A Talk with Mona Jean Benjamin,

Kim Yvon Benjamin and Michael Benjamin

Martin Jay, Gary Smith

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Gary Smith:We are delighted that Mona and Kim Benjamin, the direct descen-dents of Walter Benjamin and also Michael Benjamin, the son of Georg Benjamin,are with us. And it is a peculiar situation because we want to in a way excavatefamilial memories. Here we have a great resource of several hundred people whoprobably all know at least five stories about your grandfather. And since you didnt have the opportunity to know either Walter or Stefan Benjamin, I guesswhat I am most curious about is what kind of stories first of all were passed downthrough your father and mother to yourselves about this peculiar guy, WalterBenjamin. I remember visiting you many years ago in that wonderful house inLondon in which every closet, cranny and chair were filled with 30 or 40 copies ofevery possible edition, in every possible language, and so Walter Benjamin wasvery present in terms of his works. And, of course, many people have made a pilgrimage to London over the years. What kind of stories do you have to tell usfrom your familial lore?

Mona Jean Benjamin: It is all hearsay, really. Basically, through our mother, butit took us a long time before we actually had any conception of who our grand-father was and what he represented to so many people. The first time I realised thiswas when I was about 12, when my cousin was studying him. She had been study-ing him in the late seventies and I had no subject for show and tell at school, soshe suggested I use him, and I did, and I was the star of the class. Other than that it was really our fathers job, I suppose, which carried through a great love andpreoccupation of our grandfathers. He was an antique book dealer and also a

collector of books, of which we have many hundreds still in our house fortunately.And stories from our mother, but I know it was a very painful subject for our fatherand it was something he very rarely discussed. He found it very hard to talk abouta figure who for him was never really a true father but more an intellectual figure;someone very distant; someone who he remembers as a man who used to bring himtoys from foreign countries.

Kim Yvon Benjamin:Mostly the same really. Mona being the elder sister, anythingI know about my grandfather was passed down from Mona and my mother.

Gary Smith: I love hearsay. I published a whole book on hearsay. What aboutDora, Stefans mother and Walters wife, who of course lived in the other houses inLondon, and was responsible for moving their existence to London. What did Stefanand your mother convey about their relationship?

Mona Jean Benjamin:Dora held on to everything: the entire correspondence thatshe had, between herself and Walter, which was so awfully stolen in 1972, afterour fathers death when the house was burgled, and they also took all the remain-ing photos that Dora had kept, because she had everything. But the houses shebought were bought with money from the sale of the house in Berlin. She first ofall went to San Remo where our father studied for a while. He had his Germannationality taken away from him and came to London when he was 17. He camebefore Dora arrived and was living with an English family. Dora paid for his education. She arrived shortly afterwards, but was not entitled to citizenship andso it was our father who said to her, you will have to marry someone from here sothat you can stay, and she had a marriage of convenience with a South African butthe marriage was never consummated and I think that he believed that she never,ever stopped loving our grandfather. She never really had any other relationships.She had one, I think, very late, just before her death, but never another marriageapart from this one which was purely paperwork. He disappeared, never to be seenagain after he was paid. Our fathers memories of their relationship are that he hadalways wondered how two such unlikely people had ever managed to find eachother. Our mother said that his memories of his father were of someone who wasvery passive; someone who had no interest in the running of the house or in every-day practical things, and he remembers his mother as someone who was alwaysshouting and knocking things over. She dedicated a lot of her life to supportinghim even after he moved out when they separated in Berlin and our father madeweekly trips to visit him and remembers that the only thing he took with him was the Klee painting from the house in Berlin which he could never understand

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because he always thought it was something extremely ugly and remembersGrandfather explaining to him that one day he would understand why the paint-ing was so important to him.

Martin Jay: We had a chance to talk at dinner about the painting and about the controversy it generated. I wonder, could you perhaps share that with every-body else?

Mona Jean Benjamin: Yes, the painting was something that, after our grand-fathers death, came into my fathers possesion, and he actually had the paintinginsured himself, personally, and Adorno came to ask him if he could keep thepainting temporarily as a token of remembrance because he had nothing else toremember our grandfather by, so our father allowed him to take the painting , and when Adorno died our father went to the funeral but felt it was inappropri-ate at that time to ask for the painting to be returned to him. He came back toLondon and was then visited by a friend of Scholem who told him that Scholemwanted to keep the painting and said that Walter would have wanted him to keep it. This, I think, caused our father a lot of distress, but in the begin-ning of trying to fight for it, in the midst of things he unfortunately died, so the painting was taken by Scholem, which I think he then took to Jerusalem with him.

