WALTER BENJAMIN MEMORIAL
WEBSITE: WWW.WALTERBENJAMINPORTBOU.ORG
LOCATION: PASSEIG DE LA SARDANA, 11, 17497 PORTBOU, GIRONA
NEAREST AIRPORTS: GIRONA AIRPORT, 1 HOUR DRIVE
Of all the pilgrimages on The Art Pilgrim, Passages, the memorial sculpture created by Dani Karavan for Walter Benjamin in northern Spain, is the most modest. Seldom will you find an art graduate who has not read and studied Benjamin’s work. To travel to the place where he died being pursued by Nazis, though a different calibre to the rest of my recommendations, is one I felt important to write about.
This really is more than just a site of art pilgrimage. It is a trip for those wishing to pay their respects to the great philosopher and social commentator, the late Walter Benjamin, who found himself in Portbou desperately trying to escape his Nazi pursuers by crossing the border from Spain to neutral Portugal and transit to America.
Born in 1892 in Berlin to a fully assimilated Jewish family, Benjamin grew up in an intensely intellectual household, both his parents and extended family very involved in German academia. It was his uncle, William Stern, who invented the concept of Intelligence Quotient, or “IQ”.
In his most famous art thesis, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he argues that the more a work of art is reproduced, and the speed in which the reproduction can take place, affects our perception of the original, fading the aura and making it difficult for us to apprehend the space and time in which the original was created. This text was miles ahead of its time and is ever more relevant in the cheapening age of Instagram and social media.
In this sculpture, Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan uses Benjamin’s philosophy of unique experience and aura to create the homage. It is the physical experience of Benjamin’s philosophy as it cannot be reproduced. You need to come here to see and experience it.
One enters the dark corridor and descends down a long narrow stairway to arrive to a shielded chamber where one can only see the sea and sky in an uninterrupted horizon. It is claustrophobic but there is a sense of relief when you arrive at the bottom. I imagine this mirrors how Benjamin felt when he found himself in Portbou: alone, afraid, and stuck.
On the 26th of September 1940, seeing no way out of his situation and with fear of being sent to the Concentration camps, Benjamin died. It is unclear whether he killed himself or if he was assassinated but the going story is that it was suicide.
He was buried in a Catholic cemetery that is located just next to the sculpture. Rumour has it that the Spanish authorities were so shocked by his suicide that they granted exit to a group of around 2,000 Jews letting them go to Portugal and from there to America effectively saving their lives, though there is no evidence that this is true.
