WALTER BENJAMIN IN PAPER ISLAND
Walter Benjamin was in Ibiza twice
The new series written about literary characters in history related to the island of Ibiza, 'Paper Island', that we launch at Ibiza Editions, brings us closer to the figure of the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin.
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (Berlin, 15 de julio de 1892 – port ox, 26 de septiembre de 1940) was a philosopher, Literary critic, German translator and essayist of Jewish origin. His thought includes elements of German Idealism or Romanticism., of historical materialism and Jewish mysticism that allow him to make lasting and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism.. His thought is associated with the Frankfurt School.
He studied Philosophy at the University of Berlin where he was a member of the "Union of Free Students". Translates works of Charles Baudelaire into German. At the University of Munich he met Rainer Maria Rilke and Gershom Scholem, who would become your friend. He also writes about the German romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin.
At the University of Bern he met Ernst Bloch and Dora Sophie Pollack (1890-1964), whom he would later marry. He defended his thesis Concept of art criticism in German Romanticism (The concept of art criticism in German Romanticism). He wanted to become a professor at the university, but they rejected him because he was Jewish.
The Benjamins, The salvation of humanity is linked to the salvation of nature. He was fascinated by the works of Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire., born observers of life. He criticized Hitler mercilessly, to fascist theory, to the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy and to German financial and industrial capital that supported Nazism as a form of preventive counterrevolution against the socialists.
en 1932, during the crisis before Hitler took power, Walter Benjamin was on the island of Ibiza. He does it twice, as Vicente Valero explains in his book Experience and poverty, which reconstructs the writer's Ibizan period, in love with the island, and the great influence it had on his life and work. After, moves to Nice, where he came to think about suicide, by lucidly perceiving the sociopolitical and cultural importance of the Reichstag fire (27 February 1933), What meant the assumption of all power by the Nazis in Germany. Persecution of Jews and Marxists unleashed, Benjamin moved to Paris, after a stay in Svendborg, in Bertolt Brecht's house and in San Remo, where his ex-wife Dora lived. He wrote to Scholem about an infinite fatigue that invaded him..
He couldn't return to Berlin. He sought the support of Marxist-critical philosophers as well., Adorno and Horkheimer. The latter accused him of not being a good materialist.. Benjamin was struggling with what he earned from this school, so he decided not to leave home and isolated himself socially and physically.. After the occupation of the city by Nazi troops, fled from Paris to Spain.
In Portbou he decided to end his life (at the France Hotel) rather than having to return to France and fall into the hands of the Gestapo. His tragic escape through the Pyrenees has inspired different works, among which is the novel Passenger Benjamin, by Ricardo Cano Gaviria, published in 1989.
Benjamin's method has influenced the way of research of several generations, inspiring some extracts from small essays entire intellectual trajectories.
paper island (1)
Ibiza editions
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