Strange Friends

The Lives and Letters of Benjamin, Scholem and Adorno

By: Howard Eiland

Early in his life, Walter Benjamin committed himself to a typically paradoxical idea: Die Freundschaft der fremden Freunde—the friendship of friends who remain strange to each other even in their closeness.

Such strangeness in the midst of intimacy forms the heart of this foray into the lives and friendships of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. Drawing on archival letters (some of which are translated here for the first time), Howard Eiland reconfigures these enduring 20th thinkers in the context of their mutual entanglement – tracing their intellectual interdependence from the 1920s to the late 1960s.

From Benjamin's individual friendships with Scholem and Adorno to the brotherly relationship born of their shared concern with preserving Benjamin's post-humous legacy, Eiland’s rendering of this relational triangle moves deftly between its moments of strain, reconciliation and ambivalence. Political and theoretical tensions provide fascinating insights into the characters of these men, and the threads of other connections are spun out: from the presence of Benjamin’s first wife, Dora – instrumental in the friendship between Benjamin and Scholem, to the enduring influence of Hannah Arendt.

Hovering between biography, theory and love letter, Strange Friends is a meditation on the weird affinities, ruptures and collaborations that constitute a friendship.