The Blinkered Flâneur: Walking with Franz Hessel in 1920s Berlin

by The Public Domain Review on publicdomainreview.orgArticle

Does the flâneur, that curiously modern figure who wanders metropolitan streets, have a political consciousness? For Franz Hessel — author of Spazieren in Berlin, “a memorization while strolling” that Walter Benjamin called “thoroughly epic” — the answer seemed to be no. Paul Sullivan explores…