Historia Viva is a hiking guide that lets you discover the story of Walter Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin: philosopher, literary critic and translator. Born in 1892 in Berlin. In September 1940 during his flight from the National Socialists the left-wing writer and Jew dies in the northern Spanish border town of Portbou. Benjamin fears that the lack of an exit stamp from France will cause him to be handed over to the Nazis, so he commits suicide. Hitler’s henchmen drive European emigrants south across France before them. In 1994 the internationally highly regarded artist, Dani Karavan, created a memorial in the Portbou cemetery.
In 2007 the Walter Benjamin hiking trail completed with information boards along the route. It commemorates Benjamin’s last journey across the Pyrenees from Banyuls-sur-Mer in France to Portbou.
The route of the Walter-Benjamin hiking trail is often unremarkable.
The memorial site and the hiking trail have been very popular for many years and the name Portbou is inextricably linked with the death of the Jewish academic, while being pursued by the Nazis. It is the purpose of this website and the mobile app to present a first opportunity to get to know Walter Benjamin as a person, the circumstances of and background to his flight, and to discover parallels between then and now.
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Disclaimer:
Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.