KUNSTWELTEN

KUNSTWELTEN THE JOURNEY TO PORTBOU – DIARY EXCERPTS

JEANINE MEERAPFEL

From 18 to 23 September 2021, the trip to Portbou – long planned by the Walter Benjamin Archive and KUNSTWELTEN and repeatedly postponed due to the pandemic – finally took place with school leavers from the Rosa Luxemburg Gymnasium in Berlin, the President of the Akademie der Künste, Jeanine Meerapfel, and the director of the Walter Benjamin Archive, Erdmut Wizisla. Their train journey via Paris and Perpignan took sixteen hours, and the return trip around twenty.

In the months before, they had visited the Archive, read Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, his Moscow Diary, extracts from his Arcades Project, and reports by friends and contemporaries; they watched films about the events in the Spanish border town of Portbou and held Zoom conversations. In Portbou, they visited Dani Karavan’s Arcades memorial site, they saw the hotel where Walter Benjamin took his own life to prevent extradition back to France, and on 21 September, they walked the route in the Pyrenees from Banyuls in France to Portbou that Benjamin had to take on 24 and 25 September 1940, as described by Lisa Fittko who helped him flee. Film director Sophie Narr accompanied the group to film the trip, which was publicly screened at the Akademie der Künste on 2 May 2022.

The wind whips the hair in the stranger's face. The homecoming. Loud it whistles in the ears and rustles. Is it the sea? The blood? There the border. Then: borderless silence. No wind and not a word either. Just breath and the calm sea on the horizon. Close your eyes carefully. It's the blood.

"In the Pyrenees", Florentine Osche, 21 September 2021

Berlin, 17 September 2021

A day before the trip, I ask myself if I have read enough, if I know enough. My fascination with Walter Benjamin is much more a fascination with his biography. Because, often, I don’t understand his sentences. Sometimes, I find them to the point and even funny: W. B.: “Yesterday we saw the what’s-it.” His friend: “What kind of what’s-it?” W. B.: “You know, the sunset.”

The awful thing is that we are looking at W. B. from the vantage point of his death. Would he have wanted that? What interests me is why he showed so little interest in Judaism, why he didn’t take up Gershom Scholem’s ideas, and why he made no attempt to claim Judaism for himself.

18 September 2021

Train journey to France. Departure early in the morning at 6:00 a.m. – not my time of day. We all – students, teachers, us from the Academy – gather on platform 13. We all wear masks, and I worry that I won’t recognise them. I carry with me the thick book Begegnungen mit Benjamin (“Encounters with Walter Benjamin”) edited by Erdmut Wizisla. I haven’t read it all yet. A man comes up to us on the train. Kerstin and I sit facing each other and talk quietly – I don’t know if he might be part of the group, so I give him a friendly look. He says to me sternly, “Can you read?” I’m holding the book on Benjamin in my hand, so I say naïvely, “Yes” (immediately feeling guilty for not having read it all). The man points to a sign on the wall: “Ruhebereich; Quiet zone; Area del silenzio; Zone repos …”. The man nods, satisfied with himself (“See?!”), turns, and goes back to his seat. – Now the top of the bottle of hand sanitiser has come off in my handbag. Everything is wet. This diary as well, but only the top corners. Travelling in the times of a pandemic … Maybe it’s all a bit too much. 19 minutes de retard – voilà – the announcements on the train are only in French, not exactly a contribution to good international relations.

Sunday, 19 September 2021

In Perpignan, we set off for the Centre d’Art Contemporain Walter Benjamin, which no longer exists – as we find out. We only find a Centre d’Art Contemporain with an aesthetically underwhelming exhibition of a painter and sculptor on the first floor and a definitively tasteless photo exhibition on the second floor. A beautiful building; a twisted story. In the summer of 2020, the Akademie der Künste declared its solidarity with French intellectuals who, in an open letter in Le Monde on 30 June 2020, protested against Perpignan’s then newly elected right-wing mayor’s (Rassemblement National) illegitimate use of Benjamin’s name to adorn himself with borrowed plumes. Fortunately, W. B.’s heirs banned the mayor from using the name. Now the place is called Centre d’Art Contemporain – tout court – and continues its insignificant existence.

Strong wind in Perpignan: the girls play at throwing paper aeroplanes into the open suitcase – a suitcase that symbolises W. Benjamin’s – that travels everywhere with us.

We take the train to Portbou. “Ah!” and “Oh!” as we see the Mediterranean to our right. The Wi-Fi connection in our part of the train is “Frontera 1941”. It was here in Portbou that Benjamin killed himself on the night of 25–26 September 1940. In the evening, we ask the students what, from their point of view, is the purpose of this trip. “To empathise”, they say. To empathise, from the travails of the journey, with what Benjamin went through. E. Wizisla probes and follows up – one student, visibly moved, says, yes, to empathise, then finally to find peace: “To feel peace—”.

Monday, 20 September 2021

We go together to the Arcades memorial site to see Dani Karavan’s work.

Diary page. Arcades memorial, Jasmin Schubert. Arcades memorial, Florentine Osche.

