Programmarchiv

Discussion with readings

“I have long, indeed for years, played with the idea of setting out the sphere of life—bios—graphically on a map,” wrote Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) in 1932. Inspired by Marcel Proust, whom he was attempting to translate at the time, the German-Jewish intellectual was exploring his own memories of childhood in Berlin as fascism was transforming the face of the city and country that he once called home. The book he ended up writing (and constantly rewriting), Berlin Childhood Around 1900 (1938), set down the sphere of his youth as concrete experiences rooted in the specific spaces of his childhood city.

Benjamin’s life and work are often read backwards from the circumstances of his death in 1940, at the age of 48—his suicide in the French Alps, as he despaired of escaping the Nazis and crossing the French border into Spain. However, along with being an antifascist martyr and one of the great theoreticians of the twentieth century, he was also an avid participant in the life of the cities where he lived—a flaneur, café-dweller, drug dabbler, and occasional gambler. He wrote vibrantly about Marseilles, Naples, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris. He strove to add to German literature a textured recall of the past in place—in Berlin and beyond.

Ninety years after Benjamin was banned in Nazi Germany, Walter Benjamin in the “Sphere of Life” returns Benjamin to the streets through which he roamed. Though too rarely considered a Berlin author, he is a figure of deep and abiding interest for Berlin’s contemporary literary scene. In a discussion moderated by Julia Bosson, three guests—novelist and philosopher Lindsay Lerman, researcher and curator Caroline Adler, and essayist Sanders Isaac Bernstein—will discuss Benjamin’s ongoing vitality and importance as a literary figure still generative and inspiring for contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers.

After a drinks break, the evening will resume with a Benjaminian series of selected short readings from Berlin writers, hosted by Alexander Wells. All are welcome, from Benjamin believers to theory skeptics.

Reserve tickets

This event will be largely held in English – though the second-half readings may be in any language.

If you would like to read at the event, please email your submission of 700-1000 words to JosephRothToday@gmail.com by October 5. All readings will also be published online and in a printed zine commemorating the evening.

NOTE: Submissions do not need to be directly influenced by Benjamin—and should not be about him. What we want is for this evening to channel his great attention to the specificity of place and time. We want your literary snapshots, your unsentimental farewells to unrecoverable moments, your dream images, your meditations on exile, your search for moments of revelation in the cracked, broken, and unredeemed world you once lived in.

As Benjamin wrote, “A remembered event is infinite, because it is merely a key to everything that happened before it and after it.”

Caroline Adler is a researcher and curator based in Berlin. Her research focuses on representation and method in Walter Benjamin’s literary work (in particular his „Moscow“ essay), epistemologies of the aesthetic, and theory and critique of scientific exhibition practice. Caroline currently holds a position as research associate at the University of Hamburg. She is a member of the theory collective diffrakt – centre for theoretical periphery and editor at BERLIN REVIEW.

Forthcoming: Walter Benjamin in the European East: Networks, Conflicts, and Reception, ed. with Sophia Buck, Routledge 2025.

Sanders Isaac Bernstein is a writer living in Berlin. His work has appeared, among other places, in JEWISH CURRENTS, THE BAFFLER, NEWYORKER.COM, and THE BAD VERSION, which he founded and edited from 2011-2014. He currently teaches a personal essay writing workshop at The Reader Berlin and serves as Stage Editor for THE BERLINER, Berlin’s English-language print monthly.

Lindsay Lerman is the author of two books, I’M FROM NOWHERE and WHAT ARE YOU. She is also the translator of philosopher François Laruelle's first book. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Her short stories, essays, and poems have been published in the LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS, NEW YORK TYRANT, and elsewhere. She teaches philosophy and creative writing courses online for her intensive series Climbing Down. Her second book, WHAT ARE YOU, is currently being translated and will be published in Greece in 2025. She lives in Berlin.

Julia Bosson is a writer and editor based in Berlin. She is editor-in-chief of THE DIASPORIST, a new magazine of German politics and culture, and co-leader of the Berlin Jewish writers’ collective Die Sammlung. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Program, DAAD, and the MFJC, she is currently at work on a novel about the life and journalism of Joseph Roth.

Alexander Wells is a freelance writer and critic from Australia. His reviews and essays have been published by THE GUARDIAN, THE DRIFT, THE BAFFLER, and the EUROPEAN REVIEW OF BOOKS among others. He is also Books Editor for the print monthly THE BERLINER.

We would like to point out that the lift in the building is unfortunately not working at the moment. For this reason, access is currently restricted. We would like to apologise for this.