Siegfried Kracauer

Siegfried Kracauer (February 8, 1889 November

26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist,
cultural critic, and lm theorist. He has sometimes been
associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

ture of the new class of white-collar employees. Spiritually homeless, and divorced from custom and tradition,
these employees sought refuge in the new distraction industries of entertainment. Observers note that many of
these lower-middle class employees were quick to adopt
Nazism, three years later. In a contemporary review of
Die Angestellten, Benjamin praised the concreteness of
1 Biography
Kracauers analysis, writing that "[t]he entire book is an
attempt to grapple with a piece of everyday reality, conBorn to a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, Kracauer structed here and experienced now. Reality is pressed so
studied architecture from 1907 to 1913, eventually ob- closely that it is compelled to declare its colors and name
taining a doctorate in engineering in 1914 and working names.[2]
as an architect in Osnabrck, Munich, and Berlin until
Kracauer became increasingly critical of capitalism (hav1920.
ing read the works of Karl Marx) and eventually broke
Near the end of the First World War, he befriended the away from the Frankfurter Zeitung. About this same time
young Theodor W. Adorno, to whom he became an early (1930), he married Lili Ehrenreich. He was also very critphilosophical mentor. In 1964, Adorno recalled the im- ical of Stalinism and the terrorist totalitarianism of the
portance of Kracauers inuence:
Soviet government.[3]
With the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Kracauer migrated to Paris, and then in 1941 emigrated to
the United States.

[f]or years Siegfried Kracauer read the

Critique of Pure Reason with me regularly on
Saturday afternoons. I am not exaggerating in
the slightest when I say that I owe more to this
reading than to my academic teachers. [...] If
in my later reading of philosophical texts I was
not so much impressed with their unity and systematic consistency as I was concerned with
the play of forces at work under the surface
of every closed doctrine and viewed the codied philosophies as force elds in each case,
it was certainly Kracauer who impelled me to
do so.[1]

From 1941 to 1943 he worked in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, supported by Guggenheim
and Rockefeller scholarships for his work in German lm.
Eventually, he published From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), which
traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the Weimar
Republic as well as helping lay the foundation of modern
lm criticism.
In 1960, he released Theory of Film: The Redemption of
Physical Reality, which argued that realism is the most
important function of cinema.

From 1922 to 1933 he worked as the leading lm and

literature editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung (a leading
Frankfurt newspaper) as its correspondent in Berlin,
where he worked alongside Walter Benjamin and Ernst
Bloch, among others. Between 1923 and 1925, he
wrote an essay entitled Der Detektiv-Roman (The Detective Novel), in which he concerned himself with phenomena from everyday life in modern society.

In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for dierent institutes, amongst them in New York
as a director of research for applied social sciences at
Columbia University. He died there, in 1966, from the
consequences of pneumonia.
His last book is the posthumously published History, the
Last Things Before the Last (New York, Oxford University Press, 1969).

Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years,

building up theoretical methods of analyzing circuses,
photography, lms, advertising, tourism, city layout, and
dance, which he published in 1927 with the work Orna- 2 Theories on memory
ment der Masse (published in English as The Mass Ornament).
Siegfried Kracauers theories on memory revolved around
In 1930, Kracauer published Die Angestellten (The the idea that memory was under threat and was being
Salaried Masses), a critical look at the lifestyle and cul- challenged by modern forms of technology.[4] His most
1

6 BIBLIOGRAPHY

often cited example was the comparison of memory to have interpreted and introduced his work for a new genphotography. The reason for this comparison was that eration of scholars.[7][8]
photography, in theory, replicates some of the tasks currently done by memory.[4]
The dierences in the functions of memory and the functions of photography, according to Kracauer, is that photography creates one xed moment in time whereas memory itself is not beholden to a singular instance. Photography is capable of capturing the physicality of a particular
moment, but it removes any depth or emotion that might
otherwise be associated with the memory. In essence,
photography cannot create a memory, but rather, it can
create an artifact. Memory, on the other hand, is not beholden to one particular moment of time, nor is it purposefully created. Memories are impressions upon a person that they can recall due to the signicance of the event
or moment.[4]
Photography can also work to record time in a linear way,
and Kracauer even hints that oods of photographs ward
o death by creating a sort of permanence. However,
photography also excludes the essence of a person, and
overtime, photographs lose meaning and become a heap
of details.[4] This isn't to say that Kracauer felt that photography has no use for memory, it is simply that he felt
that photography held more potential for historical memory than for personal memory. Photography allows for
a depth of detail that can be to the advantage of a collective memory, such as how a city or town once appeared because those aspects can be forgotten, or overridden throughout time as the physical landscape of the
area changes.[4]

Reception

Although he wrote for both popular and scholarly publications throughout much of his career, in the United
States (and in English) he mainly concentrated on philosophical and sociological writings. This attracted some
criticism from American scholars who found his style difcult to penetrate.

