97into exile and from then on his situation was extremely precarious. A minimal grant
from the Institut für Sozialforschung^42 enabled him to live in Paris and work, until the
war forced him to leave that city too. On the night of September 26, 1940, on his way
to Spain—his plan was to go via Spain to New York and report to the Institute there—
he committed suicide.
The work he left behind consisted of three books and a large quantity of es-
says, short and long. The Passagenwerkthat would have been his masterpiece and
on which he had worked during the last thirteen years of his life remained unfinished.
Today Benjamin is acknowledged as one of the most important philosophers of
modernity, even though recognition in his case came somewhat belatedly. The first
edition of Benjamin’s Schriften, edited by Theodor and Gretel Adorno, did not appear
until 1955, and it was only in the sixties that his work finally became known in wider
circles. Benjamin was a genuine cult figure for a while at the time of the student re-
volt of 1968. He was seen as a radical theoretician to whom one could refer in order
to develop a materialistic theory about the relation between intellectual work and po-
litical engagement. The interpretation of his work that was fashionable at the time
was based mainly on some of his most programmatic writings. These belong to a
specific genre of Marxism; only occasionally do they give one an inkling of the theo-
logical-metaphysical mode of thought that was just as typical an aspect of Benjamin’s
philosophy.^43
Gradually, as more of his work was published—a process only completed in
1989—the reception of his work became less lopsided. Within the large body of sec-
ondary literature,^44 the ambivalence that would seem to be a hallmark of his work has
become a recurring theme. His writings are said to attest on the one hand to an in-
superable melancholy and grief about what has been lost, and, on the other, to a rad-
ical and utopian belief in the power of the avant-garde that has paved the way for the
realization of a genuinely humane society. A number of recent commentaries, how-
ever, have attempted to identify a certain coherence behind the variety, internal
contradictions, and fragmented character of Benjamin’s oeuvre and to define his
ambivalence in terms of an underlying consistency or even of a system.^45 This would
have to do with a number of philosophical intuitions that permeate his work even
though they are not systematically stated in any explicit fashion. At issue here are
some very specific—not to mention uncommon—notions about language, world,
and history that do not belong to the standard categories of Western philosophy.
They depend on a curious mixture of Jewish and materialistic concepts, combined
with a theory of experience and an openness to revolutionary impulses in mass cul-
ture. In combination, these contradictory principles lead to a unique and multifaceted
oeuvre.
In architectural theory there has been a fairly intensive, if somewhat ponder-
ous, assimilation of Benjamin’s concepts.^46 Attention has been paid in particular to
his interpretation of modern architecture. Benjamin was convinced that this archi-
tecture of steel and glass fulfills the promises that are inherent in modern civilization,96