The relationship between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno-two leading lights of the
Frankfurt School of social thought-is the subject of a special lecture at Syracuse University
by Gerhard Richter, professor of German at the University of California, Davis.
Richter's lecture-"Can Anything Be Rescued by Defending It?"-is Thursday, April 16, at 4
p.m. in Room 304 of the Tolley Building. This presentation is the first in a series of events at
SU devoted to Benjamin, the great German philosopher and cultural critic who founded
20th-century media theory. Free and open to the public, the lecture is co-sponsored by SU's
Humanities Center and Renee Crown University Honors Program. For more information,
call event organizer Karl Solibakke at (315) 443-5488.
Benjamin and Adorno were German Jews who met in 1923 at the Institute for Social
Research, also known as the "Frankfurt School." United by an intense interest in philosophy
and literary criticism, they became intellectual allies by the end of the decade. Their
correspondence caught fire when Hitler rose to power, causing Benjamin to flee to Paris and
Adorno to England and then the United States. Over the course of many years and more
than 120 letters, they discussed research, criticized each other's manuscripts, and debated
the latest scholarly manuscripts.
According to Solibakke, much of their correspondence revolved around the "Arcades
Project," on which Benjamin labored for 13 years before committing suicide in 1940. "The
'Arcades Project' was a penetrating inquiry into the emergence of bourgeois urban culture in
Europe," says Solibakke, the Love Distinguished Research Professor in German Language
and Culture in The College of Arts and Sciences. "Focusing on the arcades, which were
glass-covered shopping and bourgeois recreation areas, Benjamin looked for discernible
moments in the continuum of European cultural history. Their decline and eventual
disappearance, at a time when he began chronicling their significance, not only points to a
historical index but also heralds the passing of 19th-century collective memory as the 20th
century began to encroach on the cityscape."
As members of the Institute for Social Research, Benjamin and Adorno were avowed
Marxists. The impact, however, of living through World War I and seeing Hitler's rise to
power caused them to question Marx's socialist ideology, as well as to critique and question
society as a whole. This branch of philosophy, later known as "critical theory," underscored
their relationship and was the keystone of Benjamin's writing. "Benjamin was one of the
20th-century's most demanding intellectuals," says Solibakke. "His relationship with Adorno
was often adversarial but produced a wealth of ideas that informed modern philosophy and
culture."
Richter-an expert on German literature, culture and thought-has written or edited seven
books, as well as published dozens of articles, essays and chapters. Last fall, he organized a
three-day international conference at UC Davis titled "Benjamin's Frontiers," in conjunction
with the International Walter Benjamin Society. Prior to UC Davis, the award-winning
professor served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for nearly a decade.
Richter is frequently invited to deliver lectures and seminars around the world and has
served as a visiting scholar and fellow at various institutions throughout Germany.
The SU Humanities Center and The Renee Crown University Honors Program are
university-wide initiatives administered by The College of Arts and Sciences. More
information about them is available at http://thecollege.syr.edu.
