Walter Benjamin and Ssofia Fedortschenko: Intercultural and Intermedial Aspects of a ‘Failed’ Transfer

Abstract:Walter Benjamin reviewed the book Der Russe redet by Ssofia Fedortschenko, a Russian nurse during WWI, in 1926 for Die Literarische Welt. This article discusses the review in three respects: 1) as an interrelated component of the journal's discursive embedding, 2) as part of the reviewed book's transfer across Europe, and 3) as an element in Benjamin's (cross-cultural) engagement with war reports and 'mediating' (Soviet) Russian affairs. Taken together, the three perspectives showcase how Benjamin interacted with forming discourses in Die Literarische Welt in 1926/7. He did so by working with intercultural and intermedial dimensions that both impacted and were impacted or reflected by the literary critic. (SB)