讀了 Radio Benjamin by Walter Benjamin數篇，必須注解許多德國文化、史地：
譬如說
Chapter 10 Theodore Hosemann
可先參考
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Hosemann
---
chapter 26 "The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay" 很有趣的鐵路科技發展史。
現在Wikipedia 有很清楚的說明：
Tay Rail Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Rail_Bridge
The Tay Bridge carries the main-line railway across the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife. Its span is 2.75 ...
Berlin guttersnipe
了解有限：Großer Tiergarten
英譯本Radio Benjamin by Walter Benjamin的導言，將它和藝術史名家貢布里希的寫給年輕人看的世界簡明史【寫給大家看的簡明世界史】，因為兩德文作品"成書"約同一時期 (30年代)，都是給年輕人的。不過，味道應該是差別很大的。
https://hazlitt.net/longreads/true-dog-stories
Radio Benjamin Edited by Lecia Rosentha, book review: A new voice graces the airwaves
Walter Benjamin's work for radio finds the German thinker in beguiling form
What a day! It all started early this morning—I had hardly slept a wink, because I couldn’t stop thinking about a riddle—anyway, the doorbell rang early. I opened the door and there was my friend Anton’s deaf housekeeper. She handed me a letter from Anton.
注解Demonic Berlin (寫Hoffmann)一篇，引參考：【1900年前後柏林的童年
- Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood around 1900, 1950) Harvard University Press】 (徐小青譯【駝背小人】上海文藝出版社，2003)
【莫斯科日記+柏林紀事】潘小松譯，北京：商務，2012 (Moscow Diary, Harvard University Press, 【莫斯科日記】；One Way Street and Other Writings. I【柏林紀事BERLINER CHRONIK】in Reflections.)
談狗：文藝、科學中的狗
True Dog Stories
No two dogs are alike, nor are their stories. An excerpt from Radio Benjamin, the collected radio broadcasts of Walter Benjamin.
You probably think you know dogs. By this I mean, when I read you a famous description of dogs, you will have the same feeling I did when I first read it. I said to myself: if the word “dog” had not appeared in the description, I wouldn’t have guessed which animal it was about; things look so new and special when a great scientist looks at them, as if they had never before been seen. The name of this scientist is Linnaeus, the very same Linnaeus you all know from botany and the man responsible for the system we still use today to classify plants. Here’s what he has to say about dogs:
Feeds on meat, carcasses, farinaceous grains, but not leaves; digests bones, vomits up grass; defecates onto stone: Greek white, exceedingly acidic. Drinks by lapping; urinates to the side, up to one hundred times in good company, sniffs at its neighbor’s anus; moist nose, excellent sense of smell; runs on a diagonal, walks on toes; perspires very little, lets tongue hang out in the heat; circles its sleeping area before retiring; hears rather well while sleeping, dreams. The female is vicious with jealous suitors; fornicates with many partners when in heat; bites them; intimately bound during copulation; gestation is nine weeks, four to eight compose a litter, males resemble the father, females the mother. Loyal above all else; house companion for humans; wags its tail upon master’s approach, defends him; runs ahead on a walk, waits at crossings; teachable, hunts for missing things, makes the rounds at night, warns of those approaching, keeps watch over goods, drives livestock from fields, herds reindeer, guards cattle and sheep from wild animals, holds lions in check, rustles up game, locates ducks, lies in wait before pouncing on the net, retrieves a hunter’s kill without partaking of it, rotates a skewer in France, pulls carts in Siberia. Begs for scraps at the table; after stealing it timidly hides its tail; feeds greedily. Lords it over its home; is the enemy of beggars, attacks strangers without being provoked. Heals wounds, gout and cancers with tongue. Howls to music, bites stones thrown its way; depressed and foul-smelling before a storm. Afflicted by tapeworm. Spreads rabies. Eventually goes blind and gnaws at itself.
That was Linnaeus. After a description like that, most of the stories frequently told about dogs seem rather boring and run-of-the-mill. In any case, they can’t rival this passage in terms of peculiarity or flair, even those told by people out to prove how clever dogs are. Is it not an insult to dogs that the only stories about them are told in order to prove something? As if they’re only interesting as a species? Doesn’t each individual dog have its own special character?
No single dog is physically or temperamentally like another. Each has its own good and bad tendencies, which are often in stark contradiction, giving dog owners precious conversation material. Everyone’s dog is cleverer than his neighbor’s! When an owner recounts his dog’s silly tricks, he is illuminating its character, and when the dog experiences some remarkable fate, it becomes something greater, part of a life story. It is special even in its death.
Now let’s hear about some of these peculiarities. It must also be true of other animals that they possess many unique qualities that are not found in the species as a whole. But humans make this observation so readily and definitively only with dogs, with whom they have a closer bond than with any other animal, except perhaps horses. It all began thousands of years ago with man’s great victory over the dog, or more precisely, over the wolf and the jackal; yielding to man, allowing themselves to be tamed, these wild animals became dogs. However, the most ancient dogs, which first appeared around the end of the Stone Age, were far removed from our pets and hunting dogs of today. They were more similar to the halfwild dogs of Eskimos, which have to fend for themselves for months at a time and resemble the Arctic wolf in every respect, as well as the fearful, treacherous, and currish dogs of Kamchatka, which, according to one traveler’s account, haven’t the slightest love for or loyalty to their master—in fact, they constantly try to kill him. The domesticated dog must have arisen from such a beast. It is truly regrettable that later on, some dogs, especially mastiffs, returned to their old savagery as a consequence of breeding, becoming even more dreadful and bloodthirsty than they had been in their primitive state. Here is the story of the most famous of all bloodhounds, named Bezerillo, whom the Spaniards of Fernando Cortez came upon while conquering Mexico, and then trained most hideously.
