Benjamin's working life may be divided into four periods: his years as a student before and during the First World War; the years of growing political awareness between 1919 and 1925; the mature work as a professional writer between 1925 and 1939; and the brief coda of refugee existence in 1939 and 1940, which concluded with his suicide in September of that year. The forty-eight years of Benjamin's life passed through a distinct sequence of organisational associations. This sequence was reflected in his work and its more or less explicit commitments.