Walter Benjamin - Radio Benjamin

Here is the dualist metaphysics that Panizza so completely shares with Hoffmann and that, following the inner necessity of which we have spoken, takes the form of a contrast between life and automaton. It has given him the story of the “People Factory,” where people are manufactured with clothes already grown on. 10It takes a still unmistakably theological turn in the following passage of The Immaculate Conception of the Popes: “The pope pulled … a glass-like, idiotic-looking doll out of the mouth of every person as soon as he died. The doll was transparent, and a balance sheet of all the deeds — both good and evil — of the person in question were contained in it. This doll, which was a small person, had two wings of starched fabric glued to its back and was let walk or fly. It was directed by that new realm created by the pope outside the world. There, the doll would be immediately received and laid in a big, shiny, clean brass scale, which had two equal scale pans. The doll’s good deeds weighed heavily, the bad ones lightly. On the other scale pan sat an equalsized normal doll, in whom good and bad deeds were exactly equally balanced. If the new arrival was only one grain lighter than the normal doll on the other side, it meant that the bad deeds outweighed the good.” It was sent to hell. However, “The dolls who were heavy enough were mercifully allowed to climb down from the scale and run into heaven, coelum, about which more anon.” 11

This art would be an anachronism if, as many assumed, it only amounted to invectives against the papacy. But it is anachronistic in no different a sense than the Bavarian painters around Murnau and Kochelsee, who, up until a few years ago, painted their holy images on mirrors. A heretical painter of holy images: that is the shortest formula for Oskar Panizza. His image-fanaticism was not even extinguished at the heights of theological speculation. And it was combined with a keen, satirical insight, just as Hoffmann practiced it on the holy canon of the philistines. Both heresies are related. In both of them, however, satire is only a reflex of poetic fantasy, which safeguards its ancient rights.

“E. T. A. Hoffmann und Oskar Panizza,” GS, 2.2, 641–8. Translated by Lisa Harries Schumann.

Broadcast on Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt, on March 26, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript “Frankfurt Radio, 26 March 1930,” and for this date the Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitung listed, from 6:05–6:35 pm, “Parallels I: E.Th. Hoffmann and Oskar Panizza. Lecture by Dr. Walter Benjamin,” as the first in a series called “Parallels.”

1For Wednesday, March 26, 1930, the Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitung announced the opening of a series entitled “Parallels” with the listing, “Parallels I: E. Th. Hoffmann and Oskar Panizza. Lecture by Dr. Walter Benjamin.”

2See Hoffmann, Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern [The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr] (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1820–1822); Der goldne Topf: Ein Märchen aus der neuen Zeit [The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairy Tale] (Bamberg: Kunz, 1814); Prinzessin Brambilla: Ein Capriccio nach Jakob Callot [Princess Brambilla: A Capriccio after Jacques Caillot] (Breslau: Max, 1821); Meister Floh: Ein Märchen in sieben Abentheuern zweier Freunde [Master Flea: A Fairy-Tale in Seven Adventures of Two Friends] (Frankfurt: F. Wilmans, 1822).

3For this description, see also “Demonic Berlin” (26).

4In 1893, Panizza published his controversial parody of the doctrine of Immaculate Conception, Die unbefieckte Empfängnis der Päpste: Von Bruder Martin O.S.B; Aus dem Spanischen von Oskar Panizza [The Immaculate Conception of the Popes: By Brother Martin O.S.B; Translated from the Spanish by Oskar Panizza] (Zurich: J. Schabelitz, 1893).

5See Panizza’s Das Liebeskonzil: eine Himmels-Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen (Zurich: J. Schabelitz, 1895), for which he was charged and convicted of blasphemy.

6Panizza, Parisjana, deutsche Verse aus Paris (Zurich: Zürcher Diskußionen, 1899).

7Panizza, Visonen der Dämmerung [Visions of Gloaming] (Munich: G. Müller, 1914), xiii.

8See the account of Panizza’s life by Deacon Friedrich Lippert, In memoriam Oskar Panizza (Munich: Horst Stobbe, 1926).

9See “Die Kirche von Zinsblech” [The Church of Zinsblech] and “Das Wirtshaus zur Dreifaltigkeit” [The Inn of the Trinity] in Panizza, Visionen: Skizzen und Erzählungen (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1893).

10Panizza, “Menschenfabrik” [The People Factory], in Dämmrungsstücke: Vier Erzählungen (Leipzig: W. Friedrich, 1890).

11Panizza, Die unbefleckte Empfängnis der Päpste, 7ff.

A Conversation between Wilhelm Speyer and Walter Benjamin 1

BENJAMIN: Did you hear, Stefan Großmann is suing Fehling!

SPEYER: You could at least say “Good day.”

BENJAMIN: Good day.

SPEYER: Good day. Now why is he suing?

BENJAMIN: You must know that Fehling staged Großmann’s play Apollo, Brunnenstraße in Berlin. 2If I’m not mistaken, you were even at the premiere. The long and short of it is, he’s suing him because he feels artistically compromised by their collaboration.

SPEYER: I’m very sympathetic to Großmann’s cause, suing his colleague. You see, we too have joined forces for some collaborative work. You, the critic, and I, the playwright. It was probably a mistake. Earlier on, at least, I was always of the opinion: massacre the critics. But now you’ve got me saying “good day” to you, shaking your hand, and allowing you to jam my signals with every one of your critical aperçus as I write.

BENJAMIN: I’m deeply saddened, dear Speyer, to see that you have once again reverted to erroneous thinking. So we’ve met here today by coincidence, just like that? What’s the matter all of a sudden?

SPEYER: I have a little problem, my dear critic. In the third act.

BENJAMIN: And in just such a situation you want to chase away so useful a demon as the critic? Did the critic not speculate with you in great detail about the world and people and especially about the state of social drama today, before one day deciding to put these musings to the test? Let me remind you that at that time we were in agreement on the main point: that the writer, especially the playwright, and particularly the author of social comedies, is currently in a very exposed position. Because what does today’s society give him? Does it give him a firm measure of the important questions in life — that is, in terms of marriage or fortune or status — or a clear notion of state or civic virtue or the like? Not a chance! Sometimes society swears by the itinerant preacher, other times by the snob, and each week it’s something new. So, that’s what it gives the playwright: nothing. And what does it demand from the playwright? Everything! When society doesn’t know where to turn, he is expected to furnish the answer. When standards are lacking, he is expected to provide them. When it is deluding itself, he is to point the way, and because he is a comedy writer, everything has to be enjoyable, delivered gently and cajolingly. In short, everything should serve to entertain.

SPEYER: I have the feeling that lurking in what you just said is a small attack on the writer. Of course, you are yet again of the opinion that the critic can intervene with a healing effect on the comedy writer’s difficult situation … Once again you fancy yourself the doctor of poetry, like most of your colleagues.

BENJAMIN: Doctor is a well-chosen word. For a doctor has other tasks besides curing an illness, namely, diagnosing it.