4 See also
Frankfurt School
Exilliteratur

5 References
[1] Theodor W. Adorno, The Curious Realist: On Siegfried
Kracauer, in Notes on Literature, Volume 2, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson, New York:
Columbia University Press, p. 58.
[2] Walter Benjamin, An Outsider Makes His Mark, trans.
Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings, Volume 2, ed.
Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 307.
[3] Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of
Physical Reality, New York: Oxford University Press,
1960, p.221
[4] Leslie, Esther (2010). Siegfried Kracauer and Walter
Benjamin: Memory from Weimar to Hitler. In Susannah Radstone; Bill Schwarz. Memory: Histories, Theories,
Debates. Fordham Univ Press. pp. 123135. ISBN 9780-8232-3259-8.
[5] Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies, Boston: Little, Brown,
1965, p.269.
[6] Gertrud Koch, Siegfried Kracauer:
Princeton: Princeton, p.vii.

An Introduction,

[7] Miriam Hansen, Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, University of California Press, 2011 p.vii.
[8] Michael Kessler and Thomas Y. Levin, Eds. , Siegfried
Kracauer. Neue Interpretationen., Tbingen: Stauenburg
Verlag, 1990.

[5]

At the time of his death in 1966, Kracauer was somewhat marginal in both American and German intellectual 6
contexts. He had long ago abandoned writing in German,
yet his research remained dicult to place within Amer6.1
ican scientic and academic categories.
In the decades following Kracauers death, translations of
his earlier essays and works, such as The Mass Ornament, and the publication of his letters in German, revealed a fuller portrait of Kracauers style and gradually
brought greater recognition in the United States. His former colleague from Frankfurt, Leo Lowenthal, expressed
pleasant surprise at the newfound fame that seemed to accumulate around Kracauer in his death.[6] Since the 1980s
and 1990s a new generation of lm theorists and critics,
including Gertrud Koch, Miriam Hansen, and Tom Levin

Bibliography
Primary literature

Kracauer, Siegfried (1947). From Caligari to Hitler:

A Psychological History of the German Film.
Kracauer, Siegfried (1960). Theory of Film: The
Redemption of Physical Reality.
Kracauer, Siegfried; Paul Oskar Kristeller (1969).
History: The Last Things Before the Last.
Kracauer, Siegfried (1971). Der Detektiv-Roman
Ein philosophischer Traktat.

6.2

Secondary literature

Kracauer, Siegfried; Thomas Y. Levin (1995). The

Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays.
Kracauer, Siegfried; Quintin Hoare (1998). The
Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar
Germany.
Kracauer, Siegfried; Gwenda David & Eric Moshbacher (2002). Jacques Oenbach and the Paris of
His Time.
Kracauer, Siegfried; Johannes von Moltke (2012).
Siegfried Kracauers American Writings: Essays on
Film and Popular Culture.

6.2

Secondary literature

Agard, Olivier. Siegfried Kracauer. Le chionnier

mlancolique. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2010.
Baumann, Stephanie. Im Vorraum der Geschichte.
Siegfried Kracauers History - The Last Things Before the Last. Paderborn: Konstanz University
Press, 2014.
Oschmann, Dirk. Auszug aus der Innerlichkeit. Das
literarische Werk Siegfried Kracauers. Heidelberg:
Universittsverlag C. Winter 1999
Koch, Gertrud. Siegfried Kracauer: An Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Reeh, Henrik.
Ornaments of the Metropolis:
Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
Von Moltke, Johannes and Gerd Gemnden, eds.
Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried
Kracauer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2012.

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

Text

Siegfried Kracauer Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Kracauer?oldid=661287964 Contributors: Angela, Maximus Rex,

Bearcat, Robbot, Asparagus, Grant65, Formeruser-81, D6, Art LaPella, Smalljim, Cohesion, Philip Cross, Woohookitty, Dtaw2001,
Lockley, FlaBot, DanMS, Tony1, M3taphysical, YoungKracauer, Carabinieri, SmackBot, Stemmy, Michael Rogers, Ser Amantio di
Nicolao, RMHED, Dontworry, Courcelles, R9tgokunks, Cydebot, Gamer007, Plechazunga, Cjs2111, Freshacconci, Waacstats, Bookuser,
Humphrey20020, Gkklein, Mtevfrog, Johnpacklambert, Balthazarduju, VolkovBot, Kyle the bot, Wassermann~enwiki, All Hallows Wraith,
Jeanenawhitney, Alexbot, Estirabot, Wulf Isebrand, Woland1234, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Andreasmperu, Citation bot, JanDeFietser, Omnipaedista, Tinton5, RedBot, Full-date unlinking bot, , Christoph Balasse, RjwilmsiBot, EmausBot, ZroBot, Brandmeister, Betweenoors, Actualghosts, Fraulein451, Hcornetto, Danielson4ik, VIAFbot, Christina Gerhardt, Monkbot, KasparBot and Anonymous: 41

7.2

Images

File:Commons-logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original

artist: ?

7.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0