In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

TIMEPIECES 239
ognizable to him and pursues an idea to which the child must remain a
stranger" (Supervielle, 11). On Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin,
where the traffic is denser than anywhere else in Europe [see Automobiles],
a policeman stands on the platform of a tower with traffic lights
above him and a clock below (Boberg, Fichter, and Gillen, 142; Schuette,
21). The most popular meeting place in Germany's capital is the so-called
Normaluhr ("standard clock") at the Zoo railway station, a round clock
with two concentric dials, the first numbered from one to twelve and the
second from thirteen to twenty-four (Boberg, Fichter, and Gillen, 192).
Its name serves as the title for one of the reflections in Walter Benjamin's
Einbahnstra{?e (One-Way Street). Benjamin undermines the feeling of
security that comes from constructing, keeping, and publicly displaying
time in visible form. Truly great insights and inventions, according to
him, will never be associated with measuring time: "Only the weaker
and more distracted people derive incomparable joy from completing
something and feel that life has thus been restored to them. For the
genius, each caesura, each stroke of fate, adapts itself peacefully to the
labor performed in his workshop" (Benjamin, 1972, 88).
Related Entries
Americans in Paris, Assembly Lines, Automobiles, Bars, Polarities, Reporters,
Revues, Strikes, Action vs. Impotence, Present vs. Past, Uncertainty
vs. Reality, Immanence = Transcendence (Death), Present = Past
(Eternity)
References
Les Annees-memoire: 1926. Paris, 1988.
Johannes R. Becher, Maschinenrhythmen. Berlin, 1926.
Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstra~e (1926). In Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften,
vol. 4, part 1. Frankfurt, 1972.
Walter Benjamin, Moskauer Tagebuch, 1926-1927. Frankfurt, 1980.
Jochen Boberg, Tilman Fichter, and Eckhart Gillen, eds., Die Metropole: Industriekultur
in Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert. Munich, 1986.
Chronik 1926: Tag fur Tag in Wort und Bild. Dortmund, 1985.
Jean Cocteau, Orphee: Tragedie en un acte et un intervalle (1926). Paris, 1927.
Jack Dempsey and Barbara Piattelli Dempsey, Dempsey. New York, 1977.