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Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (18 March 1830 - 12 September 1889) was a French historian.

Born in Paris, of Breton descent, after studying at the École Normale Supérieure he was sent to the French School at Athens in 1853, he directed some excavations in Chios, and wrote an historical account of the island.

After his return he filled various educational offices, and took his doctorate with two theses, Quid Vestae cultus in institutis veterum privatis publicisque valuerit and Polybe, ou la Grèce conquise par les Romains (1858). In these works his distinctive qualities were already revealed. His minute knowledge of the language of the Greek and Roman institutions, coupled with his low estimate of the conclusions of contemporary scholars, led him to go directly to the original texts, which he read without political or religious bias. When, however, he had succeeded in extracting from the sources a general idea that seemed to him clear and simple, he attached himself to it as if to the truth itself.

From 1860 to 1870 he was professor of history at the faculty of letters at Strasbourg, where he had a brilliant career as a teacher, but never yielded to the influence exercised by the German universities in the field of classical and Germanic antiquities.

It was at Strasbourg that he published his remarkable volume La Cité antique (1864), in which he showed forcibly the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome. The book was so consistent throughout, so full of ingenious ideas, and written in so striking a style, that it ranks as one of the masterpieces of the French language in the 19th century. By this literary merit Fustel set little store, but he clung tenaciously to his theories. When he revised the book in 1875, his modifications were very slight, and it is conceivable that, had he recast it, as he often expressed the desire to do in the last years of his life, he would not have abandoned any part of his fundamental thesis. The work is now largely superseded.

Fustel de Coulanges was appointed to a lectureship at the École Normale Supérieure in February 1870, to a professorship at the Paris faculty of letters in 1875, and to the chair of medieval history created for him at the Sorbonne in 1878, he applied himself to the study of the political institutions of ancient France. The invasion of France by the German armies during the Franco-Prussian War attracted his attention to the Germanic invasions under the Roman Empire. Pursuing the theory of JB Dubos, but also transforming it, he maintained that those invasions were not marked by the violent and destructive character usually attributed to them; that the penetration of the German barbarians into Gaul was a slow process; that the Germans submitted to the imperial administration; that the political institutions of the Merovingians had their origins in the Roman laws at least as much as, if not more than, in German usages; and, consequently, that there was no conquest of Gaul by the Germans.

This thesis he sustained in his Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France, the first volume of which appeared in 1874. It was the author's original intention to complete this work in four volumes, but as the first volume was keenly attacked in Germany as well as in France, Fustel was forced in self-defence to recast the book entirely. He re-examined all the texts and wrote a number of dissertations, which were dominated by his general idea and characterized by a total disregard for the results of such historical disciplines as diplomatic. From this crucible issued an entirely new work, less well arranged than the original, but rich in facts and critical comments. The first volume was expanded into three volumes, La Gaule romaine (1891), L'Invasion germanique et la fin de l'empire (1891) and La Monarchie franque (1888), followed by three other volumes, L'Alleu et le domaine rural pendant l'époque mérovingienne (1889), Les Origines du système féodal: le bénéfice et le patronat ... (1890) and Les Transformations de la royauté pendant l'époque carolingienne (1892).

Thus, in six volumes, he had carried the work no farther than the Carolingian period. The dissertations not embodied in his work were collected by himself and (after his death) by his pupil, Camille Jullian, and published as volumes of miscellanies: Recherches sur quelques problèmes d'Histoire (1885), dealing with the Roman colonate, the land system in Normandy; the Germanic mark, and the judiciary organization in the kingdom of the Franks; Nouvelles recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire (1891); and Questions historiques (1893), which contains his paper on Chios and his thesis on Polybius.

His life was devoted almost entirely to his teaching and his books. In 1875 he was elected member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and in 1880 reluctantly accepted the post of director of the École Normale. Without intervening personally in French politics, he took a keen interest in the questions of administration and social reorganization arising from the fall of the imperialist régime and the disasters of the war.

He wished the institutions of the present to approximate more closely to those of the past, and devised for the new French constitution a body of reforms which reflected the opinions he had formed upon the democracy at Rome and in ancient France. But these were dreams which did not hold him long, and he would have been scandalized had he known that his name was subsequently used as the emblem of a political and religious party. He died at Massy (then called Seine-et-Oise) in 1889.

Throughout his historical career — at the École Normale and the Sorbonne and in his lectures delivered to the empress Eugénie — his sole aim was to ascertain the truth, and in the defence of truth his polemics against what he imagined to be the blindness and insincerity of his critics sometimes assumed a character of harshness and injustice. But, in France at least, these critics were the first to render justice to his learning, his talents and his disinterestedness.

