Reproduction/repetition: Walter Benjamin/Carl Einstein

October

Volumn , Issue 107, 2004, Pages 47-74

  Haxthausen, Charles W ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67449159162     PISSN: 01622870     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/016228704322790890     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), vol. 2, p. 104. For the convenience of the reader I have cited, here and throughout this article, references to the English translation, even though, translating from the German, I have at times occasionally used slightly different wordings
2. Carl Einstein, "Notes sur le cubisme [1929]," Werke Band 3. 1929-1940, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996)
3. English translation by Charles W. Haxthausen, "Notes on Cubism," this issue, p. 165
4. Rainer Rumold, as cited by Klaus H. Kiefer, has established that Benjamin's Paris address book, which included the names of many members of the avant-garde, does not include that of Einstein. Klaus H. Kiefer, "Die Ethnologisierung des kunstkritischen Diskurses - Carl Einsteins Beitrag zu 'Documents,'" in Elan vital oder das Auge des Eros, ed. Hubertus Gassner (Munich: Haus der Kunst, 1994), p. 101, n. 10
5. For chronologies on Einstein, see Wilfried Ihrig, "Vita Carl Einstein," Text + Kritik 95 (July 1987). 80-86
6. on Benjamin, see Benjamin, Selected Writings, vols. 1-4, in which an exhaustive chronology is included at the end of each volume
7. Georges Didi-Huberman's Devant le temps: Histoire de l'art et anachronisme des images, Collection "Critique" (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 2000), comprises extended essays on both, but he does not systematically compare them or examine in detail the issue of reproduction in their work
8. The present essay is a substantial revision and expansion of my "Reproduktion und Wiederholung, Benjamin und Einstein: Eine kritische Gegenüberstellung," Études Germaniques 1 (March 1998). 55-76
9. Whatever Benjamin's debt to Adrienne Monnier, his reproduction theory probably owed something as well to László Moholy-Nagy's discussion of reproduction in his chapter "Domestic Pinacoteca" [Hauspinakothek], in Painting, Photography, Film (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969): "Contemporary technology offers a means of assuring a wide circulation for 'originals' too. With the aid of machine production, with the aid of exact mechanical and technical instruments and processes ... we can today free ourselves from the domination of the individual handmade piece and its market value. Such a picture will obviously not be used as it is today as a piece of lifeless room decoration but will probably be kept in compartments on shelves or 'domestic picture galleries'; and brought out only when they are really needed" (pp. 25-26)
10. Benjamin's indebtedness to this passage was first pointed out by Krisztina Passuth, "Moholy-Nagy et Walter Benjamin," Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne 5-6 (1980-81). 399-403. In his "Little History of Photography" Einstein quoted from Moholy's book
11. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, p. 103
12. This discussion is indebted to Rolf H. Krauss's close analysis of "Little History of Photography" in his Walter Benjamin und der neue Blick auf die Photographie (Ostfildern Ruit: Cantz, 1998). 20-28
13. It is tempting to speculate whether this stress on the unreproducibility of an object's authenticity owes something to Erwin Panofsky's essay, "Original und Faksimilereproduktion," Der Kreis 7 (1930). 3-16
14. reprinted in Erwin Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze II, ed. Karen Michels and Martin Warnke (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). 1078-90
15. On Panofsky and Benjamin see Michael Diers, "Kunst und Reproduktion: Der Hamburger Faksimile-Streit," Idea: Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 5 (1986). 129-32
16. As Horst Bredekamp has shown, this aspect of Benjamin's thesis is contradicted by the historical facts, and those facts had been established by art historians long before Benjamin wrote his "Work of Art" essay. During the Middle Ages cult images were duplicated in order to extend their ostensible powers. If the form of a cult image or a reliquary was reproduced, then its redemptive or healing power, i.e., its aura, was transferred to the reproduction. The cult value was therefore not diminished but intensified by reproduction. Horst Bredekamp, "Der simulierte Benjamin: Mittelalterliche Bemerkungen zu seiner Aktualität," in Frankfurter Schule und Kunstgeschichte, ed. Andreas Berndt et al. (Berlin: Dietrich Riemer Verlag, 1992). 125-33
17. Letter of February 29, 1940, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 321
18. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 338
19. Letter of February 29, 1940, Adorno and Benjamin, Correspondence, p. 322
20. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2. 518-20
21. Marleen Stoessel, Aura: Das vergessene Menschliche: Zu Sprache und Erfahrung bei Walter Benjamin (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1983), p. 47
22. Carl Einstein, Werke Band 4: Texte aus dem Nachlaß I, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1992), p. 391
23. Carl Einstein, "Totalität," Anmerkungen (Berlin: Verlag der Wochenschrift "Die Aktion," 1916), p. 32
24. Konrad Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, second edition, ed. Gottfried Boehm (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1992), vol. 1. 32, 33, 46
