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Siegfried Kracauer: Documentary Realist and Critic of Ideological ‘Homelessness’

Ansgar Martins Translated by Lars Fischer

Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966) was born after the Reichstag fire. The Frankfurter into a Jewish family in .1 Following Zeitung dropped him soon after. It was dur- his parents’ wishes, he studied architecture, ing his years of extreme disillusionment and yet even then his true interests lay elsewhere, poverty in Paris that Kracauer, hoping for a as his early engagement with Georg Simmel position in the United States, developed the and phenomenology indicates. Already as a broad outline of the film theory that he would student, Kracauer wrote substantial philo- later publish to considerable acclaim. Only in sophical texts, yet these would be published 1941, at the eleventh hour, were Kracauer and only in 2004. Viewed as a maverick by his wife able to leave Europe via Marseille most established academics throughout his and Lisbon for New York. Though their professional life, Kracauer enjoyed broad financial situation remained precarious for acclaim in the 1920s as a journalist working another decade, Kracauer soon felt at home for Germany’s then foremost (liberal) daily, in the United States. He decided henceforth the . In this prestigious to publish only in English and devoted all his capacity, he developed meaningful intellec- energy to enemy reconnaissance. Keeping tual relationships with Benjamin, Bloch, and himself afloat with precarious fellowships, he Adorno, and it is principally as their associ- was initially affiliated with the MoMA Film ate that he is still cited.2 His relationship with Library. Later, he regularly served as a con- Adorno, whom he had mentored in his early sultant for empirical social-science research years, though often conflicted, would remain projects and evaluated research proposals particularly fond. Having encountered for various foundations. Kracauer gradually the turmoil of the disintegrating Weimar found new interlocutors in the likes of Erwin Republic in the early 1930s in , he and Panofsky, Paul Lazarsfeld, Hans Blumenberg, his wife Elisabeth left Germany immediately and the ‘Poetics and Hermeneutics’ circle.3

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His more substantive works include a dis- a readership. Especially in the eyes of the cussion of the transcendental foundations of ‘younger critics’, Kracauer noted in 1964, (1922); metaphysical reflections the four of them formed ‘a group that stands on the ‘trivial’ genre of the detective novel out. I would have thought that we can only (1922–5); a sociological and literary study of welcome this state of affairs’.6 Yet this all the salaried employees in Weimar Germany too neat association with has under the spell of the early detracted from a fuller understanding of his (1929–30); two autobiographical novels, of entirely idiosyncratic approach and its trans- which only the first, Ginster (1928), was pub- formations over the years. lished during his lifetime; a generally under- rated ‘social biography’ of the composer Jacques Offenbach and the Second Empire (1938), in which he paid precious little atten- ‘The Figure of the Collector’: tion to Offenbach’s compositions; studies on Continuity and Discontinuity the functioning of ‘totalitarian propaganda’ in Kracauer’s Work in Germany and Italy (around 1940); group- psychological accounts of the German char- Throughout all his texts, Kracauer insisted acter, drawing on Weimar cinema as a case on the need to argue in a concrete phenome- study (1947), and people’s ‘satellite mental- nological manner and maintain a strict focus ity’ in countries in the Soviet sphere of influ- on the object at hand. His ‘empathic method’7 ence (1956); a work of film theory focusing fundamentally challenged the validity of on the possibilities of representing ‘physical systematic conceptual dispositions and reality’ from the ‘perspective of the cam- instead focused on the heterogeneity of era’ (1960); and an unfinished epistemology empirical experience and the world of objects of history. (‘According to his theory, Columbus had to The biographical caesura of his emigration land in India’).8 His critical contribution, is imprinted on the evolution of his theory. then, lies in his micrological insistence on Kracauer scholarship tends to distinguish the logic of the slightest object or phenome- between his earlier, more political works non. As an empathic observer, he directed his published in Germany and his later, more gaze towards the usually overlooked pathol- strongly empirical and aesthetic works that ogies, promises of happiness, and demands came out in the United States.4 His poli- of everyday life and the ‘lifeworld’ tics, however, do not lend themselves to any [Lebenswelt],9 which for him formed the straightforward characterization. One might blind spot of the grand theories. ‘How is eve- say that he began as a influ- ryday life supposed to change if even those enced by vitalism, subsequently became a qualified to put the cat among the pigeons Marxist, and then a liberal humanist – and ignore it?’10 yet none of these labels truly seem to fit. It is a reflection of Kracauer’s realism and Not least, one can identify numerous conti- pluralism that he deployed a range of media nuities that cut across these outward distinc- and modes of expression in approaching the tions. Overall, his texts from the later Weimar motley assortment of coexisting objects. years, written between 1926 and 1933, are the Their philosophical sophistication notwith- ones that connect him most intimately with standing, his acclaimed texts from the 1920s the development of critical theory. Kracauer were recognizably journalistic in character; was, for many years, categorized unquestion- indeed, they decisively helped shape the ingly as a proponent of critical theory.5 In the genre of the political feuilleton.11 Kracauer’s 1960s, it was his association with Adorno and writings also reflect the gaze of the trained Benjamin (as well as Bloch) that secured him architect. He frequently presented systematic

