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Erdmut Wizisla is the director of the Bertolt Brecht Archive in Berlin, which houses some 200,000 of Brecht's manuscripts and his personal library, as well as the Walter Benjamin Archives at the Akademie der Kunste Berlin. He is currently an Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Humboldt University of Berlin.
If this book had appeared decades ago, it would have terminated an unproductive debate in one fell swoop: that of the influence be it fruitful, be it disastrous of probably the most significant German playwright and poet of the 20th century, Bertolt Brecht, on probably the most significant critic of his day, Walter Benjamin Scrupulous, scholarly, and written with loving commitment. Momme Brodersen, author of Walter Benjamin, A Biography What emerges from this rich selection of materials is not merely a fuller picture of these towering figures but also of the working life of intellectual production, deliberation, and publication on the part of a vibrant scene of letters, culture, and activism under threat of imminent dissolution. Henry Sussman, Yale University With great archival expertise, Wizisla captures the spontaneity, energy, and excitement of Benjamin s and Brecht s thinking in process; their efforts to arrive at an aesthetic that expresses Communist practice; and their struggle tocome to terms with Soviet reality under Stalin. Gitta Honegger, Arizona State University Wizisla s story of artistic and political radicalism in the darkest of times is a landmark publication. These two friends inhabited their times supremely well; their traces ought to inspire us in ours. Independent