25. See Einstein's formulation of 1931: "Through vision we change human beings and the world." Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, in Carl Einstein Werke, vol. 5, ed. Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), p. 92
26. Carl Einstein, unpublished notes from the late 1930s, Werke 4, p. 419
27. Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (1931). 69, 70
28. Einstein, Georges Braque (1934)
29. Werke 3, p. 275
30. Einstein, Georges Braque, p. 270
31. Einstein, "Notes on Cubism," this issue, p. 160
32. Letter of January 4, 1933, Erwin Panofsky: Korrespondenz 1910-1936, ed. Dieter Wuttke (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 2001), p. 557
33. Carl Einstein, "Anmerkung [1932]," Werke 3, p. 219
34. "Diese aesthetiker veranlassen uns [Gestalt und Begriff]," Einstein, Werke 4, p. 218
35. Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Propyläen- Kunstgeschichte 16 (Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1926), p. 64
36. See Einstein, "Gestalt and Concept," this issue. 169-76
37. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn," in Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), vol. 1, p. 880
38. Walter Benjamin, "Reply to Oskar A. H. Schmitz," Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 17
39. Carl Einstein, "Notes on Cubism," this issue. 163-66. Benjamin's example falls into the category of mechanical repetition of motor movements, a bodily aptitude formed by what Bergson called habit memory, and which he distinguished from the mental representations produced by the intersection of perception with memory images that was Einstein's concern
40. Walter Benjamin, "Painting, or Signs and Marks," Selected Writings, vol. 1. 83-86. The original German title is "Malerei, oder Zeichen und Mal," and "mark" does not quite capture the resonance of "Mal" or capture its semantic link to "Malerei."
41. Benjamin, Briefe, vol. 1, p. 395
42. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998). 159-60
43. Sigrid Weigel, "Thought-Images: A Re-reading of the 'Angel of History,'" Body and Image-Space: Re-reading Waller Benjamin, trans. Georgina Paul (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 49
44. Walter Benjamin, "Peintures chinoises à la Biblothèque Nationale," Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972), vol. 4, p. 603
45. As Bernd Witte formulates it, "By becoming sociologically concrete, allegory for its part acquires a political dimension." See Witte, Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991). 119-20
46. Bertolt Brecht, "Zu Die Dreigroschenoper" in Brecht, Werke: Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. Werner Hecht and Jan Knopf (Berlin/Frankfurt: Aufbau/Suhrkamp, 1988), vol. 24, p. 56
47. See Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2. 524-25
48. Benjamin, Gesammelle Schriften, vol. 1, p. 1039
49. Carl Einstein, "Dictionaire critique: Rossignol," Einstein, Werke 3, p. 31
50. English translation, Charles W. Haxthausen, "Critical Dictionary: Nightingale," this issue, p. 153
51. "Bebuquin II," CEA Berlin. Quoted in Kiefer, Avantgarde, Weltkrieg, Exil, p. 15
52. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (1931). 259-269. 667-687, plates xxx-xxxi
53. On the question of pictorial description in Einstein's writing, see German Neundorfer, "Ekphrasis in Carl Einsteins Negerplastik," in Carl-Einstein-Kolloquium 1998: Carl Einstein in Brüssel: Dialoge über Grenzen, ed. Roland Baumann and Hubert Roland (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. 2001). 49-64
54. "Bebuquin II," folder 35, Carl-Einstein-Archiv, Berlin Akademie der Künste
55. On Einstein's years in Spain, see Liliane Meffre, Carl Einstein, 1885-1940: Itinéraires d'une pensée moderne (Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002). 290-305
56. Carl Einstein, Die Fabrikation der Fiktionen, ed. Sibylle Penkert, Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973)
57. Craig Owens, "The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism," in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, ed. Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynne Tillman, and Jane Weinstock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 56
58. Einstein, "Die Fabrikation der Fiktionen," Folder 6. 176-77, CEA, Akademie der Künste Berlin. Because Einstein's meaning is clear in the original manuscript, later corrected, I quote from it rather than from Sybille Penkert's published edition
59. Einstein, "Totality," this issue, p. 116
60. Benjamin, "Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography," pp. 239, 240-41
61. Carl Einstein, "Die Pleite des deutschen Films," Werke Band 2. 1919-1928, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), p. 210
62. Carl Einstein "A propos," Werke 2. 151-52
63. On this, see Rolf-Peter Baake, "Carl Einstein-Kunstagent," in Carl Einstein: Materialien. I: Zwischen Bebuquin und Negerplastik, ed. Rolf-Peter Bakke (Berlin: Silver & Goldstein, 1990), p. 22
64. Two undated letters from 1938, Einstein/Kahnweiler Correspondance. 94, 97, 99
65. See also Meffre's discussion of this project in Meffre, Carl Einstein. 289-90
66. A German translation of the interview by Marianne Kroger, "Carl Einstein erläutert den Mehrfrontenkrieg und die Kriegspläne des Nazifaschismus," has been reprinted in Einstein, Werke 4. 645-49
67. Einstein, Werke 4, p. 423