Martin Jay: We also talked about attitudes towards Scholem and Adorno andother intimates of Benjamin.

Mona Jean Benjamin: Dora despised both Scholem and Adorno.

Kim Yvon Benjamin: She felt very bitter towards them, the bad thing was thatWalter needed them to publish.

Mona Jean Benjamin: She felt he was being exploited by both of them to furthertheir own ends and she felt our grandfather was misused by them during his life-time, but at the same time he had no other alternative as he would have beenunable to publish.

Martin Jay: Have their been many physical residues passed down? At dinner you showed us a wonderful picture of a childhood toy.

Mona Jean Benjamin: There are a lot of books. I think the problem is, its diffi-cult to differentiate the books that were our grandfathers that Dora brought with

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her, and books that our father collected, because I think were a family of notori-ous hoarders, so it becomes very hard to tell where something has originally comefrom, when everything is old, so it doesnt make it any easier, but a lot of mainlybooks.

Martin Jay: That one toy, that one temple?

Mona Jean Benjamin: Yes, a castle, a Buddhist temple made of stone that wasbought by our grandfather when he was in Italy which he gave to our father, whichis one of the sort of last memories, and the harmonica as well from the MoscowDiary which we have too.

Kim Yvon Benjamin: There were many things that were lost when our house wasburgled just after our father died, so unfortunately we lost a lot of the things thatwere passed on.

Michael Benjamin: In the last years quite a lot of people asked me too if there areany remainders, something left from Walter Benjamin, to my mother, to me.Unfortunately I have to disappoint all of them, because what we have, but that iswell known, is very very little. The majority of the photos were my father andWalter and sometimes also Dora (their sister, Dora Benjamin, our aunt) aretogether, you remember them, thats mainly of our origin. We have one, mymother has, one letter from Walter. It has been published, in I think about 71. Itwas a letter from Walter Benjamin to my mother. Im not sure if he wrote manyletters to my mother because the situation of course was peculiar. We were in NaziGermany. We lived in Berlin at that time, and he lived in Paris or in Denmarkwith Brecht and at other places. So I think for this reason alone he was in some way cautious about writing many letters to my mother, at least some, let me say,contentful letters. Thats the one thing , that well known letter where he also addeda riddle, ein Rtsel, a puzzle for me, his nephew, Michael. And then there are onlytwo books. One book of letters I talked about it in the session by DetlevHolz, Deutsche Menschen. We had no other books from Walter, firstly because therewas no Suhrkamp at that time Really, there were no books published fromWalter in the Weimar Republic time. Then it was some way ridiculous to haveofficially burned books, but Detlev Holz Deutsche Menschen was a very good titleand name. And one edition of Die Kreatur, that first published the Moscow Diary.Thats what we have up to now, no toys, no other things. Oh yes, oh I have forgot-ten: a cushion of American Indian origin. I dont know where he bought it or how,it was then presented to my mother. I used it quite a lot at times, being also in a sitting profession, but then it is of very high age now, so it is not intact. That iswhat we have from Walter Benjamin.

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Martin Jay: And do you have memories of him?

Michael Benjamin: For me, especially for me, it is some way very dangerous tospeak about memories. We read so much now about Walter Benjamin, there is adanger of projecting what you read on to your own memory. You have to know, I wasborn in 32. Walter lived in Paris already, and he never returned from Paris to Berlin,so I am not personally acquainted with him, not even as a child. What I know, whatI learned about Walter was from what my mother told me. I didnt see my fathersince 36. He had been arrested by the Nazis. So she told me I have a father who livesabroad somewhere. And then later on, she told me what really happened with him, and that I had an aunt Dora and an uncle, Walter Benjamin. But for me Walterdidnt appear in the way I heard in some lectures here and some statements. He wasfor me a very, I dont know how adequate that will be in English, eine irdischePersnlichkeit, down to earth, not so etherial, or something like that. He was anuncle, which my mother liked very much. They had good relations with each other.You know that my mother got acquainted with the Benjamin family through Dora,the sister Dora. My mother was younger than my father too, so as far as I remember,she remembered that Walter Benjamin had an elder brothers attitude towards her,towards those young people. It was purely a relationship within the family, and generally it was good. Thats what I know from my own experience, or from theexperience of my mother.