No words can describe the emotional upheaval evoked by this work of art. The students: some of them sit down in front of it and start drawing. Others go down the steps to the pane of glass where the passage ends. They are very quiet. Each has to deal with her own feelings. There’s hardly any talking, just quietly taking it in.

In the afternoon at the station. Meeting with Pilar from the Fundación Angelus Novus (after Klee’s angel of the same name that Benjamin loved so much). “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."1 W. B., Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940.

Evening discussion: the pupils share what struck them while reading the book. Two at a time, they narrate the descriptions of the encounter between Asja Lācis and Walter Benjamin. (eight students / three teachers / two archivists / Marion / Kerstin + myself)

The students read quotes that caught their attention. Descriptions of Benjamin, particularly by Asja Lācis, by Charlotte Wolff, by Lisa Fittko. They try to understand Benjamin’s psychology. Marion Neumann quotes Brecht, trying to emphasise Benjamin’s politics.

Tuesday, 21 September 2021

The group walks the route taken by Benjamin. They set off early without me. I don’t feel up to six hours of mountain climbing. In the end, they were on their way for more than eight hours; they got lost and separated but got back together again. Around 5:00 p.m., I start to worry … Via WhatsApp, I start texting with Erdmut Wizisla. - Are you ok? - We don’t know. Or, rather, we can’t tell until we find the trail again. But how are you? - I’m fine. Am in my room writing. But have you lost the way? Should I be worried? You really ought to be

getting back soon … - We’d be glad to be back too. Don’t give up on us yet. But you don’t have to worry yet. - Now we’re back together again. The sun has come out and we’ll manage the final hour! - Good! Please keep me posted.

Last day in Portbou

We visit the exhibition at the train station about the house that is to be established as the Benjamin House. Pilar runs a W. B. foundation.

Sketch, Jasmin Schubert.

After the visit, we need a place to get together and talk. We ask Pilar if it’s okay if we take plastic chairs and sit on one of the train station platforms. No problem. We sit in a semicircle at the end of the old platform. The girls start talking: - I felt like – even though I wasn’t threatened – I wanted to go down to the sea. - I found it overwhelming. Everyone was quiet at the border (says Elli, the dog at her feet). - I thought we should spend more time feeling what it was like. - Whether one can feel what it was like when there is questionable. - Seeing his fleeing in a wider context. - It’s beautiful by the Mediterranean, but … - We don’t necessarily have to feel empathy. - Extreme gratitude that I can have a kind of holiday, compared to what happened to him and others. - I felt a kind of peace. - None of us – thankfully – are in that situation … - Gratitude. - I think Benjamin would have wanted us to reflect on this. - I take a critical approach to everything. - Building a bridge to the present. - Why not say in plain words: it’s incomprehensible. - To be glad of the privilege of not being persecuted. …..

They want to know from me which traditions of the Jewish faith I adhere to. I explain that, although I am not religious, the Jewish culture is important to me. That my parental home was Jewish-liberal (threetimes-a-year Jews, that is, Jews who go to the synagogue for Passover, Rosh ha-Shanah, and Yom Kippur). I tell them about Passover, that it is a celebration of

Sketch, Florentine Osche.

liberation. That I can invite one or two of them to Passover … And everyone is enthusiastic, everyone wants to come. Now I have to see how I can organise that next year. But, in this moment, I understand that they don’t learn anything about all that at school. How could they? Without Jewish teachers. It was always clear to me that the big “gap” can only be overcome in a school with active religious education. The lack of knowledge about Judaism of these girls – who are enlightened and open-minded – is the fault and the terrible mistake of the adult generation. What do German cultural planners and educators think? That antisemitism can be combatted whilst there is hardly any knowledge about Judaism? They should be ashamed of their stupidity and ignorance.

Sketch, Florentine Osche.

In the evening, we go out for dinner together, once again on the Rambla, by the beach, in a simple bar. We had made friends with the owner’s sister, Mari, and asked her to cook “paella” for us, which she did. And also a few portions of cooked vegetables, as most of the girls are vegetarian. The big issue for these young women is climate policy. That’s what interests them most. The two who are already 18 will vote for the first time this year.

The trip comes to an end

Early start again – 5:30 a.m. departure from Portbou to Cerbère, where we take the train to Paris. We discuss whether to walk through the Marais quarter in Paris (why?). No one wants to walk the streets of Paris with luggage. So everyone decides to go to the Arc de Triomphe, wrapped (posthumously) by Christo. We all meet up again at the Gare de l’Est, board the train to Frankfurt, where we will then change trains for the last time to Berlin.

Bottom line of the trip: there is no bottom line, only a continuing experience; a knowledge that will grow and consolidate over the coming days and weeks.

Sketch, Florentine Osche.

Notes: Kerstin = Kerstin Diekmann (personal assistant to the Academy president) Marion = Marion Neumann (head of KUNSTWELTEN, a cultural education programme)

JEANINE MEERAPFEL, is a filmmaker and President of the Akademie der Künste.