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Berlin Childhood around 1900

Author Walter Benjamin
Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen
Hardcover
$24.95 US
Verso Books | Verso
5-1/12"W x 7-4/5"H | 20 oz | 12 per carton
On sale Nov 18, 2025 | 144 Pages | 9781836740148
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A new translation of philsopher Walter Benjamin's moving and groundbreaking memoir of growing up.

Completed in exile in Paris, as the second World War was dawning, Walter Benjamin looks back at the city of his birth at the beginning of the century. The book is both a sensory memoir of childhood as well as a tour of the iconic spaces of city. These are 'expeditions into the depths of memory', moving through vignettes of domestic settings and classrooms, city squares, parks and streets. The memories of childhood merge with a city that is about to disappear into darkness.

As his friend, Adorno, wrote, the work is 'illuminated by lightning flashes of immediate remembrance . . .the images this book unearths and brings strangely near are not idyllic and not contemplative. Over them lies the shadow of the Third Reich. And through them dreamily runs a shudder at the long forgotten.'
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator and philosopher. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama. In 1940, he was in Spain, fleeing the Nazis and en route to the United States, when Franco's government cancelled his visa. Expecting repatriation, he took his own life.
Walter Benjamin View titles by Walter Benjamin
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Translator’s Preface
Introduction
Foreword

Loggias
Kaiser Panorama
Victory Column
The Telephone
Butterfly Hunt
Tiergarten
Having Come Too Late
Boys’ Books
Winter Morning
Steglitzer, Corner of Genthiner
Market Hall
Fever
The Otter
Pfaueninsel and Glienicke
News of a Death
Blumeshof 12
Winter Evening
Crooked Street
The Stocking
The Mummerehlen
Hiding Places
A Ghost
Accidents and Crimes
Colors
The Sewing Box
The Moon
Two Brass Bands

Appendix
The Carousel
Awakening of the Sex Drive

Afterword: Theodor W. Adorno

About

A new translation of philsopher Walter Benjamin's moving and groundbreaking memoir of growing up.

Completed in exile in Paris, as the second World War was dawning, Walter Benjamin looks back at the city of his birth at the beginning of the century. The book is both a sensory memoir of childhood as well as a tour of the iconic spaces of city. These are 'expeditions into the depths of memory', moving through vignettes of domestic settings and classrooms, city squares, parks and streets. The memories of childhood merge with a city that is about to disappear into darkness.

As his friend, Adorno, wrote, the work is 'illuminated by lightning flashes of immediate remembrance . . .the images this book unearths and brings strangely near are not idyllic and not contemplative. Over them lies the shadow of the Third Reich. And through them dreamily runs a shudder at the long forgotten.'

Creators

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator and philosopher. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama. In 1940, he was in Spain, fleeing the Nazis and en route to the United States, when Franco's government cancelled his visa. Expecting repatriation, he took his own life.
Walter Benjamin View titles by Walter Benjamin

Table of Contents

Translator’s Preface
Introduction
Foreword

Loggias
Kaiser Panorama
Victory Column
The Telephone
Butterfly Hunt
Tiergarten
Having Come Too Late
Boys’ Books
Winter Morning
Steglitzer, Corner of Genthiner
Market Hall
Fever
The Otter
Pfaueninsel and Glienicke
News of a Death
Blumeshof 12
Winter Evening
Crooked Street
The Stocking
The Mummerehlen
Hiding Places
A Ghost
Accidents and Crimes
Colors
The Sewing Box
The Moon
Two Brass Bands

Appendix
The Carousel
Awakening of the Sex Drive

Afterword: Theodor W. Adorno

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