| Walter Benjamin |  |
Walter Benjamin (July 15, 1892 - September 27, 1940) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. He was known during his life as an essayist, translator and literary critic, and was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His close friends included the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, the critical theorist Theodor Adorno and the Judaic scholar Gershom Scholem. As a sociological and cultural critic, Benjamin created a body of work that was an entirely novel contribution to Marxist philosophy and aesthetic theory, and his investigations into urban space and the role of the flaneur (urban stroller) are taken up by many academic disciplines, from architecture to media studies.
