Like Kafka and other contemporary writers whose work is characterised by a similarly problematic concern with religion, Benjamin grew up in a family without any moulding religious commitment.¹ In Benjamin's case, however, we know that his secondary socialisation was apt to create a desire for religion. In the present section, I place his early writing against the background of that cult of Bildung ("education", "culture", "formation") which his teacher Gustav Wyneken developed before the First World War. Benjamin adopted Wyneken's Weltanschauung as an adolescent from 1905 onwards. In March 1915, after Wyneken's public support for the war, he broke with his mentor, but emphasised that this break expressed his lasting loyalty to the "true" Wyneken.² Accordingly, Benjamin's writing after 1915 still responds in a number of ways to requirements which he first encountered in Wyneken's cult. This assessment, as I shall try to show, is true even of his doctoral thesis The Concept of Art Criticism.³