Radio Benjamin

Walter Benjamin, Lecia Rosenthal, Jonathan Lutes, Lisa Harries Schumann, Diana Reese

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781781687017
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to '33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin's thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated "Enlightenment for Children" youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.
Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century's most respected thinkers.

SECTION I

Youth Hour: Radio Stories for Children

Benjamin broadcast the radio talks in this section from 1929 to 1932 on Radio Berlin and Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt. They were delivered as part of the stations’ youth programming: Berlin Radio’s Jugendstunde and Radio Frankfurt’s Stunde der Jugend, or Youth Hour.

The order of the broadcasts is roughly chronological, with further groupings into three overarching Benjaminian concerns: stories related to Berlin; stories about cheats and frauds; stories about catastrophes; and finally “True Dog Stories” and “A Crazy Mixed-Up Day,” which do not fit into the preceding categories.

CHAPTER 1

Berlin Dialect

Today I’d like to speak with you about the Berlin Schnauze. This so-called big snout is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Berliners.¹ The Berliner, as they say in Germany, well, he’s the clever one who does everything differently and better than the rest of us. Or so he would have you believe. That’s why people in Germany don’t like Berliners, or so they let on. Still, at the end of the day, it’s a good thing for people to have a capital they can grumble about now and again.

But really, is this true about the Berlin Schnauze? It is and it isn’t. Every one of you surely knows lots of stories where Berliners open their big traps so wide that the Brandenburg Gate could fit inside. And later on I’ll tell you a few more that perhaps you’ve never heard. But if you look at it a little closer, much of what you think you know about the big snout isn’t actually true. It’s quite simple: for example, other peoples and other regions make much of their particular way of speaking; “dialect” is what we call the language spoken in an individual city or area. They go on and on about it; they’re proud of it; and they love their poets, like Reuter who wrote in Mecklenburg Low German, Hebel in Alemannic, and Gotthelf in Swiss German.² And they’re right to do so. But Berliners, as far as “Berlining” is concerned, have always been very humble. In fact, if anything they’ve been ashamed of their language, at least around sophisticated people and with foreigners. Needless to say, when among themselves, they have a lot of fun with it. And of course they also make fun of Berlining, just as they do of everything else, and there are many pretty stories to show for it. For example: a man sits at the table with his wife and says: “Huh, beans again today? But I et ’em just yesterday.” Then his wife one-ups him and says: “It ain’t ‘I et,’ it’s ‘I ate.’ ” To which the man replies: “Maybe you call yourself that, but I sure as heck don’t.”³ Or the well-known story of a man walking with his son, who points to a sign and asks: “How do you prenounce that word, papa?” And the father corrects him: “ ‘Prenounce’ is prenounced ‘pronounce.’ ”

Berliners needed encouragement to own up to their language with outsiders. But this wasn’t always the case. One hundred years ago there were already writers creating Berlin characters that would become famous all across Germany. The best known include the Bootblack, the Market Woman, the Innkeeper, the Street Hawker and, above all, the famed Nante the Loafer.⁴ And if you’ve ever had your hands on old issues of the funny pages, you’ve probably come across the two famous Berliners, one short and fat, the other tall and skinny. They would talk politics, sometimes going by the names Kielmeier and Strobelweber, or Plümecke and Bohnhammel, or Meck and Scherbel, or finally just plain Müller and Schulze, and they came up with some of the greatest lines about Berlin. The newspaper had something new from them each week. But then came 1870 and the founding of the German Reich. Suddenly Berliners had grand ambitions and wanted to become refined. What was missing was a few great, widely respected men to give them back the courage of their own dialect. Strangely enough, two of them were painters, not writers, and we have a slew of lovely stories about them. The first, whom most of you won’t know, is the famous old Max Liebermann, who is still alive and still feared for his dreadful Schnauze. But a few years ago, another painter, one by the name of Bondy took him to task.⁵ The two of them were sitting across from one another in a café having a friendly chat, when all at once Liebermann said to Bondy: “You know, Bondy, you’d be a real nice guy and all if your hands weren’t so disgusting.” Bondy then looks at Professor Liebermann and says: “You got it, Professor, but you see, these hands here, I can just slide ’em in my pockets, like so. What do you do with your face?” And the other great Berliner, whom many of you know by name and who only recently died, is Heinrich Zille.⁶ If he heard or observed a particularly good story, he didn’t just run out and have it published. Instead he drew a splendid picture of it. These illustrated stories have just been collected after his death, so now you can ask for them as a gift. You’ll recognize many of them, but perhaps not this one: A father is sitting at the table with his three boys. They’re having noodle soup when one says: “Oskar, look how the noodle’s dangling from papa’s snout!” Then the oldest, Albert, says: “Gustav, you can’t call your papa’s mug a snout!” “Nah,” says Gustav, “the old buffoon don’t mind!” But now the father has had it and jumps up to fetch his cane. The three boys, Gustav, Albert, and Oskar, scurry under the bedstead. The father tries to get at them but can’t. Finally he says to the youngest: “Come out from under there, Oskar, you ain’t said nothin’. I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to you.” Oskar replies from under the bed: “And face a wretch like you?” Later on I’ll tell you a few more stories about fresh little brats.⁷

