- Person
- Walter Benjamin
- Lived
- 1892–1940
- Field
- Criticism & philosophy
- From
- German
The story
Walter Benjamin was born in Berlin in 1892 into an assimilated Jewish family. Known today as one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, he spent much of his life without a secure income, writing criticism and translating Baudelaire and Proust. In the late 1920s radio was a new mass medium in Germany, and Benjamin saw in it a way to reach ordinary people.
With help from his friend Ernst Schoen, who worked at the radio station in Frankfurt, Benjamin began broadcasting in 1927. Over the next six years he delivered about ninety broadcasts on regional stations in Berlin and Frankfurt. His last was on 29 January 1933, the day before Hitler became chancellor. Most of his radio work came between 1929 and early 1933, and much of it was made for young listeners.
His talks for children covered an extraordinary range: the streets, toy shops and dialect of Berlin, famous swindlers and frauds such as Cagliostro, bootleggers, and disasters such as the Lisbon earthquake. He also wrote radio plays for children, including one about the puppet character Kasper. Rather than lecturing, he spoke to children directly, asked them questions and encouraged them to form their own opinions. In one broadcast about Berlin's toy shops he playfully asked children to explain his criticism of shopping culture to their parents.
Benjamin and his friend Bertolt Brecht imagined radio as a two-way medium, in which listeners would not only receive information but take part. He even created what he called listening models, practical programmes meant to help people handle everyday situations.
Only some forty to fifty of his typescripts survive, and no recordings of his voice have been found. The scripts were published in German in 1985 and collected in English in 2014 as Radio Benjamin, so that new generations of readers can discover them.
Why it matters
Benjamin's broadcasts are an early model of public service radio for children that respects young listeners, and they still inspire educators and broadcasters who want to teach curiosity and critical thinking.
About Walter Benjamin
Berlin-born critic and philosopher who rethought art, memory and history in the age of mass media, and who died fleeing the Nazis at the Spanish border in 1940.
More about Walter Benjamin
Sources
- A two-way medium: Radio Benjamin editor Lecia Rosenthal speaks to Kester John Richardson-Dawes Verso Books
- Walter Benjamin's Radio Plays for Kids (1929 to 1932) Open Culture
- Walter Benjamin Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.