In earlier times the Mexican bulldog was used in the nastiest way. It was trained to catch people, tackle them to the ground, and even kill them. During the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards deployed such dogs against the Indians and one of them, by the name of Bezerillo, became famous, or rather, infamous. It can no longer be said whether or not he was an actual Cuban mastiff, which is considered to be a mongrel of a bulldog and a bloodhound. He is described as mediumsized, red in color, but black around the nose and up to the eyes. His audacity and intelligence were equally extraordinary. He enjoyed the highest status among the dogs and received twice as much food as the others. When on the attack he would hurl himself against swarms of Indians while taking care to lock onto an arm so he could drag away a captive. If they complied, the dog would inflict no further harm; if they refused to accompany him, in a flash he would pin them to the ground and strangle them. He could tell exactly which Indians had capitulated and let them be, focusing instead on the resisters. Although so cruel and so fierce, he sometimes showed himself to be much more humane than his masters. One morning, so the story goes, Captain Jago de Senadza wanted to have a little barbarous fun by letting Bezerillo rip to shreds an old captive Indian woman. He gave her a letter and ordered her to deliver it to the governor of the island; the letter instructed that the dog be let loose on the old woman to rip her apart. When the poor, defenseless Indian woman saw the ferocious dog storming after her, she fell to the ground in fear, desperately begging him for mercy. She showed him the letter, explaining that she had brought it to the commander on orders. The ferocious dog hesitated at these words, and, after a moment’s contemplation, approached the old woman tenderly. This incident astounded the Spaniards, appearing to them as something mystical, or supernatural, which is probably why the governor set the old Indian free. Bezerillo met his end in a skirmish with Caribs, who felled him with a poison dart. It’s easy to see how the unfortunate Indians saw such dogs as four-legged abettors of the two-legged devil.
The following story tells of a breed of wild mastiff that roams in packs about Madagascar:
On the island of Madagascar, large hordes of dogs roam wild. Their bitterest enemy is the caiman, which would frequently devour them as they swam from one riverbank to the next. Over the years of struggle against the beast, the dogs have invented a trick that enables them to stay clear of the caiman’s jaws. Before diving into the water, they gather in a large group by the shore and bark as loudly as they can. Drawn to the noise, all the alligators in the vicinity raise their giant heads out of the water just below the spot on the bank where the pack is waiting. At this point the dogs gallop along the bank and then swim across the water unmolested, as the ungainly alligators are not able to keep up. It is also interesting to observe that dogs brought to the island by new settlers fall victim to the caiman, while their offspring later save themselves from certain death by employing the trick invented by the indigenous dogs.
We have seen that dogs know how to help one another. Now let’s see how helpful they’ve been to humans. I’m thinking of age-old human activities such as the hunt, the night watch, trekking, war, in all of which dogs have cooperated with humans, spanning various epochs of world history and the most remote corners of the Earth. Some ancient peoples, like those from Colophon, waged wars using great packs of dogs, who would attack first in all their battles. But I’m thinking not only of dogs’ heroism throughout history, but also of their roles in society, and the assistance they give people in countless aspects of everyday life. There is no end to the number of stories, but I will tell only three very short ones, the Boot Dog, the Coach Poodle, and the Death Hound.
At the Pont-Neuf in Paris there was a young bootblack who trained a poodle to dip her thick hairy paws in the water and then tread on the feet of passersby. The people would cry out, the bootblack would appear and thereby multiply his earnings. As long as he was busy shining someone’s shoes, the dog behaved, but when the footstool became free, the game would begin anew.
Brehm tells us about a poodle he knew whose intelligence brought great amusement. He was trained in all sorts of things and, in a manner of speaking, understood every word. Whatever his master sent him to fetch, he was sure to deliver what was asked. He would say: “Go fetch a carriage!” and the dog would run to the spot where the cabs wait, jump into a coach and keep barking until the carriage drove off; if the coachman took a wrong turn, the dog began barking again, and in some cases would even run along ahead of the wagon until they reached his master’s home.
An English newspaper reports: In Campbelltown in the province of Argyllshire, every funeral procession, with very few exceptions, makes its way from the church to the cemetery accompanied by a quiet mourner in the form of a huge, black dog. He always takes his place beside those immediately following the casket and escorts the funeral cortege to the grave. Once there, he lingers until the final words of the eulogy have come and gone. With much gravitas he then turns around and exits the graveyard at a solemn pace. This remarkable dog seems instinctively to know when and where a funeral will occur, as he always shows up just at the right moment. Because he has been shouldering this freely chosen obligation for years, his presence has become more or less expected, such that his failure to appear would be conspicuous. At first the dog was always chased from the open grave, his preferred spot to sit, but he would always return to accompany the mourners at the earliest opportunity. Eventually people gave up chasing away the quiet sympathy-bearer, and he has since had an official role in every funeral procession. However, the most remarkable thing was when a chartered steamer pulled into the harbor, carrying a recently deceased man and his attendant mourners: the dog waited right where the ship would dock and then accompanied the funeral procession to the cemetery in his usual way.
