Walter Benjamin - Radio Benjamin

Then Luther goes on to describe other advantages of the book: one learns that it’s better to fight beggars with charity and compassion instead of forfeiting, having fallen for their roguish tricks, five or ten times as much money as one would voluntarily give. Of course, these beggars, as they appear in the book, were not genuine beggars as we conceive of them today, but very dangerous characters who moved about in hordes and, like swarms of locusts, infested the city, often feigning illness or frailty. Not for nothing did cities in the Middle Ages appoint so-called beggar bailiffs, whose job was nothing more than to oversee the unending influx of vagrant beggars, thus minimizing any harm to the city. There were many fewer resident beggars than tramps from foreign lands, and to distinguish between them and the robbers was often as difficult as telling the difference between some tradesmen and robbers. Some pretended to be peddlers, lugging around their wares only in order to deceive people as to their true profession, thievery. As we have already said, the business of being a crook has changed over the course of time. The artful feigning of illness, a common practice in the Middle Ages, vanished over time as the influence of the Church weakened and alms grew more scarce. We can no longer fathom the number of tricks people used back then to prey on the sympathy of their fellow men. Such false afflictions had the advantage of giving the most dangerous burglars and murderers a semblance of harmlessness. There were people who attended church and, during the benediction, made themselves foam at the mouth by chewing soap, as though they were suffering convulsions. They then collapsed to the floor right before everyone’s eyes, ensuring that they would receive donations from the devout. The steps of the church were strewn with such riff-raff. You would find people there showing off arms painted with false shackle wounds: they made people believe they had been on a crusade, had fallen into the hands of heathens, and had languished for years as galley slaves. Others would shave the top of their heads, claiming they were priests on a pilgrimage and that robbers had stolen their belongings. Still others shook rattles, as lepers did in those days, so that people would not draw near but could leave them alms from a distance. To get a better sense of these wild and dangerous mobs, one can look to the secluded square where the same sort of riff-raff gathered in Paris at the time. Bleak and desolate, it was popularly known as the Court of Miracles because it was where the blind would regain their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear and the dumb speak once more. There was no end to the list of ruses they attempted. Besides pretending to be deaf, which made it so easy for the crooks to overhear the location of things to steal, a particular favorite was acting the imbecile. For instance, if a hoodlum had the misfortune to be caught keeping lookout, he simply played the idiot and acted like he didn’t know how he got there or why.

But now, back for a moment to what Luther wrote in his preface to the Book of Vagabonds and Beggars. He says that the book shows how the devil rules the world, and this is to be taken much more literally than we would take it today. In the Middle Ages people were quick to assume that the most skilled and courageous robber captains had made a pact with the devil. This awful and, for them, almost always fatal misconception was strengthened by all sorts of supposed evidence, as well as by the fabulous superstitions prevalent among the robbers themselves. Everyone with an unsteady profession dependent on thousands of contingencies tends toward superstition, and doubly so if the profession is a dangerous one. Robbers were convinced they possessed hundreds of charms to make themselves invisible during a break-in, to lull people to sleep in the house they wanted to burgle, to ward off pursuers’ bullets, to find especially lavish treasures where they were targeting a heist. This was greatly enhanced by the misunderstood fragments of Hebrew the robbers had picked up from the Jews, and further still by the so-called demon seals, small squiggles, and dashes painted on parchment to ensure the blessing of evil spirits while committing crimes. After all, their cunning and bravery aside, most of these robbers were poor and ignorant, mostly of peasant origin. Only very few could read and write; but if the mysterious magic symbols in letters from Schinderhannes are any indication, even those who could read and write were not exempt from superstition. Many, however, knew as little about their religion as about math. There is a poignant utterance by a poor imprisoned robber who sought guidance from the divine, but received no answer: “We are told that our dear Lord and Holy Mother will provide such great assistance and intervention; but they never help us find where the money is in a farmhouse, tavern, or town hall.” There may even have been robbers who believed themselves to be wizards, in league with the devil. But bear in mind that in those days torture was still practiced, forcing the poor fellows to confess to all sorts of things they had never heard of before.

When torture was abolished in the eighteenth century, by and by people emerged who attempted to treat the captured robbers more humanely, not only trying to rehabilitate them with edifying principles and threats of hell, but also trying to understand them. One of them left us an elaborate account of the so-called Vogelsberg and Wetterau bands, in which he precisely depicts each one of these robbers. Should we think that the man whom he describes with the following words is a dangerous gang leader? “He is sincere, truth-loving, valiant, frivolous, passionate, easily excitable but stands firm behind a decision. Gracious, effervescent, vengeful, blessed with a lively imagination, a good memory and generally good humor. Of clear mind, naïve, witty at times, somewhat vain and even musical.” Those who have read The Robbers by Schiller will perhaps remember this description of Karl Moor. So there really were noble robbers. Of course, people made this discovery only when the robbers began to die out altogether. Or did they perhaps begin to die out as a result of this discovery? The ruthlessness with which they were pursued and punished up until that point, oftentimes by execution for mere theft, prevented a robber from easily returning to the life of a peaceful citizen. The cruelty of the old criminal law played just as big a role in the emergence of professional crime as the more humane law did in its disappearance.

“Räuberbanden im alten Deutschland,” GS, 7.1, 152–9. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.

Broadcast on Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt on September 23, 1930, and on Radio Berlin on October 2, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript, “Frankfurt and Berlin Radio, September, October, 1930.” The Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitung [Southwest German Radio Times], the Frankfurt statio n’s program guide, announced the broadcast for September 23, 1930, from 3:25–3:50 pm; the Funkstunde advertised it for October 2, 1930, from 5:30–5:50 pm.

1Rotwelsch is the thieves’ cant or argot in Southern Germany and Switzerland that developed as early as the thirteenth century. A “secret language,” it functioned both to protect criminals and to identify them to each other.

2Schinderhannes (nickname of Johannes Bückler, c. 1778–1803), Lips Tullian (c. 1675–1715), and Damian Hessel (1774–1810) were legendary German bandits.

3See Friedrich Christian Benedict Avé-Lallemant, Das Deutsche Gaunerthum in seiner sozial-politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande [German Thiefdom: Its Socio-Political, Literary and Linguistic Development into its Current State] (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1858), 91.