Rellstab’s father must have been a very peculiar man. He was an editor of the Vossische Zeitung.7 One evening he was supposed to attend a magic show and then write about it for the newspaper. Having no desire to go and a very busy schedule, he sent his son, who was just twelve years old at the time. When he got home, he had him write down his impressions. Then he fixed the article up a bit and sent it on to the Vossische Zeitung. This was Rellstab’s first published work. But the visit had a curious effect. After the show the magician explained a few of his tricks to those who had waited around the theater. The young Rellstab heard these explanations and for weeks could think of nothing but magic. He managed to find a shop in Berlin that sold magic supplies, contraptions with secret mechanisms, boxes with double bottoms, playing cards with hidden marks. He also searched out any book that would help him study magic as a science.
Nothing much came of this, he admits. But who knows whether he wouldn’t have become a famous magician if back then he had had the splendid book which, as our second inlay, I’d like to tell you about now. Despite technology, cars, electric generators, radio, etc., it seems that many children are still interested in magic. True, the golden age of magic has passed. There was a time when, every summer in all the big seaside resorts, world-famous magicians, the likes of Bellachini or Houdini, performed before packed houses. Just now a book has finally appeared in which all kinds of magic, including hundreds of tricks and some of the most incredible and astounding things you could ever imagine, are depicted and explained in clear detail. It’s called Das Wunderbuch der Zauberkunst [The Wonder Book of Magic] and was written by Ottokar Fischer, who calls himself “a formerly practicing artist and director of the Kratky-Baschik Magic Theater in Vienna.”8 One glance at the table of contents and your eyes are popping at the abundance of magic on offer. And don’t worry that knowing what’s behind the tricks could stop you from enjoying magic shows. To the contrary, only when you know to watch very closely, and no longer let yourself get caught up in the magician’s clever patter, always keeping an eye on what’s coming next — only then will you appreciate the magician’s unbelievable skill and recognize that it is his speed, the result of so much practice and determination, that is oftentimes behind the sorcery. Another time soon we’ll speak more about magic, so I’ll say nothing more today other than to list a few headings from our book: The Bottomless Punchbowl — The Devil’s Target — The Queen of the Air — Schiller’s Bell — The Indestructible Cord — The Swami Seer’s Wristwatch — Ladies Scorched, Perforated and Cut in Half — The Wonder of Ben Ali Bey — The Disappearance of Twelve Members of the Audience — and many more.
But it is getting late and Rellstab wants to tell us about a few more pranks:
My Tiergarten pals and I got into all sorts of other mischief: performing daring raids on fruit trees and fruit sheds; driving a fruit seller crazy by fastening a meaty bone, which hung unnoticed behind a fence, to her service bell so that every passing dog was enticed to ring it; holding a string across the path just outside a tavern, where it wasn’t rare to see tipsy guests stumbling about in the evening, until a group tripped over it and fell into the wet grass and then, after immediately releasing the string, innocently setting out to find the cause of the stumble. I’ll say no more just now, except to mention briefly that in this way, too, I was no better than other children, and actually much worse.9
And so you can see, from his own words, how a real Berlin guttersnipe cavorted about the city at a tender age. As later in life we often succeed best at precisely those things we loved and plotted early on, the same was true for Rellstab. His greatest achievements arose not from music criticism, from which he later earned his living, but rather from things intimately associated with Berlin. In addition to these childhood memories, he also has a book, simply titled Berlin, a description of the city and its nearest surroundings, including many beautiful steel engravings.10 On the title pages there’s one such engraving that depicts the Tiergarten memorial to Frederick William III. Of all the areas of the Tiergarten, my most beloved is the spot where this memorial is tucked away. I played there as a very small child and to this day I’ve never forgotten how exciting it used to be to meander along the winding paths to the Queen Louise Memorial, which was even more secluded, hidden among the bushes and separated from the king by a narrow stream. The area around these two monuments was the first labyrinth I would encounter, long before I would sketch them on blotting paper or my desk during school.11 In this regard I’d say little has changed: your blotting paper doesn’t look all that different than mine did.
In any case, for those of you who enjoy labyrinths, I will close with one last inlay. I’d like to reveal the exact location of the most beautiful labyrinths you’ll ever see: the home of the bookseller Paul Graupe, a large and wonderful house with an entire hall dedicated to fascinating labyrinths of cities, forests, mountains, valleys, castles, and bridges, each meticulously drawn in pen by the Munich painter Hirth so as to invite you to wander with your eyes.12 But clean your boots on the way in; Paul Graupe’s is a very elegant place. And when you’re standing among the maps, plans, and cityscapes you’ll find there, have a look out the window, and right before your eyes you’ll see the Tiergarten again; which means our walk today has been rather labyrinthine, leaving us, without ever having noticed, right back where we began twenty-five minutes ago.
“Ein Berliner Strassenjunge,” GS, 7.1, 92–8. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.
Broadcast on Radio Berlin, March 7, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript “Berlin Radio, 7 March, 1930.” For this date, the Funkstunde announced “Youth Hour (Berlin). Speaker: Dr. Walter Benjamin,” from 5:30–6:00 pm.
1 Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860), German poet and critic, author of Aus meinem Leben [From My Life] (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1861).
2 Rellstab, Aus meinem Leben, 18.
3 Ibid., 18–20.
4 Franz Hessel, Spazieren in Berlin (Leipzig and Vienna: Verlag Dr. Hans Epstein, 1929). References to and discussions of Hessel (1880–1941), with whom Benjamin collaborated on the translation of Proust, appear frequently in his work. See, for instance, “Die Wiederkehr des Flaneurs,” a review of Spazieren in Berlin, in GS, 3, 194–9 (“The Return of the Flâneur,” SW, 2, 262–7).
5 Rellstab, Aus meinem Leben, 38–9.
6 On “Zillrad,” see Rellstab, Aus meinem Leben, 41.
7 The renowned Vossische Zeitung was published in Berlin and was the city’s oldest daily newspaper. Rellstab’s father, the music publisher and composer Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab (1759–1813) was a critic for the Vossische Zeitung from 1808 to 1813.
8 Ottokar Fischer (1873–1940), who, from 1898 to 1911, managed and appeared at the Kratky-Baschik Magic Theater in Vienna, wrote Das Wunderbuch der Zauberkunst (Stuttgart: F. A. Perthes, 1929).
9 Rellstab, Aus meinem Leben, 152–3.