Bibliography[link]

• Quid Vestæ cultus in institutis veterum privatis publicisque valuerit? Amiens, T. Jeunet, 1858.
• Polybe ou la Grèce conquise par les Romains. Amiens, T. Jeunet, 1858. (1980, Milan, Jovene Editore, con una nota di lettura di Bertrand Hemmerdinger).
• La Cité antique, Paris, Durand, 1864.
• Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France. Première partie. L 'empire romain, les germains, la royauté mérovingienne. Paris, Hachette, 1875.
• Recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire, Paris, Hachette, 1885.
• La monarchie franque, Paris, Hachette, 1888.
• L'alleu et le domaine rural pendant la période mérovingienne, Paris, Hachette, 1889.
• La Gaule romaine. Paris, Hachette, 1891.
• L'invasion germanique et la fin de l'empire. Paris, Hachette, 1891.
• Nouvelles recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire... Paris, Hachette, 1891. 2e édition en 1923.
• Les transformations de la royauté pendant l'époque carolingienne. Paris, Hachette, 1892.
• Questions historiques. Paris, Hachette, 1893.
• Questions contemporaines, Paris, Hachette, 1916.
• Leçons à l'impératrice sur les origines de la civilisation française, Paris, Hachette, 1930.

See also[link]

• Quia Emptores

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Further reading[link]

• DiVanna, Isabel. Writing History in the Third Republic (2010) excerpt and text search
• Jane Herrick The historical thought of Fustel de Coulanges, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C 1954.
• Arnaldo Momigliano, « La Cité antique de Fustel de Coulanges » in Problèmes d'historiographie ancienne et moderne, Gallimard, Paris, 1983 (p. 402-423)
• François Hartog, Le XIXème siècle et l'histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1988.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

• Works by Fustel de Coulanges at Project Gutenberg
• La Cité antique, in The Roman Law Library (Varia).
• The Ancient City at the McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought
• The Origins of Property in Land at the McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (German pronunciation: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn];^[1] 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940)^[2] was a German-Jewish literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism, Historical Materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Among his major works as a literary critic are essays on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities; the work of Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus; translation theory; the stories of Nikolai Leskov; the work of Marcel Proust and perhaps most significantly, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.

His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, whose critical aesthetics developed epic theatre and its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarisation, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism.

Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–87), Benjamin coined the term “auratic perception”, denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth.^[3] Benjamin's work is often cited in academic and literary studies, especially the essays "The Task of the Translator" (1923) and "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).

Life[link]

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason The Fear of Freedom Dialectic of Enlightenment Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
Important concepts
Critical Theory · Dialectic · Praxis Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism Popular culture · Culture industry Advanced capitalism · Privatism Non-Identity · Communicative Rationality Legitimation Crisis
v t e

Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895 – 1942) and Dora (1901 – 1946) were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated Jews^[4] in the Berlin of the German Empire (1871 – 1918). The patriarch, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who relocated from France to Germany, where he worked as an antiques trader in Berlin; he later married Pauline Schönflies. He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks. In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled to the Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg; he completed his secondary school studies ten years later. Personally, Walter Benjamin was a boy of fragile health, so, in 1905, the family sent him to boarding school in the Thuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, returned to Berlin, his schooling resumed at the Kaiser Friedrich School.

In 1912, at the age of twenty, he enrolled at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, but, at summer semester's end, returned to Berlin, then matriculated into the Humboldt University of Berlin, to continue studying philosophy. Here Benjamin had his first exposure to the ideas of zionism, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing, this exposure gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meanings of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of "cultural zionism" - an attitude which recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values. In Benjamin's formulation his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. Benjamin expressed "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active…For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual." This was a position that Benjamin largely held lifelong.^[5]

Elected president of the Freie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change.^[6] When not re-elected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg University, and studied, with particular attention to the lectures of Heinrich Rickert; in that time he travelled to France and Italy.

In 1914, as Germany and France fought each other in the First World War (1914 – 1918), the intellectual Walter Benjamin began faithfully translating the works of the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867). The next year, 1915, he moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he met Rainer Maria Rilke and Gershom Scholem; the latter became a friend. In that year, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843).

