One reason for Benjamin's elusive image is the fact that he was never conspicuously part of any intellectual group. He was never a university professor, nor a member of the "George circle'. He did not join the Communist Party, and he was not a Zionist. He associated with the Frankfurt school, but only while also consorting with quite different elements, like Bertolt Brecht and the German emigrés in Moscow. It is not always clear who his friends were: his professional allegiances were commonly even more obscure. Does this mean that he was a member of what Karl Mannheim termed the "unaffiliated intelligentsia' (freischwebende Intelligenz) — that he was a vindication of those who claim that successful intellectual enquiry is only possible when insulated from the interference of class or professional interest? It is certainly tempting to regard Benjamin as a heroic outsider, misunderstood by friends and associates, and excluded from their baser interests by his own uncompromising pursuit of truth. This view is clearly manifested in much commentary on Benjamin, as in George Steiner's account of him as an esoteric visionary "committed to abstruse thought and scholarship'.¹