Einbahnstraße / Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert

by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamins Kurzprosa gehört längst zum Kanon der Klassischen Moderne. Ob Briefmarke, Perserteppich oder Karussell – noch die unscheinbarsten Phänomene können Gegenstand von Benjamins berühmten Denkbildern werden, die auf ein tieferes Verständnis des 20. Jahrhunderts zielen. In jedem Fragment spürt man dabei die Bedrohungen und Katastrophen der Zeit – zugleich aber auch die tiefe Hoffnung, dass alles einmal anders und besser wird.

Mit dem Werkbeitrag aus Kindlers Literatur Lexikon.

Mit Daten zu Leben und Werk, exklusiv verfasst von der Redaktion der Zeitschrift für Literatur TEXT + KRITIK.
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Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Germany

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.

Reviews

[nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

eisenbahnstrasse: diese fragmentsammlung ist ganz nett aber hab da jetzt auch nix mitgenommen. liest sich so als hätte man einem teenager auf tumblr ein fremdwörterbuch gegeben.
berliner kindheit: war ok, waren halt auch quasi blogposts

[maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

я пыталась что-то написать про беньямина и его тексты, которые столько всего во мне вызвали, но не могу я так сразу после него претендовать на хоть какое-то владение словом и умение мыслить. хочу возвращаться к этим сборникам еще много-много раз. трепет и обреченность. фотокарточки нерасколдованного мира.

[Acontecimal]

pass the boof Benjamin!!!!

[arhon · Rating 5 out of 5]

ver de uma segunda forma o que se vê sempre

[Ali Jones Alkazemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Min første bok av Walter Benjamin lignet en spennende sti. Enveiskjørt gate var klart den mest interessante etterhvert som Benjamins hverdagslige bemerkninger klart inneholdt marxistiske kjennetegn og kunne likeså bli tolket på filosofisk vis - som er svært morsomt ettersom boken også har mulighet til å bli lest som en kjedelig dagbok. Jeg var engasjert nok til å finne inspirasjon for tanker og tror at det er flere muligheter til det om jeg bruker mer tid.
Anbefales ikke til dem som ikke kjenner til Walter Benjamin, 3,5/5.

[Lukas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr dicht. Die beiden Fragmentsammlungen bilden einen sensiblen Kontrast, der einen tiefen Einblick in den Geist Benjamins, in die Zeitgeschichte sowie Kunst- und Literaturtheorie gibt.

[Harald · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the sublime to the mundane
The book includes two texts first published ten years apart, 1928 and 1938. Childhood in Berlin is written in I-form, while Enveiskjørt gate is written without any clear narrator. What is common is that the content spans both abstractions and everyday life. There is also no consistent action, not even in the memoir section. In other words, it is not an easy-to-read book. Obviously, it has not been easy to translate either. My edition from 2014 is the translators' second attempt to give Benjamin's German a Norwegian language suit.

Childhood in Berlin is still the most accessible. Even though it is an adult who writes, I think that Benjamin has managed to keep the child's perspective. Of course, we may wonder if it is possible for an adult to remember so much from early childhood, but the author is adept at avoiding retrospective interpretations and explanations.

Enveiskjørt gate, on the other hand, is almost lexical in its scarce, finely polished pieces of text. From time to time, there are glimpses of quotable insights and quirks. He writes, for example, about how the choice of writing norm affects what we write. He would greatly appreciate the large selection of fonts and emojis that we can choose from in today's word processing universe.

[Max Debie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3⭐️ Volgens mij een heel goed boek! Vooral op het laats waar het best wel gevoelig en emotioneel was vond ik het heel mooi. Misschien had ik het wat meer begrepen als het niet Duits is🥲🙄😛 (ik snapte oprecht maar 5% ofzo😭)

[Sheri Moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quatre étoiles juste pour son talent poétique.

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Coiffeur für penible Damen" ist unter vielen anderen besonders lesenswert.