Angelus Novus
The surrender of Third Reich Germany to the Allies and the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination turns 80 years old. 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day, marked the end of the Second World War. Coinciding with this date, the Berlin State Museums open an extraordinary exhibition titled “The Angel of History. Walter Benjamin, Paul Klee and The Angels of Berlin 80 Years after the Second World War”.
The surrender of Hitler’s Third Reich Germany to the Allies and the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination turns 80 years old. On 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day, the Second World War came to an end. Coinciding with that day, an extraordinary exhibition will open at the Berlin State Museums, one of the largest in the world, founded by King Frederick William III of Prussia under the name Royal Museums of Berlin: “The Angel of History. Walter Benjamin, Paul Klee and The Angels of Berlin 80 Years after the Second World War”.
The key work of this show will be Angelus Novus (1920) by the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), which leaves the Jerusalem Museum exceptionally to be exhibited in Berlin. The arrival of this charismatic work will be accompanied by other paintings of angels, from Berlin museums that survived WWII. What makes this watercolor of 31.8 by 24.2 centimeters so particular is that it was the property of the German philosopher, of Jewish origin, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Benjamin acquired the work in Munich, during a visit to his friend Gershom Scholem in 1921, and possessed it until his death.
The importance of this work in Benjamin’s life was of such magnitude that it accompanied him in his exile, thanks to the help of a friend who took the painting to Paris in 1935. The philosopher had had to flee his native Berlin, to which he would not return, escaping a Germany in which persecutions of Jews and Marxists had broken out. But in 1940, when the advance of the Nazi troops was reaching Paris, Benjamin put his papers and the painting, removed from its frame, in a suitcase and gave it to Georges Bataille, who deposited them in the National Library, fleeing the country hastily toward Spain.
Walter Benjamin took his own life in our country, specifically in Port-Bou, on 26 September 1940. He committed suicide by ingesting a high dose of morphine at the Hotel Francia where he was staying. He was 48 years old when he died. He had arrived from the French town of Port Vendres with a group accompanying him. His intention was to cross the Pyrenees and thus be able to reach Portugal and embark for the United States. To this end, his faithful friend the German philosopher Theodor Adorno had obtained the necessary transit visas through Spain and entry into the United States, so he could join him. But he lacked the exit permit from France. Therefore, the authorities of this Spanish town bordering France threatened to deport Benjamin to France. Faced with the fear of being handed over to the Gestapo, he could not bear it and hastened his death. In a will from years before, Benjamin’s wish was that the painting be given to Adorno, who would receive it in the United States after the war. Later Adorno gave it to Scholem in Frankfurt, and the latter would donate it to the Jerusalem Museum, from which it has come for this exceptional show.
Walter Benjamin at the National Library of Frankfurt in 1939.
In one of his last writings, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Benjamin composed a text about the angel represented in Paul Klee’s work, of which he makes a very peculiar, somewhat clouded interpretation, perceiving it as the Angel of History. The exhibition will also feature the manuscripts of this text by Benjamin from the Berlin Academy of Arts.
In his book Illuminations I, Benjamin gives his own interpretation of Klee’s Angelus Novus. An angel who seems about to move away from something that holds him transfixed. The angel of history who observes with his mouth open and his wings spread, with his face looking toward the past, “a single catastrophe that tirelessly piles ruin upon ruin, hurling them at his feet. He would like to pause, to awaken the dead and put together what has been shattered”. But, Benjamin continues, “a hurricane drives him irresistibly toward the future, to which he turns his back, while the heaps of ruins grow before him up to the sky. That hurricane is what we call progress”. Time as progress will be criticized by Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin was a brilliant mind who developed an extraordinary intellectual career. He was considered one of the most important literary critics of his time, although his main vocation was philosophy. With a passionate and acute thought. One of his most recognized works, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, was an invaluable contribution to aesthetic theory, since it raised problems of the philosophy of art of a metaphysical cut. The concept of aura drawn from the mystical tradition, the procedures of photomechanical reproduction or cinema are treated in this work full of discoveries.
In addition, fragments of Wim Wenders’s film “Wings of Desire” (1987) will be screened. In it two angels watch over divided Berlin and reference is made to Klee’s watercolor and to the interpretation Benjamin makes of the watercolor.
Walter Benjamin, Paris, 1938.
