The Institute formally sponsored Benjamin’s Paris arcades project as research

Evidence

The Passagen project was formally included in the research sponsored by the Institute. In the Report of the Société Internationale de Recherches Sociales for 1936, Pollock mentioned Etudes sur l'histoire de la culture française' among other items under the heading Research Fellowships’. In the Institute’s second prospectus, published in 1938, Benjamin was listed as a research associate, with his specialist topic given as aesthetics'. Under the title Aid to German European Scholars’, the first manuscript to be listed in the group Special Fields of Sociology', among a good two dozen manuscripts sponsored by the Institute, was The Social History of the City of Paris in the Nineteenth Century’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 796

Categorization

• XREF: Documents the institutional inscription of Benjamin within the Frankfurt School’s research program.