Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German philosopher, cultural and literary critic, and translator. He studied philosophy, German literature, and art history, receiving his doctorate in Bern in 1919 for a study of German Romanticism. After his unsuccessful attempt to qualify as a university lecturer, he worked for newspapers and radio. He went into exile in Paris in 1933. His best-known writings include the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” “Berlin Childhood around 1900,” and the unfinished “Arcades Project.” Benjamin also translated works by Marcel Proust, Charles Baudelaire, and Honoré de Balzac. In 1940, while fleeing Nazi persecution, he took his own life in Portbou, Spain.