Open Access

Jane O. Newman

• In a letter to Scholem, dated 22 December, 1924, Benjamin famously writes of the manuscript that was to become his 'Trauerspiel' book: "[I]ndessen überrascht mich nun vor allem, daß, wenn man so will, das Geschriebene fast ganz aus Zitaten besteht" (GS I.3, 881). Much has been made of the mosaic-like citational technique to which Benjamin refers here; his "Zitatbegriff" is said, for example, to subtend the theory of a "mikrologische Verarbeitung" of "Denkbruchstücken" into "Ideen" that Benjamin develops as his theory of representation in the "Erkenntniskritische Vorrede", which in turn figures the relation between individual phenomena and their "ideas" in astral terms. Because, however, the 'Trauerspiel' book is so often understood only on this theoretical level, e.g. as either an early articulation of Benjamin’s "avant garde" and "messianic" philosophy of history (Jäger, Kany, and Pizer) or as a performance of his systems of allegory (Menninghaus) and "constructivism" (Schöttker), his "Zitierpraxis" and the actual citations that form large parts of 'Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiel' have seldom been read for the purchase they provide on the vexed status of the period and concept that was the book’s direct subject, namely, the German Baroque.