diagram of Walter Benjamin biographies

birth: 15 July 1892

1905-1907 boarding school in Haubinda, youth movement

1902-1912 pupil at Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburf

1910-11 first texts published in Der Anfang #

1912-1919 attends universities Freiburg, Berlin, Munich and Bern

1915 breaks with Gustav Wyneken ideas, becomes acquainted with Gershom Scholem, Werner Kraft, Feliz Noeggerath, Rainer Maria Rilke

1917 marries Dora Sophie Pollak

1919 completes doctorate with the thesis The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, meets Ernst Bloch

1918 birth of a son Stefan Rafael #

1921 initiates journal Angelus Novus

1923 prepares his Habilitation at University of Frankfurt am Main; meet Adorno, Kracauer; starts translation of Tableaux parisiens by Baudelaire

1924 trip to Capri, where Benjamin meets Asja Lacis

1924/25 essay Goeathe's Elective Affinities" appears in Neue Duetsche Beitrage

1925 Habilitation is rejected by University of Frankfurt, which is necessary to have a chance for academic career

1926/27 two months stay in Moscow

1927 begins work on Arcade Project; first radio plays

1928 One-Way Stree and The Origin of German Tragic Drama published

1929 contact with Bertold Brecht intensifies

1930 divorces Dora Sophie

1932 first stay on Ibiza, work on A Berlin Chronicle, and Berlin Childhood

1933 March emigration to France

1934 regular contributions to Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung; work on Arcades resumes

1936 The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility appears under pseudonym Detlef Holz in Luzern

1937 work on Baudelaire begins

1939 expatriated by Germany; "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" published in Zeitschrift fur SOzialforschung; after beginning of IIWW is interned in a camp in Clos St Joseph

1940 returns to Paris, works on "On the Concept of History"; then in June fless to Lourdes

26 September 1940 after failed attempt to escape through Spain to US, Benjamin commits suicide in Portbou