Martin Jay: And was Walter Benjamins posthumous fame a surprise for your mother? How did she follow the increasing posthumous publication of his works?

Michael Benjamin: I think for my mother, as far as we discussed it with mymother, but of course we had to discuss a lot of things especially before and after45. I think my mother was not surprised. She thought that it was just, that it had to be in this way now, and that in some way at least it was some kindofWiedergutmachung.

Mona Jean Benjamin: I dont think it would have surprised our grandmothereither. I think that a very strong memory of our mother through our father was Dora saying that she knew one day he would achieve the recognition hedeserved.

Michael Benjamin: You see, there were two stages in the acknowledgement ofWalter. The first was immediately after 45. This process went gradually, step bystep, there were editions, there were selected works, and then of course Suhrkamp.

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The second stage then was 68. That maybe was a surprise for us, this broadacknowledgement and this broad idolisation of Walter Benjamin. But in generalwe didnt agree with everything that was made of him, but we found also that it waskind of a natural process, that it was in the order of things. Now I think things arenormalising . Theres a lot of people, how did Steiner call them, Stakhanovites inWalter Benjamin, who discuss him, and not only specialists, but I think it is justand very good, not only philosophers and linguists and philologists, but a broadspectrum of people. So, I think we can also get a more pluralistic view and a fullerpicture of Walter Benjamin.

Martin Jay: We really havent spoken about the people in their own right.Basically, weve made you into simple mouthpieces of the spirit of WalterBenjamin. Why dont you tell us a little about what youre doing now, andwhether or not in any way Benjamins legacy is significant in the work that youre doing, or is it simply an extrinsic and merely anecdotal dimension of yourlives?

Mona Jean Benjamin: I think that hes a presence that is always there for us, andwill always be. Everyday at home were made more and more aware of who he was,and I think that I actually enjoyed reading him more when I first started readinghim, when I was younger and when no one knew who he was. And now I some-times find it almost frightening to read him because of the wealth of informationthats so readily available about his work. And Id rather not read anything really,other than what he wrote. But I think, Kim teaches English and I am in film, sohes kind of dealt in areas that touch both of those, in very important and interest-ing ways that I think we both hope one day well be able to use it professionally atsome point. Not now, not yet, its too early.

Kim Yvon Benjamin: We were talking earlier about the age gap that makes itvery strange for us because Mona was born in 1970, and I was born in 1971, andwe never actually knew our grandfather or our father. So its very strange to havehis presence.

Mona Jean Benjamin: Yes, to have this sort of legacy, I mean, in a way we feelalmost as if were existing under false pretences when were brought up as thegranddaughters of Walter Benjamin because we know him just as much as anyoneelse in this room does, really. So its rather odd, and its really through our motherwho is pretty vocal about what she knows, but shes also the first one to admit that she never really knew the whole story because I think it was something thatdamaged our father so deeply, for many reasons. Also I think that Dora revealed

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to him one day that Walter had always hoped for a daughter and was dis-appointed when he had a son, soAnd he left behind only granddaughters, yes,but no sons.

Martin Jay: Michael, perhaps the audience doesnt fully appreciate your ownfamilial history, and who Georg and Hilde Benjamin were, and this is not aninsignificant story. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, first of all, theirrole, and the way in which Benjamin was received in the GDR in the post-warperiod?

Michael Benjamin: Well, Ill try not to read you a lecture about WalterBenjamin and the GDR. A four-hour lecture would not be sufficient. First of all, the general world public does not know, that it is not true to say that Walter Benjamin has not been edited or written about in the GDR. There has been a lot of publications of his own works and also about him. As far as publications of his own work are concerned, as far as I know, it was not only apolitical question, there were political questions too, it was also a question of publishing rights and of payment, and you know that Suhrkamp may be a very hard partner in discussing such questions. So from my point of view, this was the main reason we have only selected works by Walter Benjamin, edited inthe GDR. But I think that those editions are quite full, and give a sufficiently full picture of Walter Benjamins work. And, of course, in eastern Germany the reception of Walter Benjamin was not the same as in western Germany orwestern Europe. But I dont want to lecture. To put it simply, immediately after the war it was more or less the same. We got acquainted, we bought what we could, me personally and my mother. She was also able to acquire theSuhrkamp edition, so we had it from the first moment among our books. But then,of course, this second stage, the 68th, proceeded in another way in easternGermany than in western Germany. The work of Walter Benjamin was more asubject to philosophers, sociologists, cultural critics, philologists, Germanists.Walter Benjamin was not immediately subject to decisions or political conclu-sions. Thats a difference of course, and a political difference, but from my point ofview let me say I accepted it.

