Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin was born on July 15, 1892, in Berlin and committed suicide on September 26, 1940, at the Spanish border to avoid capture by the Gestapo. His most significant essays, often published as articles in journals and reviews, include: - "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" ("Critique of Violence," Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik, 1921) - "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" ("Goethe's Elective Affinities," Neue Deutsche Beiträge, 1924/25) - "Einbahnstrasse" ("One-Way Street," Rowohlt, Berlin, 1928) - "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels" ("The Origin of German Tragic Drama," 1928) - "Der Surrealismus" ("Surrealism," Die literarische Welt, 1929) - "Karl Kraus" (Frankfurter Zeitung, 1931) - "Franz Kafka. Zur zehnten Wiederkehr seines Todestages" ("Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death," Jüdische Rundschau, 1934) - "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1936) - "Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker" ("Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian," Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1937) - "Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert" ("Berlin Childhood around 1900," 1932-1934, 1938) - "Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire" ("On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1939) - "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" ("On the Concept of History," 1940), and various essays that are part of his unfinished and fragmentary work "Paris, die Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts" ("Paris, the Capital of the 19th Century")