The Journalist as Producer: Mapping the Scene

Abstract

Since the eighteenth century, literary authors have been dependent on journalism while also contributing to this field; these mutual links become particularly pronounced in the Weimar Republic, when many writers turn to journalistic writing to supplement their income and enhance their public profile. This essay sets out the vibrancy of the Weimar journalistic landscape, where the feuilleton, or review section, shaped public debate and where literary and cultural magazines offered authors unprecedented scope to publish ambitious texts for a wide readership. One of the most versatile and prolific such voices is Walter Benjamin, whose journalism is inextricably linked to his ‘serious’ large-scale projects. And yet his journalistic publications are rarely studied in their own right and even less so within their original contexts, where they form part of a network of authors, texts, and media. This special issue undertakes such contextual readings, looking at Benjamin’s strategic links both within the Weimar Republic and beyond its geographical and temporal borders. (CD/DW)