Let me say something briefly about legacy. From my point of view, there is notonly Walter. There is also my own father, of course, Georg Benjamin, and therewere the people we were personally very closely related to during the fascist time,especially Gertrud Chodziesner or Getrud Kolmar, as she is I hope known to you as a poet. A cousin of Walter and Georg Benjamin, who had been murdered in Auschwitz and also became famous only after 1945, not by Suhrkamp, butSuhrkamp now has the rights too besides. They sold the rights to Suhrkamp.

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And then there is Dora Benjamin, their sister. And I would like to use this oppor-tunity to ask you, Im just now trying to find out as much as possible about myaunt Dora Benjamin, and if there is anyone, especially from Switzerland (she diedin Zurich) or from France (she lived in Paris until the fascists came in 1940) whohas some information about how she lived and what she worked on, I would bevery grateful to you. I know how she died and where she died but unfortunatelyits very little. So I feel there is lot for me to do. Im not speak-ing about mymother, her biography has been sold here too. Its a special problem, as one of theresearchers wrote, there is a big clan, especially of the Schnfliess family, ofWalters mother and my fathers mother, and of this big clan there are very fewpeople left in Germany or in the German-speaking area, so those that remain haveto do quite a lot of things to keep their memory alive.

Martin Jay: Let me just pose one final question, especially to Walter Benjaminsgranddaughters. We heard from George Steiner in particular about the importanceof the German-Jewish symbiosis, and the theological residues in Benjamin. I wonder, in your own lives, is there any significance to this legacy? Do you find it meaningful, have you moved beyond it?

Mona Jean Benjamin: I know that it was not important to Dora particularly, andneither was it important to our father, though I think his Jewishness was veryimportant to him, but basically as an essence, not as an outward culture. He died, I think, never having entered a synagogue and absolutely refusing to go to asynagogue. And our mother is not Jewish, shes a Chinese Buddhist, so it showshow that aspect was not important to our father. I think it was only important inthe sense that he internalised it. And I think the same is true for us. I mean its certainly something that we dont ignore, but at the same time we dont activelyparticipate in the Jewish religion at all.

Martin Jay: Im sure there are people in the audience who would like to takethis opportunity and this enormous privilege to speak to people who have non-academic but real interest in the Walter Benjamin legacy.

Question from the audience: I was interested in your account of the burglary. Whenyou said that letters and photographs were taken, your account made it sound as ifit were intentional.

Mona Jean Benjamin: It was a house-break. They actually took all the posses-sions in the house, and I think they just happened to take that as well, as part of

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the package. I think it would have turned up by now, I mean, were talking aboutpeople who took the doorknobs. It was probably on a bonfire.

Question from the audience: I wonder if you could just say something about yourfather, Georg Benjamin. I dont know how many people know the story of hisinvolvement as a committed communist. Many people will know that. Walter saysvery little there are a few references in the letters but the relationship is notat all clear, even to those of us who are interested in these things.

