Berlin Childhood around 1900
Nov 2025 · Verso Books
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An elegant new translation of Benjamin’s moving evocation of the experiences of his urban childhood
Composed in exile in the 1930s and published as a whole only after his death, the miniatures that make up Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood are crystallized images of childhood experienced in a city later surrendered to fascism. No ordinary autobiography, the book is a Proustian experiment in memory and a meditative tour of the iconic spaces of a city irretrievably lost to the adult. Instead of details of family and friends, these miniatures evoke the sensory richness of childhood in images of the squares and courtyards, the parks and monuments of Berlin, the child’s schoolbooks and the gloomy flats of elderly relatives. As Benjamin’s friend Theodor Adorno writes in his afterword, ‘the images the book brings up into a disturbing proximity are not idyllic and not contemplative. The shadow of Hitler’s Reich falls across them. Dreamlike, they unite that horror with something that has long existed.’
This new translation includes an introduction by Antonia Hofstätter, highlighting the way this nearly century-old work resonates with contemporary readers and inspires hope by providing access to strata of experience not governed by instrumentality and domination.
Composed in exile in the 1930s and published as a whole only after his death, the miniatures that make up Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood are crystallized images of childhood experienced in a city later surrendered to fascism. No ordinary autobiography, the book is a Proustian experiment in memory and a meditative tour of the iconic spaces of a city irretrievably lost to the adult. Instead of details of family and friends, these miniatures evoke the sensory richness of childhood in images of the squares and courtyards, the parks and monuments of Berlin, the child’s schoolbooks and the gloomy flats of elderly relatives. As Benjamin’s friend Theodor Adorno writes in his afterword, ‘the images the book brings up into a disturbing proximity are not idyllic and not contemplative. The shadow of Hitler’s Reich falls across them. Dreamlike, they unite that horror with something that has long existed.’
This new translation includes an introduction by Antonia Hofstätter, highlighting the way this nearly century-old work resonates with contemporary readers and inspires hope by providing access to strata of experience not governed by instrumentality and domination.
An elegant new translation of Benjamin’s moving evocation of the experiences of his urban childhood
Composed in exile in the 1930s and published as a whole only after his death, the miniatures that make up Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood are crystallized images of childhood experienced in a city l...
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About the author
WALTER BENJAMIN (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Among his best-known works are ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ and essays on Kafka, Proust, Baudelaire and the storyteller. His masterwork, the Arcades Project, which intended to present a cultural theory of modernity through a study of nineteenth-century Paris, remained unfinished at his death.
SHIERRY WEBER NICHOLSEN is a psychoanalyst practicing in Seattle. She has translated several of Theodor W. Adorno’s works, including Notes to Literature, and is the author of Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno’s Aesthetics.
ANTONIA HOFSTÄTTER works on early critical theory and aesthetics. She has published widely on the thought of Theodor W. Adorno and is one of the editors of the Journal of Adorno Studies.
SHIERRY WEBER NICHOLSEN is a psychoanalyst practicing in Seattle. She has translated several of Theodor W. Adorno’s works, including Notes to Literature, and is the author of Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno’s Aesthetics.
ANTONIA HOFSTÄTTER works on early critical theory and aesthetics. She has published widely on the thought of Theodor W. Adorno and is one of the editors of the Journal of Adorno Studies.
WALTER BENJAMIN (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Among his best-known works are ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ and essays on Kafka, Pro...
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