Caroline Adler, M.A.

Caroline Adler studied Cultural History and Theory, and Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin and Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. From 2020 to 2023, she was a research assistant in the DFG Research Training Group “Literary and Epistemic History of Small Forms” at Humboldt University Berlin. In 2025, she defended her dissertation Walter Benjamin's “Moscow.” Literarization of the Lifeworld at the Department of Cultural History and Theory at HU Berlin with summa cum laude.

Her research focuses on genealogies of modernity, method and literarization in the works of Walter Benjamin, epistemologies of the aesthetic, and theory and critique of scientific exhibition practice. Besides her academic work, she worked at Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW Berlin from 2017 to 2020 and curates both discourse and exhibition programs. She is an editor of the Berlin Review and part of the Berlin collective diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie.

Monographs

• Walter Benjamins „Moskau“. Literarisierungen der Lebenswelt, Berlin: Kadmos 2026 [in preparation].

Edited Volumes

• Kleinformate im Umbruch. Mobile Medien für Widerstand und Kooperation (1918–1933) (Series: minima, Vol. 8), ed. with Maddalena Casarini and Daphne Weber. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111003009.
• Walter Benjamin in the European East (Series: Marx and Marxisms: New Horizons), hrsg. mit Sophia Buck. London: Routledge 2025 (in preparation).

Essays

• „Faschistische Armaturen. Walter Benjamins Kritik deutscher Bürgerlichkeit“, in: Morten Paul (Hrsg.): Was war Faschismustheorie?, Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag 2025 [forthcoming].
• „‘Abschüssige Straßen des Grams, aufsteigende Pfade der Revolte‘ – Benjamin und Lukács um 1923“ (gem. mit Sophia Buck), in: Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft 2024/25, Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag [forthcoming].
• ‘Countless Constellations’ – Walter Benjamin's Moscow Literarization, in: Monica Bravo and Florian Grosser (eds.): Another Revolution. Building Modern Worlds at the Interface of Art, Culture, and Politics, Modernism/Modernity Print Plus, Volume 9 Cycle 2. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/adler-countless-constellations-benjamin-moscow, https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0308.
• „Neu gesehene Menschenfiguren“. Walter Benjamins Russland-Artikel in der Literarischen Welt 1927, in: Lea Liese and Yashar Mohagheghi (eds.): Kleine Formen und Öffentlichkeit. Medialität des Politischen vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur digitalen Gegenwart (Series: minima, vol. 9). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2024. pp. 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770971-006.
• Kleinformate im Umbruch. Einleitung (together with Maddalena Casarini and Daphne Weber), in: Caroline Adler, Maddalena Casarini and Daphne Weber (eds.): Kleinformate im Umbruch. Mobile Medien für Widerstand und Kooperation (1918–1933) (Series: minima, Vol. 8). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2023, pp. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111003009-001.
• „Anschaulich, nicht theoretisch bereichert“ Walter Benjamins Moskau-Aufsatz, in: Frank Voigt, Nikos Papadakis, Jan Loheit and Konstantin Baehrens (eds.): Material und Begriff. Arbeitsverfahren und theoretische Beziehungen Walter Benjamins. Hamburg: Argument 2019, p. 81–101.

Reviews and shorter Articles (selection)

• [essay] „A five-mark note, a postage stamp, a salt mine. 10 Theses on Thomas Müntzer in the GDR“, in: Berta Lask: Thomas Müntzer, herausgegeben und übersetzt von Sam Dolbear, Helsinki: Rab Rab Press 2025 [forthcoming].
• [interview] Between Utopia and Nightmare. The Politics of Dreams in Walter Benjamin’s Writing. Conversation between Jacob Bard-Rosenberg and Caroline Adler, in: Walter Benjamin, Dreams, edited with text by Burkhardt Lindner, Bierke Books 2025 [forthcoming].
• [editorial] Editorial (together with Tobias Haberkorn and Samir Sellami), in: Berlin Review No 1, 2024, https://blnreview.de/ausgaben/02-2024/berlin-review-editors-editorial-ausgabe-1.
• [conference report] Walter Benjamin in the East. Networks, Conflicts, and Reception (together with Sophia Buck), in: Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 5 December 2022. https://jhiblog.org/2022/12/05/walter-benjamin-in-the-east-networks-conflicts-and-reception/.
• [review] Walter Benjamin’s antifascist education: from riddles to radio. Contemporary Political Theory (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-021-00507-8.
• [review] Dance of Values, in: Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, ZfM Online, Online Review, 30 May 2021, https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/online/besprechung/dance-values.
• [newspaper article] Poröse Stadt. Grenzgänge des Urbanen (together with Eylem Sengezer), in: taz Berlin [special print], 28. August 2020.
• [catalogue text] “Past in Each of its Moments be Citable” – an exhibition project on Walter Benjamin‘s Concept of History in the City of Istanbul [exhibition catalog]. Istanbul: DEPO 2016.