In 1917 he transferred to the University of Bern; there, he met Ernst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner) (1890 – 1964), whom he later married, and they had a son, Stefan Rafael (1918 – 1972). In 1919 Benjamin earned his doctoral degree cum laude with the dissertation essay Begriff der Kunstkritik in der Deutschen Romantik (The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism). Later, unable to support himself and family, the Benjamins returned to Berlin, and resided with his parents; in 1921, he published the essay Kritik der Gewalt (The Critique of Violence). At this time, Benjamin first became socially acquainted with Leo Strauss, and would remain an admirer of him and of his work throughout his life.^[7][8][9]

In 1923, when the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) was founded, and later became home to the Frankfurt School, he published Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens. In that time he became acquainted with Theodor Adorno and befriended Georg Lukács, whose The Theory of the Novel (1920) much influenced him. Meanwhile, the inflation in the Weimar Republic, consequent to the First World War, made it difficult for the businessman Emil Benjamin to continue supporting his intellectual son's family, Walter, Dora, and Stefan. At year's end of 1923, his best friend, Gershom Scholem, emigrated to Palestine, a country ruled under the British Mandate of Palestine; despite repeated invitations, he failed to persuade Walter Benjamin (and family) to leave the Continent for the Middle East.

In 1924, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, in the Neue Deutsche Beiträge magazine, published Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften (Goethe’s Elective Affinities), by Walter Benjamin, about Goethe’s third novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). Later that year, Benjamin and Ernst Bloch resided in the Italian island of Capri; Benjamin wrote Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiel (The Origin of German Tragic Drama), as an habilitation dissertation meant to qualify him as a tenured university professor in Germany. He also read, at Bloch’s suggestion, History and Class Consciousness (1923), by Georg Lukács. In the event, he also met the Latvian Bolshevik and actress Asja Lācis, then residing in Moscow; she became his lover and was a lasting intellectual influence upon him.

A year later, in 1925, the Goethe University Frankfurt, at Frankfurt am Main, rejected The Origin of German Tragic Drama as Benjamin’s qualification for the habilitation teaching credential; he was not to be an academic instructor. Working with Franz Hessel (1880–1941), he translated the first volumes of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), by Marcel Proust. The next year, 1926, he began writing for the German newspapers Frankfurter Zeitung (The Frankfurt Times) and Die Literarische Welt (The Literary World), that paid enough for him to reside in Paris for some months. In December 1926 (the year his father, Emil Benjamin, died), Walter Benjamin went to Moscow to meet Asja Lācis, and found her ill, in a sanatorium.^[10]

In 1927, he began Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), his incompleted magnum opus, a study of 19th-century Parisian life. The same year, he saw Gershom Scholem in Berlin, for the last time, and considered emigrating from Continental Europe (Germany) to Palestine. In 1928, he and Dora separated, then divorced two years later, in 1930; he published Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street), and a revision of his habilitation dissertation Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama). In 1929 Berlin, Asja Lācis, then assistant to Bertolt Brecht, socially presented the intellectuals to each other. In that time, he also briefly embarked upon an academic career, as an instructor at the University of Heidelberg.

In 1932, during the turmoil preceding Adolf Hitler’s assumption of the office of Chancellor of Germany, Walter Benjamin left Germany for the Spanish island of Ibiza for some months; he then moved to Nice, where he considered killing himself. Perceiving the socio-political and cultural significance of the Reichstag fire (27 February 1933) as the de facto Nazi assumption of full power in Germany, then manifest with the subsequent persecution of the Jews, he moved to Paris, but, before doing so, he sought shelter in Svendborg, at Bertold Brecht's house, and at Sanremo, where his ex-wife Dora lived.

As he ran out of money, Benjamin collaborated with Max Horkheimer, and received funds from the Institute for Social Research, later going permanently into exile. In Paris, he met other German artists and intellectuals refuged there from Germany; he befriended Hannah Arendt, novelist Hermann Hesse, and composer Kurt Weill. In 1936, L'Œuvre d'Art à l'Époque de sa Reproductibilité Technique (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) was first published, in French, by Max Horkheimer in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung journal of the Institute for Social Research.

In 1937 Benjamin worked on Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire (The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire), met Georges Bataille (to whom he later entrusted the Arcades Project manuscript), and joined the College of Sociology. In 1938 he paid a last visit to Bertolt Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark. Meanwhile, the Nazi Régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; now a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French government and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp near Nevers, in central Burgundy.

Returning to Paris in January 1940, he wrote Über den Begriff der Geschichte (Theses on the Philosophy of History). As the Wehrmacht defeated the French defence, on 13 June, Benjamin and his sister fled Paris to the town of Lourdes, a day before the Germans entered Paris (14 June 1940), with orders to arrest him at his flat. In August, he obtained a travel visa to the US that Max Horkheimer had negotiated for him. In eluding the Gestapo, Benjamin planned to travel to the US from neutral Portugal, which he expected to reach via fascist Spain, then ostensibly a neutral country.

