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Correspondence 1930 - 1940

Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity Press), Spanish world rights (Eterna cadencia), France (Gallimard), Japan (Misuzu Shobo)


Correspondence 1930 - 1940 / Briefwechsel 1930–1940
Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz
The correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin began in 1930, but only after Benjamin’s emigration to France did it reach its full intensity, standing not only as a testament to the intellectual Berlin of the twenties, but also as a document of a great friendship that existed independently of the relationship between Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.


While Benjamin wrote of his daily tribulations and the pressing projects he worked on in the last years of...
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The correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin began in 1930, but only after Benjamin’s emigration to France did it reach its full intensity, standing not only as a testament to the intellectual Berlin of the twenties, but also as a document of a great friendship that existed independently of the relationship between Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.


While Benjamin wrote of his daily tribulations and the pressing projects he worked on in the last years of his life, primarily the “Baudelaire” texts, it was Gretel Karplus Adorno who tried with all her might and main to keep him on earth. She urged him to emigrate, informed him of Adorno’s plans and where Bloch was staying, and in so doing maintained the connection between the old Berlin friends and acquaintances. She sent him monetary aid through the most difficult periods and organized financial support from Saarland, which remained for a time independent from the German Reich. After arriving in New York, she attempted to lure him with descriptions of those newly arriving. But Benjamin wrote in early 1940: »We must see to it that we put our very best into our letters, for there is yet no sign that the moment of our reunion is near.«

2005, 434 pages
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Gretel Adorno (née Karplus) was born in Berlin in 1902. She held a PhD in chemistry and from 1933 to 1937 managed a Berlin-based company that manufactured leather gloves. In the late 1920s, she was affiliated with numerous intellectuals including Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch and Bertolt Brecht. In 1923, she met Theodor W. Adorno, whom she married in exile in London in 1937. In 1938, the couple emigrated to the United States. They returned to Germany in 1953. Until her death in 1993, Gretel Adorno lived in Frankfurt am Main.

Gretel Adorno (née Karplus) was born in Berlin in 1902. She held a PhD in chemistry and from 1933 to 1937 managed a Berlin-based company...

Walter Benjamin was born on July 15, 1892 in Berlin as the oldest of three children and died by suicide on September 26, 1940 in Portbou, Spain. After graduating secondary school in 1912 he studied Philosophy, German Literature and Psychology in Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich and Berlin. In 1915, he met Gershom Scholem, a student of mathematics five years his junior, with whom he remained friends until his death. In 1917, Benjamin married Dora Kellner and became father to a son, Stefan Rafael (1918-1972). The marriage lasted for 13 years. Also in 1917, Benjamin relocated to Bern, Switzerland, where he obtained his PhD two years later with his thesis entitled »Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik bei Richard Herbertz«. In 1923/24 he met Theodor W. Adorno and...

Walter Benjamin was born on July 15, 1892 in Berlin as the oldest of three children and died by suicide on September 26, 1940 in Portbou, Spain....


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Correspondence 1933-1940
Year of Publication: 1983
Gershom Scholem, Walter BenjaminYear of Publication: 1983

The correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem spans from March 1933 to February 1940. The letters document the last period in Benjamin’s life: the problems of material existence,...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Schocken Books), Spanish world rights (Trotta), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Sanhui), Italy (Adelphi), Turkey (Ketebe)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Brazilian Portuguese rights (Perspectiva), France (L'Éclat), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei UP)


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27.01.2020
January 27 marks the Memorial Day for the Victims of National Socialism in Germany and the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust.