BENJAMIN WALTER
AND THE SECRET OF THE BLACK NAPKIN...
Excerpt from Lisa FITTKO's book The Walter BENJAMIN Way
MEMORIES. 1940 - 1941
Preparing for your trip...
"... I notice Benjamin is wearing a towel - no doubt he picked it up during our stop at the inn. It looks heavy. I ask him if I can help:
- It contains my latest manuscript," he explains.
- But why are you taking it away now? We're just out exploring.
- You know, this towel is my most prized possession. I'm not going to lose it. This manuscript must be saved. It's more important than I am.
Here we are, I thought. It's not going to be an easy trip. Benjamin and his quirks! Did he also have his briefcase in his hand when he wandered around the port of Marseille dressed as a sailor? But the important thing for the moment was to get our bearings: here's the stable - currently unoccupied. So far, we're on the right track. Then we come to the path which bends slightly to the left. Here's the huge rock we mentioned. A clearing! And here we are! It took us almost three hours... "
The character
"... What a strange character, I thought: crystal-clear thinking, indomitable inner strength, and with all that, clumsy as hell. Walter Benjamin revealed the secret of his strength in one of his writings(Agesilaus Santander): "[...] nothing can triumph over my patience".
Now that Benjamin is recognized as one of this century's great thinkers and literary critics, I'm sometimes asked: "What did he tell you about his manuscript?" "Did he divulge anything of its contents?" "Did he develop a new philosophical system in it..."
Crossing the border
"... Good heavens! I had to get my little world to the top of the Pyrenees... Philosophy could wait. The challenge was to save a few human beings from falling into the hands of the Nazis. And here I was, with old Benjamin as my improvised ferryman, a phenomenon whom nothing could persuade to part with his ballast, the black leather satchel. Willy-nilly, we had to drag the "monster" over the mountain...".
The difficult climb
"... We climbed between vines overloaded with bunches of almost-ripe grapes, that sweet black Banyuls grape. In my memory - but memory sometimes distorts images - the slope was almost vertical. This was the one and only time Benjamin cracked. More precisely, he tried to climb it and, unable to do so, calmly explained that the task was beyond his strength. José and I took him between us, wrapped his arms around our shoulders, and dragged him - with the satchel - up the vineyard. His breathing was labored, but he never uttered a complaint, not even a sigh. He just kept staring at his briefcase... "
Arrival in Portbou
"... Down there is Portbou. With the Spanish border post where you'll report. This road leads straight to it. A real road!"
We set off at four in the morning. It took us almost ten hours to get from Banyuls to here.
"Go straight to the border post, show your papers: passports, Spanish and Portuguese transit visas. As soon as you have your entry stamp, take the next train to Lisbon. But you know all that. I must leave you now. Good-bye!"
Old Benjamin and his manuscript were now safely on the other side of the mountain.
"A few days later, I learned of Walter Benjamin's death. He had committed suicide in Portbou, the night after his arrival. At the Spanish border post, they had been told: - We are obliged to take you back to France -..."
He committed suicide...
New guidelines for entering Spain
"... We had just received new directives from Madrid: no entry into Spain without a French exit visa."
To survive, we had to learn how to slip through the cracks, to wield the full range of tricks and feints to extricate ourselves from an ever-changing labyrinth. "... You have to manage ...".
Benjamin Walter is not a resourceful man...
"... For some, it also meant acquiring this kind of thing through collaboration. For us stateless people, the priority was to avoid the concentration camp and not fall into the hands of the Gestapo. But Benjamin wasn't a resourceful man. Benjamin had no feet on the ground. All he cared about was getting his manuscript and himself out of the hands of the Gestapo...".
Benjamin Walter can't do it again... He's going to kill himself.
"... Climbing the Pyrenees had exhausted him and, he warned me, he didn't think he could do it again. But he had foreseen everything: he had provided himself with a sufficient dose of morphine to end his life. Impressed and moved by his suicide, the Spaniards gave the others permission to continue on their way...".
Like a testament, he wrote...
"In a situation with no way out, I have no choice but to end it all. So it's in a small village in the Pyrenees, where nobody knows me, that my life will come to an end.
"... Forty years later, talking (Lisa FITTKO) with Professor Abramsky from London, we came to talk about Walter Benjamin and his work. I mentioned his last odyssey and the manuscript affair. Shortly afterwards, I received a phone call from Professor Gershom Scholem, Benjamin's closest friend and the executor of his will. I told him about the events of that day in September 1940.
- At least his prized manuscript was saved," I remarked.
- This manuscript doesn't exist," replied Scholem. No one has ever heard of it. You have to look for it... The manuscript has disappeared."
No manuscript. No one has any information about the heavy black satchel containing Benjamin's most cherished work.
It seems to me today, however, that on that night in Portbou, Walter Benjamin did not ignore the real danger. Only, his real danger, his reality, was different from ours.
In Portbou, he had to meet the gnome once again, his personal gnome, and he had to finish him off. In his own way..."
The manuscript could not be found. Not in Porbou, Figueras or Barcelona. The only entry in the death register at the time was that the deceased was in possession of a black leather satchel, "unos papeles mas de contenido desconocido", containing papers of unknown content.
Lisa Fittko - Passer in the Pyrenees
Introduction to Lisa FITTKO (author of the book), German resistance fighter against Nazism (of Hungarian origin), smuggler in the Pyrénées Orientales between 1940 and 1941. Together with her husband Hans, she was the driving force behind an underground network that organized the escape to Spain from Banyuls...
on the Walter Benjamin Way
Rumpissar pass border
departure from Banyuls
Near the start
