11 April 2019

Walter Benjamin Digital / New edition of Berliner Chronik and Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert

Press Conference Invitation
Tuesday, 30 April 2019, 11 am
Walter Benjamin Archive, Luisenstraße 60, 10117 Berlin

With Jan Philipp Reemtsma, chairman of the executive board of the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture, Nadine Werner, editor of the new edition, and Oliver Gasperlin, head of the department of Digital Humanities, pagina GmbH

Please register at: presse@adk.de 

Walter Benjamin's texts Berliner Chronik (A Berlin Chronicle) and Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900) have just been published both as Volume 11 of the critical complete edition by Suhrkamp Verlag and as a digital partial edition titled Walter Benjamin Digital. The famous prose miniatures, written between 1932 and 1938, are considered to be key texts of the modern era. For the first time, the new edition brings all of the extant writings, drafts and notes on the childhood book together, facilitating exact contextualisation and allowing a precise understanding of Benjamin's work as a writer. The effect is amazing: Benjamin's book reads in a completely new light. In addition to this, with this volume the critical issue appears in a new format: For the first time ever, the highly complex manuscripts of the Berliner Kindheit project (Berlin Childhood project) are accessible online.

To mark the occasion, and on behalf of the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture and Suhrkamp Verlag, the Akademie der Künste invites you to the Walter Benjamin Archive on 30 April 2019 at 11 am. Following speeches by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Nadine Werner and Oliver Gasperlin on promoting the complete edition, on the editorial challenges and on the digitisation of the texts, Eva Gilmer, programme director at Suhrkamp Wissenschaft, book designer Friedrich Forssman, and Erdmut Wizisla, director of the Walter Benjamin Archive, will be available for further information. During the press conference, selected manuscripts will be available to view in the original. A public book presentation is scheduled to take place on 30 April at 8 pm in the Akademie building at Pariser Platz. More

Press photographs at www.adk.de/de/presse/pressematerial 
Review copies can be requested from Suhrkamp Verlag:
Jan Trautmann, Tel. 030/740744-293, trautmann@suhrkamp.de