Howard Caygill - Introducing Walter Benjamin: A Graphic Guide

I remember being perplexed by the demand that I should look like myself

This was particularly difficult when he had to pose in front of a crudely painted backdrop of the Alps, holding a walking stick, bareheaded, sporty, and gazing into the distance with a tortured smile on his lips.

The magnitude of his torments at home and at the photographers studio faded before those of school. He attended the Kaiser Friedrich School in Berlins wealthy Charlottenberg west-end, where he enjoyed a relatively privileged education. The name of the school reflected the attitudes of the staff and the content of the curriculum. The ethos of the German Imperial Army was ever-present, along with a commitment to unremitting industry: If I rest, I rust. The teachers were a strange crew of Imperial parodies who did not recognize the future brilliance of their pupil. They found him well-behaved but with inadequate handwriting.

Benjamins horror of the discipline of school its routines, rituals and daily humiliation moved his parents to send him for two years to an experimental school in the country at the age of 14. At the Haubinda school in Thuringia, Benjamin was taught by the educational reformer Gustav Wyneken.

He was one of the most important influences on me

Wyneken introduced Benjamin to the blossoming Youth Movement in Germany which consisted of various separate groups and organizations of young people.

These ranged from clubs of hikers and ramblers to vaguely anarchistic groups such as the one Wyneken encouraged Benjamin to join. But there were also anti-Semitic and proto-Nazi bands, for example the Youth League of the Imperial Faithful. Benjamin became a teenage rebel, travelling the country giving lectures and writing in the youth fanzines on the need for the young to follow their own inclinations.