Incidentally, did you know there’s an encyclopedia of famous dogs? It was made by a man who busied himself with all sorts of obscure things. For instance, he compiled a lexicon of famous shoemakers, and wrote a whole book titled Soup, as well as other, similarly esoteric works. The dog book is very handy. Every dog known to man is in it, including some that the writer has conceived of himself. It was in this book that I found the wonderful and true story of Medor the dog, who took part in the Paris Revolution of 1831 and the storming of the Louvre, but lost his master there. I’ll tell it to you now in closing, just as its author Ludwig Börne wrote it.
I left Napoleon’s coronation for another spectacle that was more after my own heart. I visited the noble Medor. If virtue were rewarded with a title on this Earth, Medor would be the emperor of all dogs. Consider his story. After the storming of the Louvre in July, those who died in the battle were buried in the square in front of the palace, on the side where the delightful columns stand. When the bodies were laid onto carts to carry them to the grave, a dog jumped with heartrending sorrow onto one of the wagons, and from there into the large pit into which the dead were thrown. Great efforts were made to pull him out; he would have been scorched by the scattered lime even before being buried under the dirt. That was the dog people would later call Medor. During battle he always stood beside his master. He was wounded himself. Since his master’s death he never left the graves, moaning day and night before the door to the narrow cemetery, or howling while running back and forth in front of the Louvre.
No one paid much attention to Medor, because no one knew him or could guess his pain. His master must have been one of the many foreigners that came to Paris in those days, fought unnoticed for the freedom of his homeland, bled there, died there, and was buried anonymously. Only after several weeks did people begin to take notice of Medor. He was emaciated about the ribs and covered in festering wounds. People gave him food, but for a long time he refused it. Finally the persistent compassion of a good townswoman succeeded in alleviating Medor’s grief. She took him in, bandaged and healed his wounds, and made him strong again. Medor was more content, but his heart lay in his master’s grave, where his caretaker took him after his recovery and where he would stay for the next seven months. A few times greedy people sold him to rich curiosity seekers; once he was taken thirty hours from Paris, but he always found his way back. Medor is often seen unearthing a small piece of fabric; he becomes excited upon finding it and then sadly reburies it. It’s probably a piece of his master’s shirt. If he’s given a piece of bread or cake, he buries it in the ground, as if wanting to feed his friend in the grave, and then retrieves it, repeating this process several times a day. For the first few months the national guardsman at the Louvre would invite Medor into the guardhouse every night. Later on the guard saw to it that a hut was built for Medor beside the grave.
Medor quickly found his Plutarch, his rhapsodists, his painters. When I visited the square in front of the Louvre, peddlers offered me Medor’s life story, songs of his exploits, his portrait. For ten sous I purchased Medor’s immortality. The little graveyard was surrounded by a thick wall of people, all poor folks from the street. Here lies buried their pride and joy. This is their opera, their ballroom, their court, their church. They’re thrilled to get close enough to pet Medor. I too managed to edge my way through the crowd. Medor is a large, white poodle. I bent down to pet him, but he took no notice of me; my jacket was too fine. But when approached and stroked by a man in rough clothes, or a ragged woman, he responded warmly. Medor knows very well where to find the true friends of his master. A young girl, all in tatters, came to him. He jumped up to greet her, clung to her and wouldn’t let go. He was so happy, so at ease with her. To ask something of the poor girl, he didn’t need to first bend before her and touch the hem of her skirt as with a groomed and genteel lady. Wherever he bit at her dress was a rag that fit snug in his mouth. The child was very proud of Medor’s familiarity with her. I crept away, ashamed of my tears.
And with this we are through with dogs for the day.
An excerpt from Radio Benjamin, edited by Lecia Rosenthal and translated by Jonathan Lutes. Published by Verso Books.
Review
“Everything which fell under the scrutiny of his words was transformed, as though it had become radioactive.” —Theodor Adorno
“A complex and brilliant writer.” —J.M. Coetzee
“Walter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones ... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre.” —Hannah Arendt
“Benjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation … his life and work speak challengingly to us all.” —Terry Eagleton
“There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time.” —George Steiner
“A complex and brilliant writer.” —J.M. Coetzee
“Walter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones ... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre.” —Hannah Arendt
“Benjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation … his life and work speak challengingly to us all.” —Terry Eagleton
“There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time.” —George Steiner
About the Author
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations; The Arcades Project; and The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Lecia Rosenthal is the author of Mourning Modernism: Literature, Catastrophe, and the Politics of Consolation. She has taught at Columbia and Tufts.
Radio Benjamin
Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.
Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.
Walter Benjamin's work for radio finds the German thinker in beguiling form
Reviews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044b3lj
A Crazy Mixed-Up Day: Thirty Brainteasers
December 4, 2014 | by Walter Benjamin
Image: Doyle Saylor
From 1927 to early 1933, Walter Benjamin wrote and delivered some eighty to ninety broadcasts over the new medium of German radio, working between Radio Berlin and Radio Frankfurt. These broadcasts, many of them produced under the auspices of programming for children, cover a fascinating array of topics: typologies and archaeologies of a rapidly changing Berlin; scenes from the shifting terrain of childhood and its construction; exemplary cases of trickery, swindle, and fraud that play on the uncertain lines between truth and falsehood; catastrophic events such as the eruption of Vesuvius and the flooding of the Mississippi River, and much more. Now the transcripts of many of these broadcasts are available for the first time in English—Lecia Rosenthal has gathered them in a new book,Radio Benjamin. Below is one of his broadcasts for children, including thirty brainteasers.(Want the answers? They’re here.)
