All of Benjamin’s later major essays grew out of the Passagen-Werk project.

Evidence

Horkheimer left detailed examination of Benjamin’s outline to Adorno. This examination was only one stage of a continuing discussion between the two which lasted until Benjamin’s death. The discussion was carried on in letters, in the form of essays, and verbally (at a series of meetings sponsored by the Institute, the first of which took place in Paris at the beginning of 1936, and the last at about the end of 1937 or the beginning of 1938 in San Remo). All of Benjamin’s longer studies in the second half of the 1930s were published in the ZfS, and were, to a greater or lesser extent, part of his work on the Passagen. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1936) precisely located the moment of contemporary history which constituted Benjamin's point of departure for his historical reconstruction of the nineteenth century. In Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian’ (1937), Benjamin at last completed his long-delayed study of Fuchs, and took the opportunity to contrast his own conception of a historical-materialist historiography with the conception of cultural history which Fuchs had impressively represented, and which Benjamin criticized. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' (1939) was Benjamin's second version of a section of the Passagen-Werk centred on Baudelaire (the first version, The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’, had been pronounced by Adorno to be too light'). The Theses on the Philosophy of History’ appeared, not in the journal, but in a mimeographed volume published by the Institute in 1942, In Memory of Walter Benjamin. The text contained reflections fundamental to the continuation of the work on Baudelaire, which he intended to send to the Institute for discussion purposes, and which his death turned into his legacy to the Institute. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 798