PERSPECTIVES ON WALTER BENJAMIN

Winter 1999
Volume 25, Number 2

Yet this bizarre relationship, which for decades was repressed as inconceivable or dismissed as a mere chance episode, was no isolated incident. Although he was forbidden to teach after 1945 and his reputation remained tainted, Schmitt served as a kind of oracle for countless intellectuals and politicians in Germany and elsewhere before his death in 1985.3 Finally, he continues to be the subject of increasing interest, even and especially in the United States. 4

What is particularly remarkable is the frequency with which we learn of the high regard for Schmitt by persons who at first seem foreign to him in their origin and thought. Perhaps the most spectacular instance of this kind of interest was the sudden departure of Alexandre Kojève, the celebrated philosopher of "the end of history," after a lecture at the Freie Universität in the seething Berlin of 1967. Kojève announced that he was going to see Schmitt, the only one "worth talking to" in Germany. Jacob Taubes, who had invited Kojève, was, in his own words, dismayed.5 But it was that same Taubes who, almost twenty years later, revealed the heretofore little-noticed connection between Benjamin and Schmitt. In 1986, one year after Schmitt's death, Taubes was called to account as before a "tribunal" at a panel discussion in the Maison Heinrich Heine in Berlin. Taubes, the son of a rabbi and himself a well-known Judaist, was taken to task for having visited Schmitt himself and even, despite the gulf that separated them, having respected his work. It seemed inconceivable that a scholar who characterized himself as an "arch-Jew" could have had anything to do with Schmitt. 6 Taubes countered with Schmitt's own dictum, which the latter had borrowed from his poet friend Theodor Däubler--"The enemy is the embodiment of your own question" 7 --and then played his trump card: Benjamin's admiration for Schmitt.

Evidence of Benjamin's attraction to Schmitt can be found as early as 1923. In a letter to Gottfried Salomon from December of that year, Benjamin wrote that he had been reading texts on the doctrine of sovereignty in the baroque era during work on his Habilitation. 8 Without doubt he is referring to Schmitt's Politische Theologie, which Benjamin cites as his political-theoretical basis in a central chapter of his Habilitation on The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels), published two years later. 9 In his short curriculum vitae of 1928, Benjamin confirms that his work on the Trauerspiel book was methodologically influenced by both the art historian Alois Riegl and the political thinker Schmitt:

This effort, undertaken on a larger scale in the above-mentioned Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, embraces on the one hand the methodological ideas of Alois Riegl with his idea of the Kunstwollen, and on the other the contemporary essays of Carl Schmitt, who in his analysis of political structure makes an analogous attempt to integrate phenomena that can only seemingly be isolated in different areas. Above all, however, it seems to me that such observation is the prerequisite for any penetrating physiognomic interpretation of works of art, to the extent that they are unique and inimitable. 10

Esteemed Professor Schmitt,
You will receive any day now from the publisher my book, The Origin of the German Mourning Play. With these lines I would like not merely to announce its arrival, but also to express my joy at being able to send it to you, at the suggestion of Mr. Albert Salomon. You will very quickly recognize how much my book is indebted to you for its presentation of the doctrine of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Perhaps I may also say, in addition, that I have also derived from your later works, especially the "Diktatur," a confirmation of my modes of research in the philosophy of art from yours in the philosophy of the state. If the reading of my book allows this feeling to emerge in an intelligible fashion, then the purpose of my sending it to you will be achieved.

With my expression of special admiration,
Your very humble
Walter Benjamin.12

Benjamin must have known that Schmitt had enjoyed considerable success as a literary critic and surrealistic writer,15 as well as the high regard of poets such as Däubler and artists such as the Catholic-leaning dadaist Hugo Ball. 16 The decisive factor in Benjamin's use of Schmitt, however, was the way in which he saw his own concept of art clarified in the latter's political theory. Benjamin saw the double strategy of placing the shock of the exception against the background of eventless continuity as a way to, on the one hand, oppose the integration of phenomena to the existence of isolated and autonomous areas within society, and, on the other, to search for that which made the work of art "unique and inimitable." But this uniqueness consisted not only in the contrast to the close-knit web of phenomena but also in its opposition to the continuity of time. This is the point at which the ideas of Benjamin and Schmitt converge. Schmitt's theoretical association of the political, art, and time appealed to Benjamin and finally ensnared him.

1. See Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (1932; Berlin, 1991). Compare Joseph W. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton, N.J., 1983), and Andreas Koenen, Der Fall Carl Schmitt: Sein Aufstieg zum "Kranjuristen des Dritten Reiches" (Darmstadt, 1995).

2. See Dirk van Laak, Gespräche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens: Carl Schmitt in der politischen Geistesgeschichte der frŸhen Bundesrepublik (Berlin, 1993).

3. Heinrich Meier, "Der Philosoph als Feind: Zu Carl Schmitts 'Glossarium'," Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, und "Der Begriff des Politischen": Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden (Stuttgart, 1998), p. 145.

4. Mark Lilla's critical commentary on the latest Schmitt "boom" ("The Enemy of Liberalism," New York Review of Books, 15 May 1997, pp. 38Ð40, 42Ð44) has been met with sharp criticism by Paul Piccone, Gary Umen, and Paul Gottfried in Telos 109 : 87Ð97. Compare also John P. McCormick, "Political Theory and Political Theology: The Second Wave of Carl Schmitt in English," forthcoming in Political Theory. As early as 1987, Jürgen Habermas expressed consternation regarding two translations of Schmitt into English: "Die Schrecken der Autonomie; Carl Schmitt auf Englisch," Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), pp. 103Ð19.