Perhaps you know a long poem that begins like this:
Dark it is, the moon shines bright,
a car creeps by at the speed of light
and slowly rounds the round corner.
People standing sit inside,
immersed they are in silent chatter,
while a shot-dead hare
skates by on a sandbank there.
Everyone can see that this poem doesn’t add up. In the story you’ll hear today, quite a few things don’t add up either, but I doubt that everyone will notice. Or rather, each of you will find a few mistakes—and when you find one, you can make a dash on a piece of paper with your pencil. And here’s a hint: if you mark all the mistakes in the story, you’ll have a total of fifteen dashes. But if you find only five or six, that’s perfectly alright as well.
But that’s only one facet of the story you’ll hear today. Besides these fifteen mistakes, it also contains fifteen questions. And while the mistakes creep up on you, quiet as a mouse, so no one notices them, the questions, on the other hand, will be announced with a loud gong. Each correct answer to a question gives you two points, because many of the questions are more difficult to answer than the mistakes are to find. So, with a total of fifteen questions, if you know the answers to all of them, you’ll have thirty dashes. Added to the fifteen dashes for mistakes, that makes a total of forty-five possible dashes. None of you will get all forty-five, but that’s not necessary. Even ten points would be a respectable score.
You can mark your points yourselves. During the next Youth Hour, the radio will announce the mistakes along with the answers to the questions, so you can see whether your thoughts were on target, for above all, this story requires thinking. There are no questions and no mistakes that can’t be managed with a little reflection.
One last bit of advice: don’t focus on just the questions. To the contrary, keep a lookout for the mistakes above all; the questions will all be repeated at the end of the story. It goes without saying that the questions don’t contain any mistakes; there, everything is as it should be. Now pay attention. Here’s Heinz with his story.
*
What a day! It all started early this morning—I had hardly slept a wink, because I couldn’t stop thinking about a riddle—anyway, the doorbell rang early. I opened the door and there was my friend Anton’s deaf housekeeper. She handed me a letter from Anton.
“Dear Heinz,” writes Anton, “yesterday, while I was at your house, I left my hat hanging by the door. Please give it to my housekeeper. Best regards, Anton.” But the letter continues. Below he writes: “I just now found the hat. Forgive the disturbance. Many thanks for your trouble.”
That’s Anton for you, the absent-minded professor type. By the same token, he’s also a great fan and solver of riddles. And when I looked at the letter, it occurred to me: I could use Anton today. Perhaps he knows the solution to my riddle; I made a bet that I would figure out the riddle by this morning. The riddle goes like this (Gong):
The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all. What is it?
Yes, that’s it, I thought to myself, I have to ask Anton. I was hoping to ask his housekeeper whether he was already at school—Anton is a teacher—but she had already left.
I thought to myself, Anton must be at school. I put on my hat and just as I was heading down the stairs, it occurred to me that summer daylight saving time began today, so everything starts an hour earlier. I pulled out my watch and set it back one hour. When I reached the street, I realized that I had forgotten to shave. Just around the corner to the left I saw a barbershop. In three minutes I was there. In the window hung a large enamel sign: “A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free.” (Gong): A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free. The sign struck me as odd. I wish I knew why. I went in, took a seat and got a shave, all the while looking in the large mirror hanging before me. Suddenly the barber nicked me, on my right cheek. And sure enough, blood appeared on the right side of my mirror image. The shave cost me ten pfennigs. I paid with a twenty-mark note and got back nineteen marks in five-mark coins, along with five groschen and twenty five-pfennig coins. Then the barber, a jolly young man, held open the door and said to me as I went out: “Say hello to Richard if you see him.” Richard is his twin brother who has a pharmacy on the main square.
Now I’m thinking: the best thing is to go straight to Anton’s school and see if I can’t track him down. On my way there, walking down a street, I saw a large crowd of people standing around a carnival magician performing his tricks. With chalk he drew a tiny circle on the sidewalk. He then said: “Using the same center point, I will draw another circle whose circumference is five centimeters greater than the first.” After doing so he stood up, looked around with a mysterious smile and said (Gong): “If I now draw a gigantic circle, let’s say as big as the circumference of the Earth, and then I draw a second one whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the giant circle, which ring is wider: the one that lies between the tiny circle and the one five centimeters larger, or the ring between the giant circle and the one five centimeters larger?” Yes, I would like to know this, too.
I’d finally managed to push my way through the crowd, when I noticed that my cheek still hadn’t stopped bleeding, and as I was on the main square, I went into the pharmacy to buy a bandage. “Greetings from your twin brother, the barber,” I said to the pharmacist. He’s old as the hills and a bit of an odd bird to boot. And more than anything, he’s terribly anxious. Whenever he leaves his ground-floor shop, not only does he double-lock the door, he also walks around the whole building, and if he sees he’s left a window open somewhere, he reaches inside to close it. But the most interesting thing about him is his collection of curiosities, which he’ll show to anyone who comes into his shop. Today was no exception and, before long, I was left to admire everything at my leisure. There was a skull of an African Negro when he was six years old, and next to it a skull of the same man when he was sixty. The second was much larger, of course. Then there was a photograph of Frederick the Great, playing with his two greyhounds at Sanssouci. Next to it lay a bladeless antique knife that was missing its handle. He also had a stuffed flying fish. And hanging on the wall was a large pendulum clock. As I paid for my bandage, the pharmacist asked (Gong): “If the pendulum on my clock swings ten times to the right and ten times to the left, how often does it pass through the middle?” This, too, I wanted to know. So, that was the pharmacist.
