Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn];^[1] 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940)^[2] was a German philosopher, cultural critic, and translator.

Walter Benjamin
Born	(1892-07-15)15 July 1892 Berlin, German Empire
Died	26 September 1940(1940-09-26) (aged 48) Portbou, Catalonia, Spain
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Western Marxism
Main interests	Literary theory, aesthetics, philosophy of technology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of history
Notable ideas	Auratic perception, aestheticization of politics
Influences Adorno · Bachofen · Baudelaire · Brecht · Lukács · Marx · Proust · Scholem
Influenced Adorno · Arendt · Derrida · Scholem · Sontag · Taussig · Löwy · Buck-Morss · Perret

Benjamin was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, then-German Empire.

He worked in many subjects such as German idealism, Romanticism, historical materialism, and Jewish mysticism. He helped aesthetic theory, media studies and Western Marxism grow.

Benjamin died by suicide by taking an overdose of morphine in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis at the age of 48.

Family

Jewish-East German judge and politician Hilde Benjamin was his brother's wife.