German Season - R4X programmes on Walter Benjamin

[aeolium]

An alert to two very good programmes as part of the Beeb's German Season on Radio 4 Extra today. Firstly there is a talk by George Steiner on Benjamin:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007dxj6

Secondly, there is a programme presented by Michael Rosen on Benjamin's radio talks for children in the years just before Hitler came to power, the texts for which have I think been recently translated. This I actually found even more fascinating than the Steiner talk (the programme does include some quotations from that talk). The extracts from the talks sound poetic, imaginative, elliptical, questioning and it makes one wonder what they must have sounded like to their young German audience:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044b3lj

[vinteuil]

... thanks for this.

How I wish arcadesproject was still with us.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... thanks for this.

Seconded.

How I wish arcadesproject was still with us.

Indeed.

[aeolium]

How I wish arcadesproject was still with us.

Yes - he's greatly missed.

Going back to the Benjamin radio talks, I was thinking what imagination and courage of the radio producer/director of the German radio station to commission such work and broadcast it for children. I cannot think of any parallel in children's broadcasting here, certainly when I was a child, and I suspect since then (though there were good children's radio serials). And being the work of someone who was, as Steiner said, always an outsider, it would have struck a particular chord with those children who themselves felt alienated at home or school.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've just liastened to the two links, and it strikes me that, were such broadcasts to be put out today, yes even today, there would be cries of brainwashing, propaganda and warping young minds coming from reactionary quarters.

I was reminded that John Berger's Ways of Seeing, which made a huge and lasting impression on me in my mid-twenties, was strongly influenced by Benjamin's ideas.

These programmes would have passed me by, so thanks very much, aeolium.