Now I needed to hurry if I wanted to make it to the school before lessons were over. I jumped onto the next streetcar and just managed to get a corner seat. A fat man was seated to my right and on my left was a small woman talking to the man across from her about her uncle (Gong): “My uncle,” she said, “has just turned one hundred years old, but has only had twenty-five birthdays. How can that be?” This, too, I wanted to know, but we had already reached the school. I went through all the classrooms looking for Anton. The teachers were very annoyed at being disturbed.
And they asked the oddest questions. For example, I walked into a math class where the teacher was getting cross with a young boy. He had not been paying attention and the teacher was going to punish him. He said to the boy (Gong): “Add up all the numbers from one to a thousand.” The teacher was more than a little surprised when, after a minute, the boy stood up and gave the right answer: 501,000. How was he able to calculate so fast? This I also wanted to know. First I tried it with just the numbers one through ten. Once I came upon the quickest way to do this, I had figured out the boy’s trick.
Another class was geography. (Gong): The teacher drew a square on the blackboard. In the middle of this square he drew a smaller square. He then drew four lines, each connecting one corner of the small square with the nearest corner of the large square.This resulted in five shapes: one in the middle, this was the small square, and four other shapes surrounding the small square. Every boy had to draw this diagram in his notebook. The diagram represented five countries. Now the teacher wanted to know how many different colors were needed so that each country was a different color than the three, or four, countries that it bordered. I thought to myself, five countries need five colors. But I was wrong, the answer was smaller than five. Why? This, too, I wanted to know.
I then entered another class, where students were learning to spell. The teacher was asking very strange things, for example (Gong): “How do you spell dry grass with three letters?” And (Gong): “How can you write one hundred using only four nines?” And (Gong): “In your ABC’s, which is the middlemost letter?” To conclude the lesson he told the children a fairy tale (Gong):
“An evil sorcerer transformed three princesses into three flowers, perfectly identical and planted in a field. Once a month, one of them was allowed to return to her house for the night as a human. On one of these occasions, one of the princesses said to her husband just as dawn broke and she had to return to her two friends in the field and become a flower again: ‘If you come to me this morning and pluck me, I will be redeemed and can stay with you for evermore.’ This came to pass. Now the question is, how did her husband recognize her, since the flowers looked identical?” This, too, I wanted to know, but it was high time for me to get hold of Anton, and because he wasn’t at school, I headed to his home.
Benjamin in 1928.
Anton lived not far away, on the sixth floor of a building on Kramgasse. I climbed the stairs and rang the bell. His housekeeper, who had been at my house in the morning, answered right away and let me in. But she was alone in the apartment: “Herr Anton is not here,” she said. This irritated me. I thought the smartest thing to do was to wait for him, so I went into his room. He had a gorgeous view onto the street. The only hindrance was a two-story building across the way, which obstructed the view. But you could clearly see the faces of passersby, and on looking up, you could see birds fluttering about in the trees. Looming nearby was the large train station clock tower. The clock read exactly 14:00. I pulled out my pocket watch for comparison and sure enough, it was 4 pm on the nose. I had waited for three hours when, out of boredom, I started browsing the books in Anton’s room. (Gong) Unfortunately a bookworm had gotten into his library. Every day it ate through one volume. It was now on the first page of the first volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I thought to myself, how long will it need to reach the last page of the second volume ofGrimm’s Fairy Tales? I wasn’t concerned about the covers, just the pages. Yes, this is something I wanted to know. I heard voices outside in the hallway.
The housekeeper was standing there with an errand boy, who had been sent by the tailor to collect money for a suit. (Gong) Because the errand boy knew the housekeeper was deaf, he had handed her a piece of paper with one word written on it in large capital letters: MONEY [GELD]. But the housekeeper had no money with her, so to convey her request that he be patient, she drew just two more letters on the piece of paper. What were these two letters?
I had had enough of waiting. I headed out to find a little something to eat after such a tedious day. As I reached the street the moon was already in the sky. There had been a new moon a few days prior, and by now it had waxed to a narrow crescent that looked like the beginning of a capital German “Z” hovering over the rooftops. In front of me was a small pastry shop. I went in and ordered an apple cake with whipped cream. (Gong): When the apple cake with whipped cream arrived, it didn’t appeal to me. I told the waiter I would prefer a Moor’s Head [i.e., a mallomar]. He brought me the Moor’s Head, which was delicious. I stood up to go. As I was just on my way out, the waiter ran after me, shouting: You didn’t pay for your Moor’s Head!—But I gave you the apple cake in exchange, I told him.—But you didn’t pay for that either, the waiter said.—Sure, but I didn’t eat it either! I retorted, and left. Was I right? This, too, I’d like to know.
As I arrived home, imagine my astonishment at seeing Anton, who had been waiting there for five hours. He wanted to apologize for the silly letter he had sent to me early this morning via his housekeeper. I said that it didn’t matter all that much, and then told Anton my whole day as I’ve just told it to you now. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. When my story was over he was so astounded that he was speechless. He then left, still shaking his head. As he disappeared around the corner, I suddenly realized: this time he really has forgotten his hat. And I—of course I had forgotten something as well: to ask him the answer to my riddle (Gong): The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all.
But perhaps you’ve found the answer by now. And with this, I say goodbye.
