Radio Benjamin

Abbreviations and a Note on the Texts

GS Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols., with supplements, eds. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhäuser et al. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972–1989).

SW Selected Writings, 4 vols., ed. Michael W. Jennings et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003).

Translations in this volume are based on Benjamin’s radio typescripts as published and edited in the Gesammelte Schriften. Information about individual broadcasts, including dates and location, are provided in a section following each translation, just above the notes. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations, including translations of texts cited by Benjamin, are by the translators. The editor of this volume is indebted to the editors of the Gesammelte Schriften; the notes to the translations in this volume borrow from and expand upon their work.

The editor would like to thank a number of friends and colleagues who supported this project along the way: Joseph Massad, Martin Harries, Virginia Jackson, Jonathan Zittrain, Andrew Rubin, Jacqueline Loss, Andrew Coletta, Chris Coletta, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Andrew Magliozzi, Berit Schlumbohm, Till Jesinghaus, and Ryan Shiraki. Ursula Marx at the Benjamin Archive in Berlin was especially helpful, as was Thomas Küpper, who, as co-editor along with Anja Nowak of the volume devoted to Benjamin’s radio works in the forthcoming German new critical edition, Werke und Nachlaß, shared invaluable information as well as his excitement about the project. I would also like to thank the translators, Jonathan Lutes, Lisa Harries Schumann, and Diana Reese, for their hard work. I am grateful to them for allowing me to work closely with them on the translations, for being so open to my queries, and for their thoughtful contributions to conversations about the volume as a whole. To Jonathan Lutes, who was a collaborator from the start, I owe particular thanks. It was because of his encouragement and enthusiasm that the idea for the volume took off. Lisa Harries Schumann generously agreed to join the project midway, and without her contributions it would not have been completed. At Verso, Mark Martin and Lorna Scott Fox expertly guided the book’s final stages. I am indebted to them and to Sebastian Budgen, who supported the project from the beginning.