Walter Benjamin: A Biography
- ISBN-10
- 1859849679
- ISBN-13
- 9781859849675
- Series
- Walter Benjamin
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography / General
- Pages
- 334
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1996
- Publisher
- Verso
- Author
- Momme Brodersen
Description
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now generally recognized as one of the most original and influential thinkers of this century. In Britain and the United States in particular, he has acquired a status unlike that of any other German philosopher, as successive generations of readers find their own paths through the endlessly fruitful ambiguities of his work. The conflicts and conjunctions between Benjamin's Marxism and his messianic Judaism, between his fascination for surrealism and his explorations of the Cabbala, between the philosopher of language and the ever-observant flâneur on the streets of Berlin or Paris—all these have inspired a wealth of interpretations and critical studies.
Widely acclaimed in Germany, Momme Brodersen's Walter Benjamin is the most comprehensive and illuminating biography of Benjamin ever published. Not only does Brodersen provide a fuller and more coherent account of Benjamin's nomadic career than has any previous scholar, he also demonstrates the fallacy of the popular, romanticized notion of his life as the sorrowful progression of a melancholic personality. The only real tragedy, he argues, was Benjamin's suicide at Portbou on the Franco-Spanish border in 1940. Using previously unavailable material, Brodersen pays particular attention to Benjamin's childhood in Berlin, to his conflicts with his bourgeois, Jewish family, his activities in the German Youth Movement, and the formative, irreconcilable influences of idealism, socialism and Zionism. He gives an exceptionally vivid picture of Benjamin's life during the Weimar Republic, of his success as a literary critic and his work as a translator and radio journalist, as well as of his friendships and love affairs. Finally, he follows Benjamin's harrowing journey through exile, internment and flight, and for the first time unravels the mysteries surrounding his death. At the same time, Brodersen provides a fresh and lucid presentation of Benjamin's written work, and of the extraordinary range of his ideas and enthusiasms.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2023-12-16
- 48 pages
- Ebook
- Hatje Cantz Verlag
-
- 2022-12-19
- 431 pages
- Ebook
- Ediciones El Mercurio
Similar books
-
The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake
By Henry TimberlakeThe Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake
-
Interviews with William Carlos Williams: "speaking Straight Ahead"
By William Carlos WilliamsDr. Williams discusses his own work and that of such contemporaries as Pound and Eliot and reveals his thoughts on a wide variety of twentieth-century concerns
-
雪球：巴菲特傳（最新增訂版）
By 艾莉絲．施洛德巴菲特畢生唯一授權傳記 全球首富與世人分享最慷慨的資產 除了股票，巴菲特更教你投資自己 ｜最新增訂版｜新增第63章危機、第64章雪球 ...
-
遇見安徒生
By 安徒生（H.C.Andersen）、葉君健本書內容分三部分:一為葉君健所寫評論安徒生其人其文的文章;二為安徒生所寫小故事;三為安徒生繪圖作品
-
Alta California, 1840-1842: The Journal and Observations of William Dane Phelps, Master of the Ship "Alert"
By William Dane Phelps276-9 , 403-3 ) ; William Richard Cutter , Genealogical and Personal Memoirs relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts ( N.Y. , 1908 ) , II , pp . 867-69 ; William Bentley , The Diary of William Bentley ...
-
Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of a Citizen of New-york, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853,...
By Solomon NorthupTwelve Years a Slave: Narrative of a Citizen of New-york, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853,...
-
Behind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
By Elizabeth KeckleyBehind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
-
Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail
By Daniel DraytonPersonal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail
-
Journalists of the United States: Biographical Sketches of Print and Broadcast News Shapers from the Late 17th Century to the...
By Robert Bingham Downs, Jane B. DownsWhen the Press folded after eighteen months , Cooper went to the Indianapolis Sun , as a police reporter . In 1901 he became Scripps - McRae's Indianapolis correspondent and then manager of the Indianapolis bureau , supplying news to a ...
-
Give Us Each Day: The Diary
By Alice Moore Dunbar-NelsonGive Us Each Day: The Diary