The historical record indicates he safely crossed the French-Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of Portbou, in Catalonia. The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined. Expecting repatriation to Nazi hands, Walter Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of morphine tablets on the night of 25 September 1940; the official Portbou register records 26 September 1940 as the official date of death.^[11]

Works[link]

Among Walter Benjamin’s works are:

• Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Critique of Violence, 1921).
• Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften (Goethe’s Elective Affinities, 1922).
• Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1928).
• Einbahnstraße (One Way Street, 1928).
• "Karl Kraus" (1931 in the Frankfurter Zeitung).
• Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936).
• Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood around 1900, 1950).
• Über den Begriff der Geschichte (On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History), 1940.
• Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire (The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire, 1938).

Walter Benjamin corresponded much with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by the Frankfurt School under the direction of Adorno and Horkheimer, even from their New York City residence. The competing influences — Brecht’s Marxism, Adorno’s critical theory, Gerschom Scholem’s Jewish mysticism — were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved. Moreover, the critic Paul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin’s writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition; the exemplar synthesis is "On the Concept of History" (Theses on the Philosophy of History).

Paul Klee's 1920 painting Angelus Novus, which Benjamin compared to "the angel of history"

The ninth thesis in the essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” presents:

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

[edit] The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1928), is a critical study of German baroque drama, as well as the political and cultural climate of Germany during the Counter-Reformation (1545–1648). Benjamin presented the work to the University of Frankfurt in 1925 as the (post-doctoral) dissertation meant to earn him the Habilitation (qualification) to become a university instructor in Germany.

Professor Schultz of University of Frankfurt found The Origin of German Tragic Drama inappropriate for his Germanistik department (Department of German Language and Literature), and passed it to the Department of Aesthetics (philosophy of art), the readers of which likewise dismissed Benjamin's work. The faculty, among them Max Horkheimer, recommended that Benjamin withdraw Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels as a Habilitation dissertation to avoid formal rejection and public embarrassment. He heeded the advice, and three years later, in 1928, he published The Origin of German Tragic Drama as a book.^[12]

The Arcades Project[link]

The Passagenwerk (Arcades Project, 1927–40), was Walter Benjamin’s final, incomplete book about Parisian city life in the 19th century, especially about the Passages couverts de Paris the covered passages that extended the culture of flânerie (idling and people-watching) when inclement weather made flânerie infeasible in the boulevards and streets proper.

Writing style[link]

Susan Sontag said that in Walter Benjamin’s writing, sentences did not originate ordinarily, do not progress into one another, and delineate no obvious line of reasoning, as if each sentence “had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes”, a “freeze-frame baroque” style of writing and cogitation. “His major essays seem to end just in time, before they self-destruct”.^[13] The difficulty of Benjamin's writing style is essential to his philosophical project. Fascinated by notions of reference and constellation, his goal in later works was to use intertexts to reveal aspects of the past that cannot, and should not, be understood within greater, monolithic constructs of historical understanding.

Walter Benjamin’s writings identify him as a modernist for whom the philosophic merges with the literary: logical philosophic reasoning cannot account for all experience, especially not for self-representation via art. He presented his stylistic concerns in The Task of the Translator, wherein he posits that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational mortification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth.

Death[link]

Walter Benjamin's grave in Portbou

Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis. The people he was with were told by the Spanish police that they would be deported back to France, which would have hampered Benjamin's plans to get to the United States. While staying in the Hotel de Francia, he apparently took some morphine pills and died on the night of 25/26 September 1940.^[14][15][16] Benjamin's colleague Arthur Koestler, also fleeing Europe, attempted suicide by taking some of the morphine tablets, but he survived.^[17]

The fact that Benjamin was buried in the consecrated section of a Roman Catholic cemetery would indicate that his death was not announced as a suicide. The others in his party were allowed passage the next day, and safely reached Lisbon on 30 September. A manuscript of Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" was passed to Theodor Adorno by Hannah Arendt, who crossed the French-Spanish border at Portbou a few months later, and was subsequently published by the Institute for Social Research (temporarily relocated to New York) in 1942.

A completed manuscript, which Benjamin had carried in his suitcase, disappeared after his death and has not been recovered. Some critics speculate that it was his Arcades Project in a final form; this is very unlikely as the author's plans for the work had changed in the wake of Adorno's criticisms in 1938, and it seems clear that the work was flowing over its containing limits in his last years. As the last finished piece of work from Benjamin, the Theses on the Philosophy of History (noted above) is often cited; Adorno claimed this had been written in the spring of 1940, weeks before the Germans invaded France.

