Date of birth: 15 July 1892
Date of death: 27 September 1940
Website:

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist philosopher-sociologist, literary critic, translator and essayist. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His Marxism was more influenced by Bertolt Brecht, who had developed his own critical aesthetics, which asked for the emotional distancing of the spectator (Verfremdungseffekt). An important earlier influence and friend was Gershom Scholem, who founded the modern, academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism. Over the last half-century the regard for his work and its influence have risen dramatically, making Benjamin one of the most important twentieth century thinkers about literature and about modern aesthetic experience.

Source and more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

More Authors

William Robert Scott

William Robert Scott was born in Northern Ireland. He earned his BA, MA, and DLitt from Trinity College in Dublin. He became a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, graduating DPhil in 1900, and was an assistant to the Professor of Moral Philosophy there from 1896-1901 and a lecturer in P...

Nils Strindberg

Swedish engineer and polar explorer, member of the Andrée expedition in 1897....