5. See Jacob Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987), p. 24; hereafter CS.

6. Taubes, letter to Carl Schmitt, 18 Sept. 1979, in CS, p. 39; compare also p. 46.

7. "Der Feind ist deine eigne Frage als Gestalt" (Theodor Däubler, Hymne an Italien [Munich, 1916], p. 58). This source was discovered by Meier, "Der Philosoph als Feind," pp. 12, 35, 79, 91, 96; see also Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung politischer Theologie und politischer Philosophie (Stuttgart, 1994), p. 76. On Taubes's use of the verse, see CS, p. 51; on Benjamin and Schmitt, see ibid., p. 26.

8. See Chryssoula Kambas, "Walter Benjamin an Gottfried Salomon: Bericht ¨ber eine unveröffentlichte Korrespondenz," Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 56 (1982): 609.

9. See Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, 7th ed. (1922; Berlin, 1996), hereafter abbreviated PT; and Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 7 vols. in 14 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974Ð89), 1:1:203Ð430; see esp. p. 246; hereafter abbreviated UD; trans. John Osborne, under the title The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1977; London, 1985); see esp. p. 65; hereafter abbreviated OG.

10. Dieser Versuch, den ich in größerem Maßstabe in dem erwähnten "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels" unternahm, knüpft einerseits an die methodischen Ideen Alois Riegls in seiner Lehre vom Kunstwollen, andererseits an die zeitgenössischen Versuche von Carl Schmitt an, der in seiner Analyse der politischen Gebilde einen analogen Versuch der Integration von Erscheinungen vornimmt, die nur scheinbar gebietsmäßig zu isolieren sind. Vor allem aber scheint mir eine derartige Betrachtung Bedingung jeder eindringlichen physiognomischen Erfassung der Kunstwerke in dem worin sie unvergleichlich und einmalig sind. [Benjamin, "Lebenslauf," Gesammelte Schriften, 7:1:219]

11. Schmitt mentions this letter in his 1956 book on Shakespeare; see Schmitt, Hamlet oder Hekuba: Die Einbruch der Zeit in das Spiel (1956; Stuttgart, 1985), p. 64. The letter was not published in the first edition of Benjamin's correspondence (Benjamin, Briefe, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, 2 vols. [Frankfurt am Main, 1966]), but was later printed by Hans-Dietrich Sander in Marxistische Ideologie und allgemeine Kunsttheorie, 2d ed. (1970; Basle, 1975), p. 173 n. 79 and commented upon in three important articles: Michael Rumpf, "Radikale Theologie: Walter Benjamins Beziehung zu Carl Schmitt," in Peter Gebhardt et al., Walter Benjamin--Zeitgenosse der Moderne (Kronberg im Taunus, 1976), pp. 37-50; Fritz Güde, "Der Schiffbrüchige und der Kapitän: Carl Schmitt und Walter Benjamin auf stürmischer See," Kommune 3, no. 6 (1985): 61Ð67; and Horst Turk, "Politische Theologie? Zur Intention auf die Sprache bei Benjamin und Celan," in Juden in der deutschen Literatur: Ein deutsch-israelisches Symposion, ed. Stéphane Moses and Albrecht Schöne (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), pp. 330Ð49.

12. Benjamin, letter to Schmitt, 9 Dec. 1930, Gesammelte Schriften, 1:3:887, and Benjamin, letter to Schmitt, 9 Dec. 1930, Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Christoph G&ounl;dde and Henri Lonitz, 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 3:558; trans. Samuel Weber, in Weber, "Taking Exception to Decision: Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt," Diacritics 22 (FallÐWinter 1992): 5.

13. See Michael Rumpf, ÒRadikale Theologie."

14. See Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 5th ed. (1919; Berlin, 1991). On this complex of ideas, compare Ellen Kennedy, who attributes the antiliberal thinking to the Frankfurt school as a whole; see Ellen Kennedy, "Carl Schmitt und die 'Frankfurter Schule,'" Geschichte und Gesellschaft 12 (1986): 389; on Benjamin's letter, see p. 382 n. 5. A series of critiques of Kennedy appeared in Telos 71 [Spring 1987]: Martin Jay, "Reconciling the Irreconcilable? Rejoinder to Kennedy," pp. 76-80; Alfons Söllner, "Beyond Carl Schmitt: Political Theory in the Frankfurt School," pp. 81-96; and Ulrich K. Preuß, "The Critique of German Liberalism: Reply to Kennedy," pp. 97-110. See also Weber, "Taking Exception to Decision: Theatrical-Theological Politics, Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt," in Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940, ed. Uwe Steiner (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), pp. 137-37, and the thorough dissertation by Susanne Heil, ÒGefährliche Beziehungen: Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt" (Ph.D. diss., University of Stuttgart, 1996).

15. His surrealistic piece "Buribunken" appeared in the magazine Summa 4 (1918): 89-106, in which authors such as Ernst Bloch, Hermann Broch, Max Scheler, and Robert Musil were also published.

16. Compare Ingeborg Villinger, Carl Schmitts Kulturkritik der Moderne: Text, Kommentar, und Analyse der "Schattenrisse" des Johannes Negelinus (Berlin, 1995); Heil, ÒGefährliche Beziehungen," pp. 10-47; and A. and Ch. Einem, "Carolus jocosus? Ein Blick in die Katakomben der Carl-Schmitt-Forschung," Etappe 13 (Sept. 1997): 59.

Horst Bredekamp, professor of art history at Humboldt University, Berlin, is the author of The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine (1995). His forthcoming book is entitled Thomas Hobbes's Visual Strategies.