While this is not completely certain, Theses is clearly one of his last works, and the final paragraph, about the Jewish quest for the Messiah provides a harrowing final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, to try to determine the year when the Messiah would come into the world, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."

Legacy[link]

Since the publication of Schriften (Writings, 1955) fifteen years after his death, Benjamin's work--especially the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936)--is of seminal importance to academics in the humanities disciplines.

See also[link]

• Gertrud Kolmar
• Angelus Novus
• Profane illumination

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Primary literature[link]

Secondary literature[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (June 2011)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Walter Benjamin

• Walter Benjamin, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft. In English and German. (Defunct)
• Walter Benjamin at Marxists.org
• Fragments of the Passagenwerk: The Arcades Project, Giles Peaker
• Aufklärung für Kinder, by Walter Benjamin. 30 broadcasts for German Radio between 1929-1932 specifically for children, maybe 7-14 or so, each consisting of a 20 minute talk or monologue.
• One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1993), by Jon Hughes. This documentary provides clear and accessible introductions to some of the central ideas in Benjamin's writings.
• Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline Translated by Scott J. Thompson, copyright March 25, 1997
• From 'Rausch' to Rebellion An introductory essay by Scott J. Thompson
• Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle In French
• Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate
• "Walter Benjamin for Historians", American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 5. December 2001.
• Who Killed Walter Benjamin..., (Spain/The Netherlands/Germany, 2005, 73 min.) a documentary film about the circumstances of Benjamin's death by David Mauas
• Paris, capital of 19th century, an essay/experimental film about the Passagen-Werk by Benjamin Bardou, France, 2010, 10'
• The Mysterious Death of Walter Benjamin, Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, Volume 006, Issue 37, 11 June 2001
• Through the Trapdoor: review of The Narrow Foothold by Carina Birman describes Benjamin's final days
• The Arcades Project or The Rhetoric of Hypertext, Heather Marcelle Crickenberger
• The Dialectics of Allegoresis: Historical Materialism in Benjamin's Illuminations, John Parker
• Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project - The Passagenwerk

Dr. Myles Munroe
Born	(1954-04-20) April 20, 1954 (age 58) Nassau, Bahamas
Occupation	Pastor, Motivational Speaker
Nationality	Bahamian
Genres	Inspirational / Motivational Speaker
Influences Oral Roberts
Influenced Nations
www.bfmmm.com

Dr. Myles Munroe (born (1954-04-20)April 20, 1954) is the president and founder of the Bahamas Faith Ministries International (BFMI)and Myles Munroe International (MMI), a Christian growth and resource center that includes leadership training institutes, a missions agency, a publishing company, a television network, radio and Web communications, and a church community. He is chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the International Third World Leaders Association and president of the International Leadership Training Institute. He is the author of 23 books and is a motivational speaker.^[1]

Biography[link]

Myles Munroe was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1954 and has been a lifetime resident of the Bahamas. He has degrees in fine arts, education and theology from Oral Roberts University (1978), a Master’s degree in administration from the University of Tulsa (1980), and he has been awarded a number of honorary doctoral degrees. He has also served as an adjunct professor of the Graduate School of Theology at Oral Roberts University. His wife, Ruth Munroe is copastor with him at BFMI. He has a son Chairo (Myles Jr.) and daughter Charisa and says that his family is his greatest responsibility and his marriage his most sacred trust.

Today, Dr. Munroe is a pastor, teacher, administrator, author and motivational speaker. He travels throughout the world as a speaker addressing governments leaders, businesses, schools/universities and church congregations. He personally addresses over 500,000 people each year on personal and professional development, and he receives hundreds of invitations every year to speak worldwide.^[2] Dr. Munroe has appeared on Benny Hinn's This Is Your Day program, where he spoke about the Kingdom of God.^[3]

Dr. Munroe places a great emphasis on the Kingdom of God and believes that the whole Bible, along with the message of Jesus, revolved around the kingdom and not a religion.^[4] He has said, "My vision, is wrapped up in one statement: I exist to transform followers into leaders. My philosophy is, trapped in every follower is a leader. My belief is, if that person is placed in the right environment, the leader will manifest himself or herself."^[5]

Bibliography[link]

Myles Munroe is the author or coauthor of over 100 books, study guides, and audio tapes currently in print,^[6] and he is a contributing writer for various Bible editions, journals, magazines, and newsletters, such as The Believer’s Topical Bible, The African Cultural Heritage Topical Bible, Charisma Life Christian Magazine, and Ministries Today.

