Walter Benjamin ― A Biography

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 fruitul ambiguities of his work. Now available for the first time in English, Momme Brodersen's Walter Benjamin is the most comprehensive biography so far published, and has been widely acclaimed in its author's native Germany. Brodersen provides a fuller and more coherent account of Benjanin's career than has any previous writer. In telling detail, he recounts Benjamin's emotional and intellectual relaionships and discusses many hitherto neglected aspects of Benjamin's life, including his role as literary critic. Brodersen pays particular attention to Benjamin's childhood and youth, his activities in the radical section of the German Youth Movement, and the formative, irreconcilable influences of idealism, socialism and Zionism. At the same time, he gives a fresh and lucid presentation of Benjamin's written work -- much of which remains unavailable in English -- and of the extraordinary diversity of his ideas and enthusiasms. Thoroughly revised and updated for this English edition, and accompanied by nearly a hundred documentary photographs, this biography, is an essential study of the man who himself remains an indispensable guide to the ruins and enchantments of the twentieth century.

Momme Brodersen teaches German literature and cultural history at the University of Palermo. He has compiled two Benjamin bibliographies and has edited a casebook of Benjamin studies.