*
Repetition of the fifteen questions:
- The first question is an old German folk riddle: The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all. What is it?
- What’s fishy about a barber who hangs an enamel sign in his window reading, “A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free”?
- If I have a small circle and then around its center point I draw a circle whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the original, this creates a ring between the two circles. If I then take a giant circle, one as big as the circumference of the Earth, and around the same center point I draw another one, whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the first giant one, there is then a ring between those two circles. Which of the two rings is wider, the first or the second?
- If the clock pendulum swings ten times to the right and ten times to the left, how often does it pass through the middle?
- How can a man who is a hundred years old have had only twenty-five birthdays?
- What is the quickest way to add up all the numbers from one to 1,000? Try it first with the numbers from one to ten.
- A country is surrounded by four other countries, each of which borders the middle country and two of the others. What is the fewest number of colors needed so that each country has a different color than its neighbors?
- How do you spell dry grass with three letters?
- How can you write 100 using only four nines?
- In your ABC’s, which is the middlemost letter?
- There are three identical flowers in a field. In the morning, how can you tell which of them has not been there overnight?
- If each day a bookworm eats through one volume in a series of books, how long will it take for it to eat its way from the first page of one volume to the last page of the next, provided he eats in the same direction in which the series of books is arranged?
- You have a piece of paper with the word money [Geld] written on it. Which two letters can you add to convey a request for patience [Geduld]?
- What’s wrong with the logic of a man who orders a piece of cake, exchanges it for another once it arrives, and then won’t pay for the new piece because he claims he traded the old piece for it?
- The old riddle once more, whose solution is worth four points because it has now appeared twice: The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all.
You can find the answers to these fifteen questions, as well as a list of the fifteen mistakes,here.
Translated from German by Jonathan Lutes. Broadcast on Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt, probably on July 6, 1932. The Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitungannounced for the Youth Hour on July 6, 1932, at 3:15 pm, “‘Denksport’ [Mental Exercise], by Dr. Walter Benjamin (for children ten years and older).” “A Crazy Mixed-Up Day” was most likely the text Benjamin prepared for this broadcast.
This transcript appears in Radio Benjamin, available now. Reprinted with the permission of Verso Books.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
What a day! It all started early this morning—I had hardly slept a wink, because I couldn’t stop thinking about a riddle—anyway, the doorbell rang early. I opened the door and there was my friend Anton’s deaf housekeeper. She handed me a letter from Anton.
A Crazy Mixed-Up Day: Thirty Brainteasers
December 4, 2014 | by Walter Benjamin
Image: Doyle Saylor
From 1927 to early 1933, Walter Benjamin wrote and delivered some eighty to ninety broadcasts over the new medium of German radio, working between Radio Berlin and Radio Frankfurt. These broadcasts, many of them produced under the auspices of programming for children, cover a fascinating array of topics: typologies and archaeologies of a rapidly changing Berlin; scenes from the shifting terrain of childhood and its construction; exemplary cases of trickery, swindle, and fraud that play on the uncertain lines between truth and falsehood; catastrophic events such as the eruption of Vesuvius and the flooding of the Mississippi River, and much more. Now the transcripts of many of these broadcasts are available for the first time in English—Lecia Rosenthal has gathered them in a new book, Radio Benjamin. Below is one of his broadcasts for children, including thirty brainteasers. (Want the answers? They’re here.)
Perhaps you know a long poem that begins like this:
Dark it is, the moon shines bright,
a car creeps by at the speed of light
and slowly rounds the round corner.
People standing sit inside,
immersed they are in silent chatter,
while a shot-dead hare
skates by on a sandbank there.
Everyone can see that this poem doesn’t add up. In the story you’ll hear today, quite a few things don’t add up either, but I doubt that everyone will notice. Or rather, each of you will find a few mistakes—and when you find one, you can make a dash on a piece of paper with your pencil. And here’s a hint: if you mark all the mistakes in the story, you’ll have a total of fifteen dashes. But if you find only five or six, that’s perfectly alright as well.
But that’s only one facet of the story you’ll hear today. Besides these fifteen mistakes, it also contains fifteen questions. And while the mistakes creep up on you, quiet as a mouse, so no one notices them, the questions, on the other hand, will be announced with a loud gong. Each correct answer to a question gives you two points, because many of the questions are more difficult to answer than the mistakes are to find. So, with a total of fifteen questions, if you know the answers to all of them, you’ll have thirty dashes. Added to the fifteen dashes for mistakes, that makes a total of forty-five possible dashes. None of you will get all forty-five, but that’s not necessary. Even ten points would be a respectable score.
You can mark your points yourselves. During the next Youth Hour, the radio will announce the mistakes along with the answers to the questions, so you can see whether your thoughts were on target, for above all, this story requires thinking. There are no questions and no mistakes that can’t be managed with a little reflection.
One last bit of advice: don’t focus on just the questions. To the contrary, keep a lookout for the mistakes above all; the questions will all be repeated at the end of the story. It goes without saying that the questions don’t contain any mistakes; there, everything is as it should be. Now pay attention. Here’s Heinz with his story.
*
What a day! It all started early this morning—I had hardly slept a wink, because I couldn’t stop thinking about a riddle—anyway, the doorbell rang early. I opened the door and there was my friend Anton’s deaf housekeeper. She handed me a letter from Anton.
“Dear Heinz,” writes Anton, “yesterday, while I was at your house, I left my hat hanging by the door. Please give it to my housekeeper. Best regards, Anton.” But the letter continues. Below he writes: “I just now found the hat. Forgive the disturbance. Many thanks for your trouble.”
