
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1912· 1 entry
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 Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin to continue studying philosophy
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1905· 1 entry
The family sent him to Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, part of the German rural boarding school movement in the Thuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Ka
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1901· 1 entry
The eight-year-old Walter was enrolled at the Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg; he completed his secondary school studies ten years later
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1892· 1 entry
Born 1892-07-15.
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