About the Author

Walter Benjamin, (born July 15, 1892, Berlin, Ger.--died Sept. 27, 1940, near Port-Bou, Spain) man of letters and aesthetician, now considered to have been the most important German literary critic in the first half of the 20th century.

Carl Skoggard lives in Ghent, New York, and is a celebrated German translator and former editor and contributor to Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, an influential magazine of design and style.