His works cover Christian interpretations of the Kingdom of God as well as guidance on love, sex, family relationships, and finances. His works are written in English, Spanish and Portuguese. His most popular works include:

• Myles Munroe on Relationship
• Pass it On
• Kingdom Principles: Preparing for Kingdom Experience and Expansion
• Rediscovering the Kingdom
• The Most Important Person on Earth
• Understanding Your Potential
• Waiting and Dating
• The Spirit of Leadership
• The Principles and Power of Vision
• Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer
• Understanding the Purpose and Power of Woman
• Understanding the Purpose and Power of Men
• God's Big Idea
• Overcoming The Crisis
• Principles and Benefits of Change
• Releasing Your Potential

Awards[link]

In 1998, Dr. Munroe was awarded the Silver Jubilee Award for providing twenty five years of outstanding service to the Bahamas in the category of Religion.

Also in 1998, Myles Munroe was named to the Queen's Birthday Honours 1998, OBE.^[2]

In 2004, he was named the Oral Roberts University Alumnus of the year and has an honorary doctorate from them.

External links[link]

• Bahamas Faith Ministry International home page
• Myles Munroe International home page
• Myles Munroe Official Facebook home page
• Myles Munroe Official Twitter home page

Benny Hinn
Born	Toufik Benedictus Hinn (1952-12-03) December 3, 1952 (age 59) Jaffa, Israel[1]
Occupation	Televangelist Author Speaker
Spouse	Suzanne Harthern (m. 4 August 1979, Divorced)
Children	three daughters, one son

Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn (Greek: Τουφικ Βενέδικτος "βενι" Χιν, Arabic: توفيق بندكتوس "بني" الحن‎, Hebrew: תאופיק בנדיקטוס (בני) הין; born December 3, 1952) is a televangelist, best known for his regular "Miracle Crusades" – revival meeting/faith healing summits that are usually held in large stadiums in major cities, which are later broadcast worldwide on his television program, This Is Your Day.^[2]

History[link]

Hinn was born in Jaffa, in 1952, in the then newly-established state of Israel^[3] to Palestinian Christian parents. He was raised within the Eastern Orthodox tradition.^[4]

Soon after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (a.k.a. "The Six-Day War)", Hinn's family emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he attended but later prematurely left the Georges Vanier Secondary School. In his books, Hinn states that his father was the mayor of Jaffa at the time of his birth, and that as a child, he was socially isolated and was handicapped by a severe stutter, but was nonetheless a first-class student.^[5] These claims, however, have been disputed by critics of Hinn.^[6] As a teenager in Toronto, Hinn converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Pentecostalism, eventually joining a singing troupe made up of young evangelicals. According to a 2004 CBC report on Hinn, his newfound religious devotion during this period became so intense that his family became concerned that he was turning into a religious fanatic. Hinn was taught the bible and mentored by Dr. Winston I. Nunes of Broadview Faith Temple in Toronto.^[7]

He has written that on December 21, 1973, he traveled by charter bus from Toronto to Pittsburgh to attend a "miracle service" conducted by evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. Although he never met her personally, he often attended her “healing services” and has often cited her as an influence in his life.^[5]

Upon moving to the United States, Hinn traveled to Orlando, Florida, where he founded the Orlando Christian Center in 1983. Eventually, Hinn began claiming that God was using him as a conduit for healings, and began holding healing services in his church. These new "Miracle Crusades" were soon held at large stadiums and auditoriums across the United States and the world, the first nationally televised service being held in Flint, Michigan, in 1989. During the early 1990s, Hinn launched a new daily talk show called This Is Your Day, which to this day airs clips of supposed miracles from Hinn's Miracle Crusades. The program premiered on the Trinity Broadcasting Network of Paul Crouch, who would become one of Hinn's most outspoken defenders and allies. Hinn's ministry began to rapidly grow from there, winning praise as well as criticism from fellow Christian leaders. In 1999, he stepped down as pastor of the Orlando Christian Center, moving his ministry's administrative headquarters to Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, while hosting This Is Your Day from a television studio in Orange County, California, where he now lives with his family. His former church was renamed Faith World Church under the leadership of Clint Brown, who merged his Orlando church with Hinn's.

Ministry and theology[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Benny Hinn

Benny Hinn is a well-known Christian evangelist and Bible teacher who practices faith healing. He is the author of a number of best-selling inspirational Christian books. His thirty-minute TV program This Is Your Day is among the world’s most-watched Christian programs, seen on various Christian television networks, including Trinity Broadcasting Network, Daystar Television Network, Revelation TV, Grace TV, Vision TV, INSP Networks, and The God Channel.