But don’t think Berlinish is just a collection of jokes. It is very much a real and wonderful language. It even has a proper book of grammar, which was written by Hans Meyer, director of the old Gray Cloister School in Berlin. It’s called “The True Berliner in Words and Phrases.”⁸ As much as any other language, Berlinish can be spoken in a manner that is refined, witty, gentle, or clever, but of course, the speaker must know when and where to do so. Berlinish is a language that comes from work. It developed not from writers or scholars, but rather from the locker room and the card table, on the bus and at the pawn shop, at sporting arenas and in factories. Berlinish is a language of people who have no time, who often must communicate by using only the slightest hint, glance, or half-word. It’s not for people who meet socially from time to time. It’s only for those who see one another regularly, daily, under very precise and fixed conditions. Special ways of speaking always arise among such people, which you yourselves have a perfect example of in the classroom. There is a special language for school kids, just like there are special expressions used among employees, sportsmen, soldiers, thieves, and so on. And all these ways of speaking contribute something to Berlinish, because in Berlin all these people from all walks of life live piled together, and at a tremendous pace. Berlinish today is one of the most beautiful and most precise expressions of this frenzied pace of life.

Of course, this was not always the case. I will now read you a Berlin story from a time when Berlin was not yet a city of four million people, but just a few hundred thousand.

BRUSHMAKER (carrying his brushes and brooms, but so drunk that he’s forgotten what he’s actually selling). Eels here! Eels here! Get your eels here! Who’s got cash!

FIRST BOOTBLACK: Listen up, Sir Scrubber, whoever eats a couple eels gets swept away. (He leaves the drunkard and runs madly through the streets, screaming.) Holy cow, this one takes the cake! No more smokin’ from the window!

SEVERAL PEOPLE: What are you talkin’ about? Really? You can’t smoke from the window anymore? Now they’ve gone too far.

FIRST BOOTBLACK (running away): Yep! You gotta smoke from a pipe!—Hah!

BRISICH THE LOAFER (in front of the museum): I like this building, it cracks me up.

LANGE THE LOAFER: How come it cracks you up?

BRISICH (staggering a bit): Well, because of the eagles on top!

LANGE: What’s so funny about the eagles?

BRISICH: Well, they’re royal eagles but still they sit there loafin’ on the corner! Just think if I was a royal eagle and got to loaf on the corner of the museum just for decoration! I tell you what I’d do. If I was thirsty, I’d quit my decorating for a while and pull out my bottle, take a couple swigs and holler down to the people: “Don’t think bad about the museum! A royal eagle’s just takin’ a break!”⁹

All languages change quickly, but the language of a metropolis changes much more quickly than does language in rural regions. Now, compare the language you just heard to that of a crier in a story from today. The man who wrote it is named Döblin, the same Döblin who told you about Berlin one Saturday not long ago.¹⁰ Of course, he wouldn’t have heard it exactly as he wrote it. He often just hung around Alexanderplatz and listened to the people hawking their wares and then cobbled together the best bits of what he heard:

