The Work of Walter Benjamin in the Age of Information

"The kind of thinking that Benjamin embodies today," remarked Siegfried Kracauer somewhat ruefully in a 1928 essay, "has fallen into oblivion."2 Reviewing Benjamin's two book publications of that same year, Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [The Origin of the German Tragic Drama] and Einbahnstrasse [One-Way Street] the only two major books published under his name in his lifetime Kracauer perceived in Benjamin "a type of thinking that is foreign to current thought," something that was "more akin to talmudic writings and medieval tractates."3 Little could Kracauer ever have suspected that some seven decades later, long after Benjamin's untimely death in September 1940, his close friend would gain the recognition, even the fame, that would prevent his thinking from falling anywhere near