Walter Benjamin Jots in His Notebook Every Book He’s Read Since He Was 18

If you’re in Berlin, stop by the Galerie Max Het­zler, which is cur­rent­ly stag­ing an exhi­bi­tion where the Jew­ish mys­tic philoso­pher Wal­ter Ben­jamin plays a promi­nent role. Here’s how the gallery sets the scene:

[British artist British artist Edmund] De Waal first came to know the city of Berlin through the writ­ings of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, par­tic­u­lar­ly his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal frag­ments in A Berlin Child­hood around 1900. The exhi­bi­tion title, Irrkun­st, has been tak­en from Benjamin’s con­cept of the art of get­ting lost, the art of notic­ing what has been dis­re­gard­ed.

In the Bleib­treustrasse gallery, offer­ing a room with a view on Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s for­mer school, [De Waal] will show works that reflect Ben­jam­in’s child­hood, his pas­sion for gath­er­ing objects and the idea of col­lect­ing as mem­o­ry work. Here, amongst oth­ers, de Waal will present a major new series of vit­rines. Fur­ther­more, a selec­tion of orig­i­nal notes and man­u­scripts from the Wal­ter Ben­jamin archive in Berlin will be on view at Bleib­treustrasse and illus­trate Ben­jam­in’s own way of work­ing as well as de Waal’s deep fas­ci­na­tion with the œuvre of this thinker.

One such item on dis­play, we dis­cov­ered through Julia Michal­ska’s Twit­ter stream, is “Wal­ter Ben­jam­in’s note­book in which he not­ed all the books he read since he was 18”–a pic­ture of which you can find above. When I zoomed into the image, I could­n’t make out the books on the list. But I did get this detail: By 1931/32, the 40-year-old Ben­jamin had amassed 1200 books on his list, which means he was read­ing, on aver­age, 54 books per year. No doubt, they weren’t light ones. If any­one stops by Galerie Max Het­zler and iden­ti­fies actu­al titles in the note­book, we’d love it if you could note some in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Update: Some titles were added to the com­ments below–books by Cocteau, Hem­ing­way, Mal­raux and more. Check them out.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Benjamin’s 13 Orac­u­lar Writ­ing Tips

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Radio Plays for Kids (1929–1932)

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Pre­sent­ed by Two Exper­i­men­tal Films