Understanding Brecht

The majority of these studies, by one of the outstanding critics of this century, were set down in the years of emigration from Nazi Germany, when Benjamin was a personal friend of Brecht's. Most remained unpublished in the author's lifetime, a few were printed in the short-lived periodicals of exile. Their publication, more than twenty-years after Benjamin's death, revealed him to be Brecht's first and most profound critic.

Walter Benjamin was born in Germany in 1892 and died in Spain in 1940. he studied philosophy and literature in Berlin, Freiberg, Munich and Bern. After the First World War he worked as a freelance critic and translator, notably of Baudelaire and Proust. He moved to Paris to escape the Nazi take-over and committed suicide in September 1940 whilst attempting to escape from Occupied France to Spain. He was a friend of figures such as Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. His other books include Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1968), Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (1978), Moscow Diary (1986) and, published by Verso, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (1973), The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1977) and One-Way Street (1979). For biographical details, see Walter Benjamin. A Biography by Momme Broderson (Verso 1996).