(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

LOST ORDERS OF THE DAY: BENJAMIN’S EINBAHNSTRASSE
71
power of his writing and a certain powerlessness in his real life, although
he actually viewed this contradiction rather critically, as is shown in the
pun Für Männer (For men): “Über-Zeugen ist unfruchtbar” (GS IV.1:83;
“To convince is to conquer without conception,” SW 1:446).
A Better Life
The book is one of the very rare authentically surrealistic testimonies in
Germany written between the two world wars. It was published in January
1928 by Ernst Rowohlt Verlag in Hamburg. In the 1920s Benjamin
tried to launch a double career as an academic and as a creative literary
author; he wrote books in both fields and tried to erase the boundaries
between them. In 1926 he did not succeed with his philosophical
post doctorate project (Habilitation) at the University of Frankfurt am
Main. 2 So he decided to continue as a professional freelance writer, critic,
reviewer, and columnist for the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Literarische
Welt, the most important feuilleton venues in Germany at that time. It
was his later companion of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Max
Horkheimer, who did not understand his Habilitation thesis, Ursprung
des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of the German Mourning Play),
and so the authorities of the university refused to grant Benjamin formal
permission to give professorial lectures. His second academic attempt in
1929 to become a professor, at the newly founded Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, did not succeed either, but that was his own doing: his friend
Gershom Scholem, who had been living in Jerusalem since 1923, had
tried hard to bring him into the faculty and had even sent him the money
for the journey. However, Benjamin would have had to learn Hebrew,
and Scholem also wanted him to agree to some of the conditions in Jewish
Palestine. Benjamin hesitated for a long time — he had fallen in love
with Asja and was separated from the Jewish world. So he took the travel
money from Scholem but stayed in Europe and continued to work with
Lacis, Brecht, and others in Berlin, Munich, and Paris. 3 When Einbahnstraße
was published, he was at the peak of his love affair with Asja, full of
hope for a new life.
A Small Book for Friends, and a Picture
In 1928 Benjamin planned a book comprising a collection of aphorisms
for his personal friends, a so-called plaquette: “In mehreren Kapiteln, die
je als einzige Überschrift den Namen eines mir Nahestehenden tragen,
will ich meine Aphorismen, Scherze, Träume versammeln” (I intend to
collect my aphorisms, witticisms, and dreams in several chapters, each of
which will carry the name of someone close to me as its only heading),
he wrote in a letter to Scholem. 4 Later on he gave each short piece a new
title, which was an integral part of the work itself, and he also changed