• Roundtable „Walter Benjamin in the European East“, togethe with Sophia Buck and Isabel Jacobs, 22nd Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS London, 08.11.2025.
• „‘Incidentally, I found it surprisingly easy to extract the city images from Moscow‘. Peter Szondi’s editorial practice of W. Benjamin’s Städtebilder (1963)“, International Walter Benjamin Conference „Southern Benjamin. Mourning, Play, Revolution“ in the section „City Images & Tender Empiricism“, Universität La Sapzienza, Rom, 17.09.2025.
• „Mythos Raum – Mythos Berlin“, together with Eylem Sengezer, Porosità della città: Porosità dell’immagine. Walter Benjamin e Napoli (1925–2025), Bibliotheca Hertziana Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, 10.–11.04.2025.
• 100 years of fascism theory: Epistemology, poetics and mediality of a heterodox genre, Panel, together with Patrick Eiden-Offe, Francesca Raimondi, Morten Paul, Elena Vogman, 21st Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS London, 08.11.2024.
• Walter Benjamin in the “Sphere of Life”, Panel, together with Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Lindsay Lerman, Julia Bosson, Alexander Wells, Léttretage Berlin, 26.10.2024.
• Faschistische Armaturen. Walter Benjamins Theorien des deutschen Faschismus, Workshop „Was war Faschismustheorie? Epistemologie, Poetik und Medialität einer heterodoxen Gattung“, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, 18.09.2024.
• ‘Abschüssige Straßen des Grams, aufsteigende Pfade der Revolte’ – Benjamin und Lukács um 1923, together with Sophia Buck, Conference of Helle Panke, RLS and ZfL „1923 – Sattelzeit der Revolution“, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research ZfL, Berlin, 20.10.2023.
• „…ehemals gesicherte Begriffe von Gerechtigkeit“. „Drei Bücher [des Heute]“ und die Krisis der europäischen Intelligenz, International Walter Benjamin Conference „Politics of Justice: Text, Image, and Practice“ within the section „Justice & Crisis“, SWPS University Warsaw, 29.09.2023.
• „Es gibt viele Arten neue Grenzen zu errichten“ – Steyerl/Benjamin und die leere Mitte, Workshop „Wohnen in der leeren Mitte, Baustelle Brecht/Müller“, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Berlin, 03.12.2021.
• „Neu gesehene Menschenfiguren“ – Walter Benjamins Russland-Berichte in der Literarischen Welt 1927, Conference „Von der Anekdote zum Hashtag. Perspektiven auf die politische Kommunikation kleiner (literarischer) Formen“, Deutsches Seminar der Universität Basel in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Germanistische und Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft der RWTH Aachen (digital), 26.06.2021.
• “A Turning Point in Historical Events” - Walter Benjamin's decisive Moscow Montage, 52nd and 1st Virtual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) in der Sektion “Writing in Crisis: The Literature of the 1920s”, 12.03.2021.
• „[…] daß jede prinzipielle allgemeine Untersuchung sofort wieder einen ihr eigenen Gegenstand findet“: Literarische Methode in Walter Benjamins Moskau-Aufsatz, International Walter Benjamin Conference ”Walter Benjamins Methoden. Das Vermächtnis der Frankfurter Schule im heutigen Kontext” within the section „Benjamins Schriften: Methodik, Archiv, Edition“, University of Oxford, 25.09.2017.
• „Das Kreatürliche gerade dadurch sprechen zu lassen“. Benjamins Moskau-Essay im Kontext der Zeitschrift „Die Kreatur“, Workshop „Material und Begriff. Arbeitsverfahren und theoretische Beziehungen Walter Benjamins“, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research ZfL, Berlin, 25.03.2017.
• Benjamins Figur des Sammlers und der Engel der Geschichte, Klee/Benjamin-Studientag on the occasion of the exhibition „L’Ironie à L’Ouevre“, Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte / Centre Pompidou, Paris, 17.05.2016.

• Winter 2021/2022, Seminar (B.A.) Kritik des Ausstellens, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory, https://www2.hu-berlin.de/ausstellungskritik/.
• Winter 2015/2016, Projekttutorium (B.A./M.A.) Raumgewordene Vergangenheit. Bilddenken und Denkbilder in Walter Benjamins „Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert”, together with Monique Ulrich (HGB Leipzig), Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory, https://www.hu-berlin.de/de/studium/reform/projekttutorien/adler_ulrich.
• Summer 2015, Projekttutorium (B.A./M.A.) Raumgewordene Vergangenheit. Erinnerungsräume, Texträume, Denkräume in Walter Benjamins “Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert”, together with Monique Ulrich (HGB Leipzig), Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory.
• Summer 2014, Tutorium (B.A.) Einführung in das Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory.
• Winter 2013/2014, Tutorium (B.A.) Einführung in das Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory.
• Summer 2013, Tutorium (B.A.) Einführung in das Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Cultural History and Theory.