That’s Anton for you, the absent-minded professor type. By the same token, he’s also a great fan and solver of riddles. And when I looked at the letter, it occurred to me: I could use Anton today. Perhaps he knows the solution to my riddle; I made a bet that I would figure out the riddle by this morning. The riddle goes like this (Gong):
The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all. What is it?
Yes, that’s it, I thought to myself, I have to ask Anton. I was hoping to ask his housekeeper whether he was already at school—Anton is a teacher—but she had already left.
I thought to myself, Anton must be at school. I put on my hat and just as I was heading down the stairs, it occurred to me that summer daylight saving time began today, so everything starts an hour earlier. I pulled out my watch and set it back one hour. When I reached the street, I realized that I had forgotten to shave. Just around the corner to the left I saw a barbershop. In three minutes I was there. In the window hung a large enamel sign: “A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free.” (Gong): A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free. The sign struck me as odd. I wish I knew why. I went in, took a seat and got a shave, all the while looking in the large mirror hanging before me. Suddenly the barber nicked me, on my right cheek. And sure enough, blood appeared on the right side of my mirror image. The shave cost me ten pfennigs. I paid with a twenty-mark note and got back nineteen marks in five-mark coins, along with five groschen and twenty five-pfennig coins. Then the barber, a jolly young man, held open the door and said to me as I went out: “Say hello to Richard if you see him.” Richard is his twin brother who has a pharmacy on the main square.
Now I’m thinking: the best thing is to go straight to Anton’s school and see if I can’t track him down. On my way there, walking down a street, I saw a large crowd of people standing around a carnival magician performing his tricks. With chalk he drew a tiny circle on the sidewalk. He then said: “Using the same center point, I will draw another circle whose circumference is five centimeters greater than the first.” After doing so he stood up, looked around with a mysterious smile and said (Gong): “If I now draw a gigantic circle, let’s say as big as the circumference of the Earth, and then I draw a second one whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the giant circle, which ring is wider: the one that lies between the tiny circle and the one five centimeters larger, or the ring between the giant circle and the one five centimeters larger?” Yes, I would like to know this, too.
I’d finally managed to push my way through the crowd, when I noticed that my cheek still hadn’t stopped bleeding, and as I was on the main square, I went into the pharmacy to buy a bandage. “Greetings from your twin brother, the barber,” I said to the pharmacist. He’s old as the hills and a bit of an odd bird to boot. And more than anything, he’s terribly anxious. Whenever he leaves his ground-floor shop, not only does he double-lock the door, he also walks around the whole building, and if he sees he’s left a window open somewhere, he reaches inside to close it. But the most interesting thing about him is his collection of curiosities, which he’ll show to anyone who comes into his shop. Today was no exception and, before long, I was left to admire everything at my leisure. There was a skull of an African Negro when he was six years old, and next to it a skull of the same man when he was sixty. The second was much larger, of course. Then there was a photograph of Frederick the Great, playing with his two greyhounds at Sanssouci. Next to it lay a bladeless antique knife that was missing its handle. He also had a stuffed flying fish. And hanging on the wall was a large pendulum clock. As I paid for my bandage, the pharmacist asked (Gong): “If the pendulum on my clock swings ten times to the right and ten times to the left, how often does it pass through the middle?” This, too, I wanted to know. So, that was the pharmacist.
Now I needed to hurry if I wanted to make it to the school before lessons were over. I jumped onto the next streetcar and just managed to get a corner seat. A fat man was seated to my right and on my left was a small woman talking to the man across from her about her uncle (Gong): “My uncle,” she said, “has just turned one hundred years old, but has only had twenty-five birthdays. How can that be?” This, too, I wanted to know, but we had already reached the school. I went through all the classrooms looking for Anton. The teachers were very annoyed at being disturbed.
And they asked the oddest questions. For example, I walked into a math class where the teacher was getting cross with a young boy. He had not been paying attention and the teacher was going to punish him. He said to the boy (Gong): “Add up all the numbers from one to a thousand.” The teacher was more than a little surprised when, after a minute, the boy stood up and gave the right answer: 501,000. How was he able to calculate so fast? This I also wanted to know. First I tried it with just the numbers one through ten. Once I came upon the quickest way to do this, I had figured out the boy’s trick.
Another class was geography. (Gong): The teacher drew a square on the blackboard. In the middle of this square he drew a smaller square. He then drew four lines, each connecting one corner of the small square with the nearest corner of the large square.This resulted in five shapes: one in the middle, this was the small square, and four other shapes surrounding the small square. Every boy had to draw this diagram in his notebook. The diagram represented five countries. Now the teacher wanted to know how many different colors were needed so that each country was a different color than the three, or four, countries that it bordered. I thought to myself, five countries need five colors. But I was wrong, the answer was smaller than five. Why? This, too, I wanted to know.
I then entered another class, where students were learning to spell. The teacher was asking very strange things, for example (Gong): “How do you spell dry grass with three letters?” And (Gong): “How can you write one hundred using only four nines?” And (Gong): “In your ABC’s, which is the middlemost letter?” To conclude the lesson he told the children a fairy tale (Gong):
“An evil sorcerer transformed three princesses into three flowers, perfectly identical and planted in a field. Once a month, one of them was allowed to return to her house for the night as a human. On one of these occasions, one of the princesses said to her husband just as dawn broke and she had to return to her two friends in the field and become a flower again: ‘If you come to me this morning and pluck me, I will be redeemed and can stay with you for evermore.’ This came to pass. Now the question is, how did her husband recognize her, since the flowers looked identical?” This, too, I wanted to know, but it was high time for me to get hold of Anton, and because he wasn’t at school, I headed to his home.