How come the elegant man in the West End wears a tie and the prole wears none? Gentlemen, come closer, you too Fräulein, that’s right, the one with the man on your arm, and minors are allowed too, they’re for free. Why are there no ties on a prole? Because he can’t tie ‘em. So he buys himself a tie-holder and once he’s got it, it’s no good ‘cuz he can’t tie it. It’s a scam and it embitters the masses and sinks Germany into even deeper misery than she’s in already. Tell me, for example, why no one wears these big tie-holders? Because no one wants to tie a dustpan around his neck. Not men, not women, not babies if they had a say. It’s no laughing matter, gentlemen, laugh not, we don’t know what goes on in that sweet little baby brain. Dear God, the sweet little head, what a sweet little head, with its little hairs, but what’s not pretty, gentlemen, is paying your alimony, that’s no joke, that gets a man into trouble. Go buy yourself a tie at Tietz or Wertheim, or somewhere else if you won’t buy from Jews. I’m an Aryan man. The big department stores don’t need me to pitch for ‘em, they do just fine without me. So buy yourselves a tie like I have here and then think about having to tie it every morning. Ladies and gentlemen, who has time nowadays to tie a tie in the morning and give up an extra minute of precious sleep? We need all the sleep we can get because we all work so much and earn so little. A tie-holder like this makes you sleep easier. It’s putting pharmacists out of business, because whoever buys one of these here tie-holders needs no sleeping potion, no nightcap, no nothin’. He sleeps safe and sound like a baby at his mother’s breast, because he knows there’s no hustle in the morning; what he needs is right there on the dresser, tied and ready, just waitin’ to be shoved into his collar. You spend your money on so much rubbish. You must have seen the crooks last year at the Krokodil Bar, there was hot sausage in front, and behind lay Jolly in his glass case, with a beard like sauerkraut growing around his mouth.¹¹ Every one of you saw it—come a little closer, now, I wanna save my voice, I haven’t insured my voice, I’m still saving up for the down payment—how Jolly was lying in the glass case, you all saw it. But how they slipped him some chocolate? You didn’t see that! You’re buyin’ honest goods here, not celluloid, but galvanized rubber, twenty pfennigs apiece, fifty for three.¹²

This shows you just how useful the Berlin Schnauze can be, and how someone can earn his money with it, drumming up as much interest in his ties as if he were running an entire department store.

Thus a language renews itself every second. All events, great and small, leave their mark on it. War and inflation as much as a Zeppelin sighting, Amanullah’s visit, or Iron Gustav.¹³ There are even speech fads in Berlinish. Perhaps some of you still remember the famous “to me.” For example: if a Berliner is being chatted up by someone he doesn’t want to talk to, he says, “That’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to me,” which means “nave.” And, as everyone knows, a “knave” is a scoundrel. Or someone is giving an order to a young boy and says to him, “Can you manage it?” And the boy replies, “That’s abacus to me.” (You can count on me.)

By now you will have noticed that in many of these stories, there’s more to Berliners than just the big Schnauze. For instance, people can be very impertinent yet also very awkward. Berliners, however, at least the better ones, combine their impertinence with a whole lot of quick wit, spirit, and jest. “A Berliner ain’t never taken for a fool,” as they say. Take, for example, the nice story of the fellow, who’s in a great hurry and riding in a horse-drawn carriage that’s going too slow: “My God, driver, can’t you move a little faster?” “Sure thing. But I can’t just leave the horse all alone.” But a true Berliner joke is never only at the expense of others; it’s just as much at the jokester’s expense. This is what makes him so likable and free: he doesn’t spare his own dialect, and there are many wonderful stories to prove it. For example, a man, already a bit drunk, walks into a bar and says: “What ales you got?” And the barkeep replies: “I got gout and a bad back.”¹⁴

And now for the stories I promised you about children. Three boys enter a pharmacy. The first one says: “Penny o’ licorice.” The shopkeeper fetches a long ladder, climbs to the top step, fills the bag, and climbs back down. Once the boy pays, the second boy says: “I’d also like a penny o’ licorice!” Before climbing the ladder again, the shopkeeper, already annoyed, asks the third boy: “You want a penny of licorice, too?” “Nope,” he says. So the shopkeeper climbs back up the ladder, and then down again with the full bag. He now turns to the third boy: “And what do you want, lil’ man?” And he answers: “I want the licorice for a ha’penny.” Or, a man sees a young boy on the street: “Huh, smokin’ already? I’m gonna tell your teacher.” “Do what you want, you old fool, I ain’t big enough for school yet.” Or, there’s a fifth-grader at school who can’t get used to calling his teacher “sir.” The teacher’s name is Ackermann and he lets it pass for a while until finally he gets angry: “By tomorrow morning you’ll write in your notebook 100 times: ‘I shall never forget to call my teacher “sir.””‘ The next day the boy comes to school and gives his teacher the notebook, in which indeed he has written 100 times: “I shall never forget to call my teacher ‘sir.’ ” The teacher counts and, sure enough, there’s 100. And the boy says: “What’s up, Ackermann, surprised?”

We’ll hear some more Berlinish another time if you want, but there’s surely no need to wait. Just open your eyes and ears when you...