Walter Benjamin’s resistance to exile in America led to his suicide

Evidence

Throughout the thirties Benjamin resisted the Institut’s entreaties to join its other members in New York. In January, 1938, at what was to be their last meeting, Benjamin turned down Adorno’s urgent plea by saying, “there are still positions in Europe to defend.” 121 By the time these positions had been overrun and remaining in Paris was no longer possible — the Gestapo seized Benjamin’s apartment in the summer of 1940 - emigration to America had become increasingly difficult. German refugees who had escaped to France at an earlier date were in danger of being returned to the Nazis by the Vichy government. Benjamin was put into an internment camp at Nevers in anticipation of such a move. The Institut began then to do all it could on his behalf. Maurice Halbwachs and Georges Scelle intervened to have him released from the camp. A certain number of emergency visas to the United States were available, and, primarily through Pollock’s efforts, one was obtained for the reluctant refugee. Benjamin was less successful, however, in securing an exit visa from France. Although an obstacle, this did not present an insurmountable problem, as a generally unguarded road over the Pyrenees to the Spanish border at Port Bou was considered a safe alternative. Benjamin, in ill health at the time because of a heart condition, was one of a party of refugees who set out for the frontier on September 26, 1940. In his baggage were fifteen tablets of a morphia compound, which, so he told Arthur Koestler in Marseilles a few days earlier, “were enough to kill a horse.” 123 By chance, the Spanish government had closed its border just before their arrival. Tired by the trip, distraught over the prospect of returning to Gestapo seizure, and still unenthusiastic about his future in America, Benjamin swallowed the pills during the night. Refusing to have his stomach pumped the next morning, he died in agony, a few months past his forty-eighth birthday. On the next day, the Spanish border guards, shaken by his suicide, allowed the rest of the party to pass through to safety. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 595

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the broader Frankfurt School exile narrative and to biographical treatments of Benjamin elsewhere in the tradition. — connects to: Several Institut associates who delayed emigration, including Walter Benjamin, died — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 522; Benjamin’s suicide inadvertently enabled his fellow refugees to cross the border — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 595; Adorno saw mass art as reconciling audiences to the status quo, unlike Benjamin. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 630

Broader Connections

• Benjamin’s suicide inadvertently enabled his fellow refugees to cross the border #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 595