Michael Benjamin:Well, first of all, this of course not a conference about GeorgBenjamin, which I would find very useful too. But to be speaking about Walter,you cannot measure how close a relationship is from the quantity of letters whichhave been exchanged or not. As far as I know from my mother. Its very frequentin Jewish families that family relationships are very close in general. So it wasamong the Benjamins, although physically they were far from each other for a longtime. Walter Benjamin was in Paris, Georg, my fathers family, my father lived inBerlin nearly all the time without any break, except of course what I told youabout. Thats at first. That my father was a Communist you know very well, andmy mother was too. Sometimes, speaking about the relationships between thebrothers, some people see a difference, let me say it in a simple way, WalterBenjamin as a thinker and Georg Benjamin as a doer, Walter als Denker, Georg alsttiger Mensch. There is something true in this comparison, but its not true fully.Of course, Walter Benjamin, Professor Steiner spoke about it, at the time of WorldWar I was in Switzerland and Georg Benjamin volunteered into the German army.But what I would point out is the next stage of their development, because whathappened to Georg Benjamin on the eastern front at Verdun and in all thoseplaces, led them to the same result: this war was unjust and a kind of war whichnever should be repeated, which never should take place again. Let me say it evenin this way, that such kind of war was criminal. So they had to put together alltheir forces, they had to fight this. So this anti-war, anti-militarist and also anti-fascist attitude was common for them but they acted in some different way. GeorgBenjamin became a member of the Communist Party. He was active politically, hewas a member of local parliament, and Walter wrote a thesis about history, to bringit to the point. But their aim, and they were both conscious of this, was common,and the result was the same too: the one died in Mauthausen, the other in Port Bou.Walter was very eager to know about the fate of his brother, after the fascists came to power. There were letters of Walter where he wrote that at least they didnt beat an eye out him, my father, so the worst maybe did not happen. Youknow these letters. So the ties were very close as far as it was possible, because then was war. We learned about the death of Walter Benjamin only after the war,

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in 45 or 46, my mother and me, while he I suppose never learned about the deathof Georg which was nearly at the same time, fatefullly. So much about GeorgBenjamin.

Question from the audience: Mona, you said, Kim teaches English and you are infilm, and you made a connection between that and your granddad. Im curiousabout it because people do things and say I just feel like doing it, but do you everthink Ooh, I wonder what Granddad would think, or is it just very intuitive whatyoure doing?

Mona Jean Benjamin: For us, I think it is, I mean I think our choices have alwaysbeen very open. A point which is, I think interesting to bring in is that Doraalways wanted our father to become a professor and a writer. And he, I thinkactively rebelled, which is why he did neither, although he was very intelligent.He spoke 8 languages, had a voracious appetite for learning and did his degree inLondon, but decided to only collect and sell books. And in his more ironicmoments told our mother that he did it to spite Dora, he did it intentionally. But for us its never been, no, our hands have never been tied, no.

Question from the audience: In a conversation I had with you, you said that youstudied in Cambridge, and according to the year 1970 when you were born, prob-ably graduated in 91, so, at that time, Benjamin was even received in Cambridge,is that right?

Mona Jean Benjamin: Yes

Question from the audience: So, was it a sort of clash of two different images, on the one hand, as you said before, Benjamin really accompanied your growing upand so on, nevertheless I could imagine that before you went into this profes-sional setting, probably you had an image of Walter Benjamin as your grand-father as any child would have it, and that then in Cambridge did it occur that suddenly an image came towards you from the outside, an image that was sort of made from another world, was here a clash of bringing the two imagestogether?

Mona Jean Benjamin: Not really, because what was quite interesting was thatwhen I was studying at school, before I got to university, I had only one teacherwho knew who Walter Benjamin was, who was a kind of ardent left wing sup-porter, and he was the only person who had any idea, and even at university, in myfirst year and a half there, I didnt come into contact with any people who wereactually teaching me, who were familiar with his work, and I told Martin this

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evening actually that it was only sort of only towards the end that there was thehuge explosion of Walter Benjamin all over the place and he suddenly becameincredibly trendy to study, and I would have friends leaving me messages saying ,Ive been told I need to read this, and its your grandfather, and I also rememberhaving conversations with more than one person who would say, no, its impossi-ble, because Walter Benjamin had no children, so therefore you cant be his grand-daughter, youre lying. More than one. So that was odd, sort of how gradually I kind of made contact with other people who had taken on very, very clear ideasabout who he was to them, and obviously his family didnt play any part in that.They rather liked the lonely tragic figure who had no one left.

Gary Smith: I must admit, I remember that when I was sitting in Boston, editinga book about Benjamin, someone said, Well, there are some people who claim tobe the granddaughters of Walter Benjamin, and I said that couldnt be, becauseStefan didnt have any children. I was also convinced that, until I came to yourhouse the first time, that Stefan would have to be formed by the relationship to hismother, because after all they went into exile together, in San Remo, in Londonand so on, and then coming into your house, and being hit by these thousands ofbooks on London, this passionate, obsessive collection of books, one does thinkthat he was formed, at least if only in the choice to become an antiquarianbookdealer, by the absence and relationship to his father. It seems to me also thathis neglect of the whole copyright situation, the fact that he in a way left it toAdorno to take care of, and that has led to a probably still continuing problematicrelationship, because after all I assume that all the manuscripts in the Adornoarchives are family manuscripts. Are there other questions?