"Forces of the Self". Esoteric Discourses on Force between Faith and Science

The research project investigates the emergence, transformation, and persistence of esoteric forms of knowledge at the intersection of modern science and symbolic interpretations of the world. The focus is on the question of how esoteric movements legitimize themselves epistemically, particularly through the semantics of “force” – especially in areas where modern (natural) science is increasingly devoted to the macro- or microscopic “beyond the senses”, reaching the limits of its comprehensibility. Based on a historical analysis of esoteric movements around 1900, the project asks how these discourses transform scientific concepts (such as “energy,” “frequency,” “field,” or “vibration”) in order to establish their own, supposedly scientifically based counter-epistemology. 

Informed by research in Cultural Studies on the nexus of science and esotericism, esotericism is understood here not as an irrational residue or “metaphysics of stupid people” (Adorno), but as an epistemic formation within modern knowledge cultures. The project highlights how esoteric discourses develop a contemporary appeal (for example, in current self-help and self-optimization literature or in the post-pandemic boom in alternative healing concepts), and how they deliberately attempt to distinguish themselves from religious or spiritual interpretations.

The project interprets the reactivation of esoteric concepts of force in current contexts as a reaction to the epistemological obscurity of modern natural sciences – an obscurity that began at the start of the 20th century with the revolutions in quantum physics, biochemistry, and radiology, and has shaped the relationship between knowledge, experience, and world view ever since.

Methodologically, the project combines historical discourse analyses with close readings of esoteric texts and a contextualization of ideas and the history of science. The aim is to open up a culturally and historically grounded perspective on the semantic, aesthetic, and political functions of the esoteric as a knowledge-forming practice – as a medium in which alternative, sometimes ambivalent notions of “forces of the self” are negotiated between meaning-making, knowledge critique, and market logic.

Walter Benjamin’s “Moscow.” Literarization of the Lifeworld

The focus of this dissertation is Walter Benjamin‘s essay “Moscow” (1927), which the German-Jewish author and critic wrote for the ecumenical journal Die Kreatur after his trip to the capital of the young Soviet Union in the winter of 1926/27. Starting from a conflict-ridden history of the edition and reception, which understands “Moscow” primarily as a vivid ‚cityscape’ and has often neglected the attention in favor of the Moscow Diary written during the journey, which is characterized by intimate confessions and political positioning, the dissertation provides a detailed material analysis and reading of “Moscow” as a form of a literarization of the Soviet world (Lebenswelt).

The focus lies both on the process of literary construction – departing from the Moscow Diary towards the literary form(ation) of the essay itself – and on an evaluation of this writing experiment in relation to the “incessant organizational change” (Benjamin) of the Soviet Union in 1926/27 – just a few years after Lenin’s death and marked by tensions in public life that encouraged a critical reflection on the (own) role of the free intelligentsia.

The dissertation draws on the recently published volume 14 of the Critical Edition of the Werke und Nachlaß of Walter Benjamin, which includes previously unedited lists, drafts, and versions of the essay “Moscow” and thus offers a comprehensive insight into Walter Benjamin’s work processes. These materials form the basis for a detailed material analysis that aims to shed light on the textual design and aesthetic techniques that Benjamin uses in “Moscow” and to critically evaluate what he, based on his experiences documented in his diary, deemed presentable and communicable.

Subsequently, “Moscow” is contrasted with other journalistic projects that Benjamin undertook in the context of his trip to Moscow. It will be shown how his journalistic production collided with the demands and expectations of the various media outlets for which he received assignments. The present study shows that these projects (some of which also failed) also bear witness to a productive process of negotiation between his own experience and his public positioning in the context of his engagement with the Soviet world.

In planning

• Conference „Die Kraft der Avantgarden. Formen und Funktionen einer ästhetischen Bezugsgröße zwischen 1900 und 1940“, together with Julia Soytek and Adrian Renner, Universität Hamburg, 04.–06.02.2026
• Conference „Jenseits der Stärke. Imaginarien schwacher Kräfte in Kunst, Literatur und Wissenschaft“, together with Franca Buss and Gerd Micheluzzi, 04.–06.06.2026.
• Workshop „Figur | Figuration in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy“, together with Stefano Marchesoni, Nassima Sahraoui and Sebastian Truskolaski, Universität Wien, 12.–13.06.2026.

• Play | Spiel in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy, Co-Organizer together with Stefano Marchesoni (Paris), Nassima Sahraoui (Frankfurt), Sebastian Truskolaski (Manchester), in collaboration with the Walter Benjamin Archiv (Akademie der Künste), Frankfurt Benjamin Lectures and the SFB Intervenierende Künste, Freie Universität Berlin, 23.–24.05.2025.
• International Conference Walter Benjamin in the East – Networks, Conflicts, and Reception, Co-Organizer together with Sophia Buck (Oxford/ZfL), Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research ZfL, Berlin, Co-funded by the Oxford-Berlin Research partnership, the ZfL Berlin, and the GRK 1956 ‘Cultural Transfer and “Cultural Identity”’, 07.–09.07.2022.
• Workshop Krise und Kleinformat. Von der Institutionskritik zur politischen Mobilisierung (1918—1933), Co-Organizer together with Maddalena Casarini and Daphne Weber (HU Berlin), Humboldt University Berlin, Department of German Literature, 16.–18.09.2021.