Hinn conducts regular "Miracle Crusades" – revival meeting/faith healing events held in sports stadiums in major cities throughout the world. Tens of millions attend his Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades each year.^{[citation needed]} Benny Hinn claims to have spoken to one billion people through his crusades, including memorable crusades with attendance of 7.3 million people (in three services) in India, the largest healing service in recorded history.^[8][9][10] Notable individuals have credited their healing to Benny Hinn, such as Evander Holyfield, who was diagnosed with a non-compliant left ventricle, and stated that through God working through Hinn, he was healed as he had "a warm feeling" go through his chest as Hinn touched him.^[11][12]

Hinn's teachings are Evangelical and charismatic, accepting the validity of spiritual gifts, and Word of Faith in origin, with a focus on financial prosperity. Some doctrine and practices that Hinn teaches would be thought unusual in mainstream Christianity.^[13] The charismatic Christian community (who, according to a recent study by The Barna Group, make up 46% of United States Protestants and 36% of United States Catholics),^[14] is very diverse, and Hinn's ideas would only be accepted in some constituencies.^{[citation needed]}

Missions[link]

Benny Hinn Ministries claims to support 60 mission organizations across the world and several orphanages around the world, and claims to house and feed over 100,000 children a year and support 45,000 children daily because of his donors. ^[15][16]

Benny Hinn Ministries donated $100,000 for Relief Supplies to Hurricane Katrina Victims in 2007, and $250,000 to Tsunami Relief Effort in 2005.^[17]

Criticism and controversy[link]

A controversial aspect of Hinn's ministry is his teaching on, and demonstration of, a phenomenon he dubs "The Anointing"—the power purportedly given by God and transmitted through Hinn to carry out supernatural acts. At Hinn's Miracle Crusades, he has allegedly healed attendees of blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS,^[18] and severe physical injuries. However, investigative reports by the Los Angeles Times, NBC's Dateline, the CBC's The Fifth Estate, and the Nine Network's 60 Minutes have called these claims into question.

Hinn has also caused controversy for theological remarks and claims he has made during TV appearances. In 1999, Hinn appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, claiming that God had given him a vision predicting the resurrection of thousands of dead people after watching the network—laying out a scenario of people placing their dead loved ones' hands on TV screens tuned into the station—and suggesting that TBN would be "an extension of Heaven to Earth".

False Prophecies[link]

Hinn is notable for his mistaken prophecies relating to the end times, including the destruction of homosexuals in the USA, the death of Fidel Castro in the 1990s, and the end of the world in 1992 and 1999.^[19]

[edit] A Question of Miracles

In April 2001, HBO aired a documentary entitled A Question of Miracles that focused on Hinn and a well-documented fellow Word-of-Faith German minister based in Africa, Reinhard Bonnke.^[20] Both Hinn and Bonnke offered full access to their events to the documentary crew, and the documentary team followed seven cases of "miracle healings" from Hinn's crusade over the next year. The film's director, Antony Thomas, claimed to CNN's Kyra Phillips that they did not find any cases where people were actually healed by Hinn.^[21] Thomas said in a New York Times interview that "If I had seen miracles [from Hinn's ministry], I would have been happy to trumpet it...but in retrospect, I think they do more damage to Christianity than the most committed atheist."^[22]

"Do You Believe in Miracles"[link]

In November 2004, the CBC Television show The Fifth Estate did a special titled "Do You Believe in Miracles" on the apparent transgressions committed by Benny Hinn's ministry.^[3] With the aid of hidden cameras and crusade witnesses, the producers of the show demonstrated Benny's apparent misappropriation of funds, his fabrication of the truth, and the way in which his staff chose crusade audience members to come on stage to proclaim their miracle healings.^[3] In particular, the investigation highlighted the fact that the most desperate miracle seekers who attend a Hinn crusade—the quadriplegics, the brain-damaged, virtually anyone with a visibly obvious physical condition—are never allowed up on stage; those who attempt to get in the line of possible healings are intercepted and directed to return to their seats. At one Canadian service, hidden cameras showed a mother who was carrying her Muscular Dystrophy-afflicted daughter, Grace, being stopped by two screeners when they attempted to get into the line for a possible blessing from Benny. The screeners asked the mother if Grace had been healed, and when the mother replied in the negative, they were told to return to their seats; the pair got out of line, but Grace, wanting "Pastor Benny to pray for [her]", asked her mother to support her as she tried to walk as a show of "her faith in action", according to the mother. After several unsuccessful attempts at walking, the pair left the arena in tears, both mother and daughter visibly upset at being turned aside and crying as they explained to the undercover reporters that all Grace had wanted was for Benny to pray for her, but the staffers rushed them out of the line when they found out Grace had not been healed.^[3] A week later at a service in Toronto, Baptist evangelist Justin Peters, who wrote his Masters in Divinity thesis on Benny Hinn^[23] and has attended numerous Hinn crusades since 2000 as part of his research for his thesis and for a seminar he developed about the Word of Faith movement entitled A Call for Discernment,^[24] also demonstrated to the hidden cameras that "people who look like me"—Peters has cerebral palsy, walks with arm-crutches, and is obviously and visibly disabled—"are never allowed on stage[...]it's always somebody who has some disability or disease that cannot be readily seen." Like Grace and her mother, Peters was quickly intercepted as he came out of the wheelchair section (there is one at every crusade, situated at the back of the audience, far away from the stage, and never filmed for Hinn's TV show) in an attempt to join the line of those waiting to go onstage, and was told to take a seat.^[3]

