Walter Benjamin - Radio Benjamin

Radio Frankfurt presented three listening models from 1931 to 1932:

1. “A Pay Raise?! Whatever Gave You That Idea!”

2. “The Boy Tells Nothing But Lies.”

3. “Can You Help Me Out Until Thursday?”

The first listening model showed one inept and one clever employee, negotiating with their boss. The second showed a ten-year-old boy who tells a fib. In the first part his father questions him, driving him deeper and deeper into his untruth. In the second part his mother demonstrates how to make the boy aware of his naughtiness without provoking defiance. The third listening model showed the clumsy behavior of a man who asks his friend for money and gets turned down, followed by the skillful actions of someone else in the same situation.

“Hörmodelle,” GS, 4.2, 628. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.

Unpublished during Benjamins lifetime. “Listening Models” was possibly written in early 1931, in conjunction with the broadcast of “A Pay Raise?!” Benjamin did produce at least one additional listening model, perhaps in collaboration with Wolf Zucker: a piece entitled “Frech wird der Junge auch noch!” [The Boy Is Getting Fresh, Too!], likely a version of the above-mentioned “The Boy Tells Nothing But Lies,” was broadcast from Frankfurt on July 1, 1931, and perhaps from Berlin as well (see editors’ notes in GS, 2.3, 1442; see also Schiller-Lerg, Walter Benjamin und der Rundfunk, 196–7, 213–16).

The Appendix, a chronological presentation of Benjamin’s known broadcasts and, where possible, their titles, is intended to provide the reader with an overall sense of the scale and timing of Benjamin’s broadcast output. It is indebted to Sabine Schiller-Lerg’s seminal study, Walter Benjamin und der Rundfunk (see in particular her chronological listing of the broadcasts, pp. 530–2; for programming categories, see especially pp. 540–1), as well as to the editors’ notes to Benjamin’s Gesammelte Schriften. Both of these sources provide detailed information concerning the archival status, dating, and location of Benjamin’s broadcasts. Where indicated, the information comes from another source.

Below the individual translations in this volume, we have provided further information, where available, concerning the archival sources from which the dates of broadcast have been determined. There, where possible, we also indicate the length and time of the broadcasts.

For broadcasts that are translated and included in Radio Benjamin, the reader is referred to this volume. For broadcasts that do not appear in this volume but that have been translated elsewhere, the reader is referred to the relevant translation. For broadcasts that do not appear in this volume and, as far as we know, have not been translated elsewhere, the reader is referred to the relevant pages in the Gesammelte Schriften. In the last instance, the titles appear first in German, with a translation provided in brackets.

A word on the “lost or missing” broadcasts: these are known to have taken place in the sense that other archival traces, including announcements in radio journals such as the Berlin station’s Funkstunde or the Frankfurt station’s Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitung, testify to the fact. These broadcast-events, for which there is no remaining typescript of the material in its broadcast form, fall into at least two categories: broadcasts for which there is no related, surviving “textual witness” to the broadcast material, in other words no existing material other than the mention of the broadcast in a radio journal or in Benjamin’s other broadcasts, letters, or other work; and broadcasts for which there exist other, related versions of the material, such as print versions published elsewhere by Benjamin. For the latter category, we refer the reader to the relevant pages of the related material in the Gesammelte Schriften, and, where possible, relevant translations of the related texts.

For dates on which a broadcast is known to have taken place but for which the precise title or content is not known, the relevant, if incomplete, information is given in brackets under the title column. These dates should be read in tandem with Table 2, which gives broadcast texts for which the precise date of broadcast is not known.

Table 3 provides information about radio texts that were planned or completed by Benjamin but were never aired, as well as about broadcasts that might have taken place but for which there is no further information.

Table 1 : Chronological list of broadcast dates

Date

Station

Title

Programming Category / Broadcast Type

Reference

1.

3/23/1927

Frankfurt

“

Junge russische Dichter” [Young Russian Writers]

Talk

Lost or missing. See related text, “Neue Dichtung in Russland,” GS, 2.2, 755–62.

2.

8/14/1929

Frankfurt

“Die Romane von Julien Green” [The Novels of Julien Green]

Talk on the book-hour

Lost or missing. See related text, “Julien Green,” GS, 2.1, 328–34. Translated in SW, 2, 331–6.

3.

8/15/1929

Frankfurt

“Children’s Literature”

Talk

In this volume.

4.

8/20/1929

Frankfurt

“Reading of Works by Robert

Walser”

Reading

Lost or missing.

1

5.

9/4/1929

Frankfurt

“Vorlesung aus eigenen Werken” [Readings from My Own Work]

Reading

Lost or missing.

6.

10/29/1929

Frankfurt

“Johann Peter Hebel”

Talk on the book-hour

GS, 2.2, 636–40.

7.

10/31/1929

Frankfurt

“Gides Berufung” [Gide’s Vocation]

Talk

GS, 2.1, 257–69.

8.

11/9/1929

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

9.

11/23/1929

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

10.

11/30/1929

Berlin

[In a series entitled “Tales and Adventures”; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

11.

12/7/1929

Berlin

“Berlin Puppet Theater”

Youth radio

In this volume.

12.

12/14/1929

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

13.

12/15/1929

Frankfurt

“Bücher von Thornton Wilder und Ernest Hemingway” [Books by Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway]

Talk on the book-hour

GS, 7.1, 270–1.

14.

12/16/1929

Frankfurt

“Sketched in Mobile Dust”

Reading

In this volume.

15.

1/4/1930

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

16.

1/23/1930

Frankfurt

“Pariser Köpfe” [Parisian Minds]

Talk

GS, 7.1, 279–86.

17.

1/24/1930

Frankfurt

“Friedrich Sieburgs Versuch ‘Gott in Frankreich?’ ” [Friedrich Sieburg’s Essay “God in France?”]

Talk on the book-hour

GS, 7.1, 286–94.

18.

2/1/1930

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

19.

2/8/1930

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

20.

2/15/1930

Berlin

[On a Berlin-related theme; title unknown]

Youth radio

Lost or missing.

21.

2/25/1930

Berlin

“Demonic Berlin”

Youth radio