“Theodor Hosemann,” GS, 7.1, 124–30. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.
Broadcast on Radio Berlin, April 14, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript “Berlin Radio, 14 April, 1930,” and for this date, the Funkstunde announced “Youth Hour (Berlin), Speaker: Dr. Walter Benjamin,” from 5:45–6:10 pm.
1 Theodor Hosemann (1807–1875). Though he died in Berlin, he was born outside the city, in Brandenburg an der Havel.
2 For this passage, see “Briefe von Theodor Hosemann” [Hosemann’s Letters], in Lothar Brieger, Theodor Hosemann, ein Altmeister Berliner Malerei: Mit einem Katalog der graphischen Werke des Künstlers von Karl Hobrecker [Theodor Hosemann, An Old Master of Berlin Painting: With a catalog of the artist’s illustrated works compiled by Karl Hobrecker] (Munich: Delphin, 1920), 103–4.
3 Max and Moritz are the title characters of a popular German illustrated children’s book by Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz — Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen [Max and Moritz: A Story in Seven Pranks] (1865).
4 Johann Wilhelm Hey’s “Hundert Fabeln” mit den Bildern von Otto Speckter [“One Hundred Fables” with Illustrations by Otto Speckter] first appeared anonymously in Hamburg in 1833 as Fünfzig Fabeln [Fifty Fables]; the complete edition (Hundert Fabeln) was first published in 1884.
5 Adolf Glassbrenner, under the pseudonym Brennglas, wrote Berlin, wie es ist und trinkt [Berlin, As It Is — and Drinks] (Leipzig: Vetter and Rostosky, 1836), a series to which Hosemann contributed some of the illustrations.
6 See Glassbrenner, Unterm Brennglas: Berliner politische Satire, Revolutionsgeist und menschliche Komödie [Under Glassbrenner’s Magnifying Glass: Berlin Political Satire, Revolutionary Spirit, and Human Comedy], ed. Franz Diederich (Berlin: Paul Singer, 1912), 75.
7 Hosemann, letter dated November 15, 1848, in Brieger, Theodor Hosemann, 109–10.
8 See Unsterblicher Volkswitz: Adolf Glaßbrenners Werk in Auswahl [Immortal Joke-Lore: Selected Works by Adolf Glassbrenner], eds. Klaus Gysi and Kurt Böttcher (Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 1954), vol. 1, 95ff. In this passage, Nante’s parts are written in Berlin dialect, whereas the court representative speaks in standard High German.
CHAPTER 11. A Visit to the Brass Works
I can imagine that upon hearing something like “A Visit to the Brass Works” on the radio, a listener might think: “Oh dear, another of those harebrained topics. You have to see something like that, you can’t describe it.” If that listener did not turn off his radio a few seconds ago, then I beg him to be good enough to give me just a few moments more, because it is precisely to him that I wish to speak.
One thing I would admit to him right away: one can really describe only the smallest part of all that meets the eye there. The writer or poet has yet to be born who is capable of describing a three-high rolling mill or a rolling shear or an extrusion press or a high performance cold rolling mill so that others can imagine them. An engineer could hardly do that. He simply draws the things. But what of the observer? I mean, for instance, what if one of you went into the Hirsch-Kupfer Brass Works near Eberswalde, and walked from one of those machines with the almost unpronounceable names to the next? What would you see? Very simple: just about as much as I can describe here with words. That is: next to nothing. And what would be the point of describing such a machine purely by its appearance? It is not made to be looked at, unless perhaps by someone who has first grasped its structure, its functional performance, its purpose and because of that knows what he should pay the most attention to as he observes it. One can only correctly comprehend something from the outside if one knows it on the inside; that is true for machines just as it is for living things.
But of course, you cannot get to know a machine from the inside, even if you are directly in front of it. Let’s assume you are standing in one of the giant halls: it would be fascinating to see how the mixture that is melted to brass is poured into the ovens, how the brass plate comes out of the ovens, how the fat, short metal plates go into the rolling mill and come out the other end all thin and long, how the short, round cylindrical rods get pushed automatically into the pressing mill and appear again as long, delicate, narrow tubes. You would see all of that. But you would not see how it was done, and what with the deafening racket of the machines at work, the rolling cranes, the dropping of loads, no one could explain it to you either.
Thus one can say that the closer one wants to get to what is going on in such an immense plant — should one witness such an operation some day — and the more one longs to understand a little bit of it, the further one has to distance oneself from it. And we should think of our few minutes here on the radio as if they were the gondola of a tethered balloon from which we can see into the whole operation down there in the Hirsch-Kupfer Brass Works, and can single out the points that must first be grasped in order to master the whole. Even then it will be difficult enough for us. For are there not many such crucial points? First we have the whole science, everything that physics and chemistry can tell us about brass. What is brass? What is its melting point? What is its hardness grade? How does it expand when it is warmed? What is its specific weight? And so on. Not one of these questions would be unimportant to the technical operations in a brass works. Or we could approach it from a completely different angle: What does such a plant have to produce in order to sell its products well? What is produced there? We’ll hear later, for example, that it’s none of the brass objects we normally handle. None of the things that were made there 200 years ago, when the Brass Works was founded by the Great Elector. Neither kettles nor ornamental coverings, neither candlesticks nor cutlery. All of these are made by specialized factories, and it is precisely to these specialized factories that the Hirsch-Kupfer Brass Works delivers its material. That means that it is here that the semi-finished products are made: metal plates and bands, rods, bars, wires of all sorts of different lengths, qualities, and sizes that are then further processed in other metalware factories or electro-technical businesses.
Or another point: How did such an enormous business, employing about 2,000 workers and 400 administrators, emerge? Naturally not from one day to the next. And this Hirsch-Kupfer Brass Works, the biggest of its kind in Europe, is also one of the oldest businesses. It dates back to the year 1697. It would be another story in itself to tell how it came about. But the only thing that matters to me now is that, as you contemplate the innumerable parts, conditions, and difficulties of such an enormous factory, you have your breath taken away exactly as if you had unexpectedly stepped into one of its roaring halls. So there are ever more such points that one has to keep in mind in order to even begin to understand the whole. For example, the power industry. Where does the mighty power, harnessed to the metal works day and night, come from? It comes from the Mark Brandenburg’s electric power plant, which lies only a kilometer away from the Brass Works. The electricity alone costs the Brass Works approximately 100,000 marks a month. Naturally, such huge customers pay the electric power plant at a special rate. There, too, every detail is given the sharpest consideration, and is subject to the most exact accounting. For such an operation must make sure to have as constant a power consumption as possible, day in, day out, even at any given hour, because the power plant will demand more payment the more irregular the use of power.