Benjamin, Walter

Walter Benjamin was a German philosopher, translator and critic of art and literature. He was born in Berlin in 1892 and died in Portbou, Spain, in 1940. Texts such as “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century” (1924-1939) and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935) make him a major theorist of the twentieth century, but also one who is difficult to classify. His erudite and multifaceted work takes the form of essays, correspondence and lectures, at the crossroads of literature, philosophy and the social sciences. Often associated with the Frankfurt School, he occupied a place within this movement (which was not yet called the Frankfurt School in his lifetime) that was both prefigurative and marginal.