This segment was later edited with new footage and shown on Dateline: NBC in November 2005.

Ministry Watch issues "Donor Alert"[link]

In March 2005, Ministry Watch, issued a Donor Alert against the ministry.^[25] Benny Hinn Ministries is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.^[26]

BHM raises funds for a Gulfstream jet[link]

In December 2006, BHM sent out a mailing asking for donations towards a new Gulfstream G4SP jet valued at an estimated US$36 million and costing over US$600,000/year to maintain and operate.^[27] The 22-seat craft was purchased in 2007 and christened "Dove One".

Senate investigation[link]

On November 6, 2007, United States Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa announced an investigation of Hinn's ministry by the United States Senate Committee on Finance. In a letter to BHM,^[28] Grassley asked for the ministry to divulge financial information^[29] to the Senate Committee on Finance to determine if Hinn made any personal profit from financial donations, and requested that Hinn's ministry make the information available by December 6, 2007. The investigation also scrutinized five other televangelists: Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, Eddie L. Long, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar.^[30][31] On December 6, 2007, Hinn told the Associated Press that he would not respond to the inquiry until 2008.^[32] Hinn's ministry has since responded to the inquiry, and Senator Grassley commented that, "... Benny Hinn [has] engaged in open and honest dialogue with committee staff. They have not only provided responses to every question but, in the spirit of true cooperation, also have provided information over and above what was requested."^[33]

Personal life[link]

Hinn married Suzanne Harthern on August 4, 1979.^[34] The couple have four children together. Harthern filed papers in Orange County (California) Superior Court on February 1, 2010, seeking a divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences".^[35][36]

In July 2010, both Hinn and fellow televangelist Paula White denied allegations in the National Enquirer claiming that the two were engaged in an affair.^[37] In February 2011, Hinn was sued by the Christian publishing house Strang Communications, which claimed that a relationship with White did occur and that Hinn had violated the morality clause of his contract with the company.^[38]

Bibliography[link]

• Benny Hinn. Kathryn Kuhlman: Her Spiritual Legacy and Its Impact on My Life. W Pub Group. ISBN 0-7852-7888-5. 
• Benny Hinn. Good Morning, Holy Spirit. Nelson Books. ISBN 0-7852-7176-7. 
• Benny Hinn. He Touched Me an Autobiography. Nelson Books. ISBN 0-7852-7887-7. 
• Benny Hinn. The Anointing. Nelson Books. ISBN 0-7852-7168-6. 
• Benny Hinn. Welcome, Holy Spirit How You Can Experience The Dynamic Work Of The Holy Spirit In Your Life. Nelson Books. ISBN 0-7852-7169-4. 
• Benny Hinn. This Is Your Day for a Miracle. Orlando, FL: Creation House. ISBN 0-88419-391-8. 
• Benny Hinn. The Biblical Road to Blessing. Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson Inc. ISBN 0-7852-7517-7. 
• Benny Hinn. Miracle Of Healing. Nashville, Tenn: J. Countryman. ISBN 0-8499-5399-5. 
• Benny Hinn. The Blood. Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House. ISBN 0-88419-763-8. 
• Benny Hinn. Going Deeper with the Holy Spirit. Benny Hinn Ministries. ISBN 1-59024-039-1. 
• Benny Hinn. Lord, I Need a Miracle. Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson Inc. ISBN 0-8407-6251-8. 
• Benny Hinn. Total Recovery, Supernatural Restoration and Release. Dallas, Texas: Clarion Call Marketing, Inc. ISBN 1-59574-038-4. 

See also[link]

• Charismatic movement
• Kathryn Kuhlman
• Prosperity Gospel
• Televangelism
• Word of Faith

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Benny Hinn on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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	Learning resources from Wikiversity
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	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
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• Benny Hinn Ministries – Official website
• Faith World – Official website Hinn's former church
• Ministry Watch Report on Benny Hinn
• Videos