Benjamin in 1928.
Anton lived not far away, on the sixth floor of a building on Kramgasse. I climbed the stairs and rang the bell. His housekeeper, who had been at my house in the morning, answered right away and let me in. But she was alone in the apartment: “Herr Anton is not here,” she said. This irritated me. I thought the smartest thing to do was to wait for him, so I went into his room. He had a gorgeous view onto the street. The only hindrance was a two-story building across the way, which obstructed the view. But you could clearly see the faces of passersby, and on looking up, you could see birds fluttering about in the trees. Looming nearby was the large train station clock tower. The clock read exactly 14:00. I pulled out my pocket watch for comparison and sure enough, it was 4 pm on the nose. I had waited for three hours when, out of boredom, I started browsing the books in Anton’s room. (Gong) Unfortunately a bookworm had gotten into his library. Every day it ate through one volume. It was now on the first page of the first volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I thought to myself, how long will it need to reach the last page of the second volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales? I wasn’t concerned about the covers, just the pages. Yes, this is something I wanted to know. I heard voices outside in the hallway.
The housekeeper was standing there with an errand boy, who had been sent by the tailor to collect money for a suit. (Gong) Because the errand boy knew the housekeeper was deaf, he had handed her a piece of paper with one word written on it in large capital letters: MONEY [GELD]. But the housekeeper had no money with her, so to convey her request that he be patient, she drew just two more letters on the piece of paper. What were these two letters?
I had had enough of waiting. I headed out to find a little something to eat after such a tedious day. As I reached the street the moon was already in the sky. There had been a new moon a few days prior, and by now it had waxed to a narrow crescent that looked like the beginning of a capital German “Z” hovering over the rooftops. In front of me was a small pastry shop. I went in and ordered an apple cake with whipped cream. (Gong): When the apple cake with whipped cream arrived, it didn’t appeal to me. I told the waiter I would prefer a Moor’s Head [i.e., a mallomar]. He brought me the Moor’s Head, which was delicious. I stood up to go. As I was just on my way out, the waiter ran after me, shouting: You didn’t pay for your Moor’s Head!—But I gave you the apple cake in exchange, I told him.—But you didn’t pay for that either, the waiter said.—Sure, but I didn’t eat it either! I retorted, and left. Was I right? This, too, I’d like to know.
As I arrived home, imagine my astonishment at seeing Anton, who had been waiting there for five hours. He wanted to apologize for the silly letter he had sent to me early this morning via his housekeeper. I said that it didn’t matter all that much, and then told Anton my whole day as I’ve just told it to you now. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. When my story was over he was so astounded that he was speechless. He then left, still shaking his head. As he disappeared around the corner, I suddenly realized: this time he really has forgotten his hat. And I—of course I had forgotten something as well: to ask him the answer to my riddle (Gong): The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all.
But perhaps you’ve found the answer by now. And with this, I say goodbye.
*
Repetition of the fifteen questions:
- The first question is an old German folk riddle: The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all. What is it?
- What’s fishy about a barber who hangs an enamel sign in his window reading, “A shave today ten pfennigs, a shave tomorrow free”?
- If I have a small circle and then around its center point I draw a circle whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the original, this creates a ring between the two circles. If I then take a giant circle, one as big as the circumference of the Earth, and around the same center point I draw another one, whose circumference is five centimeters greater than that of the first giant one, there is then a ring between those two circles. Which of the two rings is wider, the first or the second?
- If the clock pendulum swings ten times to the right and ten times to the left, how often does it pass through the middle?
- How can a man who is a hundred years old have had only twenty-five birthdays?
- What is the quickest way to add up all the numbers from one to 1,000? Try it first with the numbers from one to ten.
- A country is surrounded by four other countries, each of which borders the middle country and two of the others. What is the fewest number of colors needed so that each country has a different color than its neighbors?
- How do you spell dry grass with three letters?
- How can you write 100 using only four nines?
- In your ABC’s, which is the middlemost letter?
- There are three identical flowers in a field. In the morning, how can you tell which of them has not been there overnight?
- If each day a bookworm eats through one volume in a series of books, how long will it take for it to eat its way from the first page of one volume to the last page of the next, provided he eats in the same direction in which the series of books is arranged?
- You have a piece of paper with the word money [Geld] written on it. Which two letters can you add to convey a request for patience [Geduld]?
- What’s wrong with the logic of a man who orders a piece of cake, exchanges it for another once it arrives, and then won’t pay for the new piece because he claims he traded the old piece for it?
- The old riddle once more, whose solution is worth four points because it has now appeared twice: The peasant sees it often, the king only seldom, and God never at all.
You can find the answers to these fifteen questions, as well as a list of the fifteen mistakes,here.
Translated from German by Jonathan Lutes. Broadcast on Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt, probably on July 6, 1932. The Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitungannounced for the Youth Hour on July 6, 1932, at 3:15 pm, “‘Denksport’ [Mental Exercise], by Dr. Walter Benjamin (for children ten years and older).” “A Crazy Mixed-Up Day” was most likely the text Benjamin prepared for this broadcast.
This transcript appears in Radio Benjamin, available now. Reprinted with the permission of Verso Books.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
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