Question from the audience: I would like to ask Michael Benjamin, what do youknow about Georg and your mother, and the role of Jewishness in the orientationor attitude of your mother.

Michael Benjamin:Well, first of all my mother was not a Jew. Thats the reasonthat I survived. I could survive only because I was what in the Nazi jargon wascalled a Mischling, Mischling ersten Grades. I dont know how to translate it.Its one of the difficulties of translation, we just have to see it from another side.And you know that according to the Wannsee Conference the Mischling-question,as they expressed it, had to be solved only after the Endsieg, the final victory. So thats the reason why people like me survived. Secondly, we lived in Germanyall this time, from my birth until now, and especially in the fascist time you could not live without being conscious that you were of Jewish origin. You werereminded of this each day, and more than once a day. I think some of you may

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be of my generation, and will remember this by your own experience. So we were very conscious of my Jewish origin and my fathers and Walters and DorasJewishness.

And of course we didnt forget this after 45. And now I would like to point outtwo sides of the question. First of all, from my own experience I can say thisabsolutely confidently, that this was no question in the GDR. I dont judge aboutHungary, I dont judge about Russia. Simply Jewish origin was of no interest foranything or anybody. I am not speaking about what is called the Jewish Question,but about were you personally of Jewish origin or not. It was of interest though forquestions of rehabilitation, of some money you had, pensions and so on. It playeda role if you were, in how your attitude was to Communism, in how your attitudewas maybe to western culture and things like that, and of course, your attitude to Zionism as an ideology was part of what was called bourgeois nationalism, I know this. But your origin was of no interest. As I have also written, you could havea good career neither because you were a Jew, nor in spite of the fact that you were aJew. It was simply, you were a Jew.

And then I have to tell you, and this is now sometimes misunderstood, espe-cially misunderstood by people of Jewish origin which did not live in the time offascism in Germany, it was for us, especially in the first years, in 45, 46, it was eineungeheure Erleichterungan immense relief not to be asked are you of Jewish ori-gin? . It was very good and I felt much more relieved by the fact that nobody knew,and yet they knew, but nobody was interested in this fact. It was my privacy, it wasmy private fact. I tell you one thing which happened in my life. It was about, Ithink, the Six Days War, in 67. I was a young scientist in eastern Germany, work-ing on questions of penal law, very specific questions, and there came a scientistfrom Egypt and wanted to discuss those questions of penal law with someone fromthe GDR. I received a call from the Ministry of Higher Education of the GDR,and they told me this: There is some professor from Egypt and he likes to discussquestions, and so on. I was aware that there was a war. I dont know what hethinks about Jews or not. So I asked the lady who phoned me, Are you sure thatyou wish me to discuss this question with the professor from Egypt? . Sheanswered, Why not? You have been recommended as a specialist in this field andyou are in Berlin and it is convenient, he is in Berlin too, and so on. I repeated,Did you reallyThe result was that I had to explain to her what my name meansand all these questions. And what happened then was, that she answered, Oh, wedidnt think about this fact. For me, this circumstance was of some decisive meaning. She did not think about it, and after thinking it over they decided that I had to discuss and will meet the Egyptian professor, but as the Russians say, thats from another song. For me, it was a Schlsselerlebnis, a key experience that they did not think it over. Another question is the attitude to Zionism.

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Another question is also the attitude to religion in general in an atheistic state, but I dont think that the Jewish religious community had many difficulties ineastern Germany, as far as I know. But thats also from another song. And let meadd this. Once I got interested in this question, who is a Jew and who not in the GDR, I found out that among the elites, economic and political elites, theJews in eastern Germany are very over-represented in relationship to their part inthe population.

Martin Jay: Were moving into very interesting waters, but I think maybe wealas must close. Id like to thank for everybody Mona and Kim and MichaelBenjamin for sharing with us their many memories, for being so candid and gra-cious, and we hope theyll be with us again tomorrow and join in the scholarlywork of this conference. Thanks again.

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