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problems in the form of geometrical allego- was among Kracauer’s central theoretical ries and ‘topographical’ images, not to men- concepts. It points to the transitory and rela- tion those texts which dealt explicitly with tive nature of human knowledge and insight. street maps, streets, buildings, and interiors.12 Yet Kracauer went further and argued that Writing articles from the vantage point of a the most profound and substantial problems monocle or the apparently doomed umbrella, actually revealed themselves in the surface or offering an account of his all too human appearance of the object at hand. To give and crisis-ridden relationship with his type- one example, Kracauer rejected the notion writer,13 he transcended the conventional that National Socialism was a masked bour- realms of journalism, literature, and theory. geois-capitalist counter-revolution. If fascism With enormous plasticity he demonstrated masked anything it was the goals and inter- what, on his reading, the period after the First ests of the concrete gang of rulers. Yet this World War had itself confirmed with enor- should not detract from the need to take its mous plasticity – namely, that the objects ideology seriously on its own terms. Instead humans had created were turning into inde- of tearing off the ‘mask’, ‘as though one pendent beings with a life of their own that obviously knows already who has deigned to interacted with one another and with the hide behind it’,16 one needed to dissect the humans. In the meantime, Kracauer also mask itself. ‘Only the character of the mask wrote two autobiographical novels in which may, at best, reveal the nature of the monster he developed the same critical diagnosis of wearing it, provided, that it is actually pos- his time and portrayed the abandonment and sible to tear off its mask’.17 insecurity of the contingent subject in the One of the results of Kracauer’s vigilance ‘Age of the Masses’. The principal protago- in this regard was his immediate insistence, nists, Ginster and Georg, frequently seem in 1933 – when many on the left still con- to be only passive participants who merely sidered it a propagandistic red herring – on respond to an environment that cajoles them the centrality to National Socialism of anti- into taking on certain roles.14 This speculative semitism and the ‘force of the annihilatory literary social philosophy stands in marked intent’ it reflected.18 Yet Kracauer’s approach contrast to Kracauer’s focus on empirical pertained not only to major ideologies such social research following his emigration. In as National Socialism. For him, the symp- his late film theory, the cinema screen even- toms allowing for a valid diagnosis articu- tually emerged as a far more reliable means lated themselves, as a matter of principle, of conveying the experience of physical- in ‘inconspicuous surface appearances’. It sensory reality. was ‘precisely because of their nescience’ What united these differing methodologi- that they offered ‘direct access to the basic cal and stylistic approaches was their phe- content of social reality’.19 The streamlining nomenological focus on the objects at hand. character of the capitalist mode of produc- Against this backdrop, Kracauer was con- tion, for instance, was, to his mind, revealed sistently concerned with the indirect juxta- paradigmatically by the Tiller Girls. This position of phenomena: ‘To focus directly dance troupe presented not individual human upon ideas is at any rate a sure means never beings but ‘indivisible clusters of girls’ as to grasp them… Ideas manifest themselves ‘ornaments’.20 Similarly, the displacement of rather in by-ways, in unobtrusive facts’.15 umbrellas by light waterproof raincoats with Consequently, general problems too could hoods bore testimony to the dwindling of the be approached only circuitously, by sound- bourgeois generosity of spirit.21 ing out contingent phenomena and their In his unfinished and posthumously surface appearance. Like the notion of the published study on the writing of history, anteroom, the term ‘surface appearance’ Kracauer took stock of the continuity of his

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work, which he saw precisely in the recording that nothing should go lost. It is as if the fact- of discontinuities. The book, he wrote, was oriented accounts breathed pity with the dead. This vindicates the figure of the collec- another attempt of mine to bring out the signifi- tor’.26 How far removed this sorrowful col- cance of areas whose claim to be acknowledged in their own right has not yet been recognized. … So lector was from the Marxist Kracauer of the at long last all my main efforts, so incoherent on 1920s is illustrated by a letter to Bloch. Back the surface, fall into line – they all have served, in 1926, when he first conceived of the plan and continue to serve, a single purpose: the reha- to write a philosophy of history, Kracauer bilitation of objectives and modes of being which had complemented the notion ‘that nothing still lack a name and hence are overlooked or misjudged.22 should ever be forgotten’ with the claim that ‘nothing that is unforgotten will remain He owed this focus on symptomatic details untransformed’.27 This ‘motif of transforma- and novel phenomena to his first teacher, tion’,28 located in the utopian abyss between Georg Simmel. In the course of the 1920s, theology and revolution, was not lost without against the backdrop of his exchange with trace, though. His experience as a refugee Bloch, Benjamin, and Adorno, Kracauer and his encounter with US democracy formed developed his mode of essayistic narration the counterpoint to its disappearance from into an entirely new and stringent method of Kracauer’s horizon. socio-philosophical critique.23 In 1930, Benjamin famously praised his friend Kracauer as and the Particular: a rag collector… recovering rags of speech and Kracauer’s Controversy with linguistic snippets with his stick. Mumbling cantan- Critical Theory kerously and a little boozily, he tosses them into his cart, not without, on occasion, derisively letting one of these faded calico rags… flutter in the Philosophers have frequently found morning breeze. A rag collector out at the crack of Kracauer’s realism, pluralism, and documen- dawn on the day of revolution.24 tary approach too imprecise.29 In his reckon- ing with his former mentor, Adorno noted in Yet the revolutionary political perspective 1964 that Kracauer felt no ‘desire for the Kracauer still shared with Benjamin in 1930 rigorous mediation within the object itself, gradually receded after 1933 and no longer no urge to evince the essential at the heart of featured in his later work (although he did individuation processes’.30 Yet paradoxically, continue to acknowledge Marx’s qualities as Adorno added, this was precisely the source a historian). In the late monographs on film of Kracauer’s strength: ‘The greater the and historiography, he is ‘merely’ concerned blindness and abandon with which he devoted with adequate ways of approaching concrete himself to the subject matter… the more individual phenomena in their diversity, with- fecund was the result’.31 Since Kracauer did out any revolutionary backdrop. As he noted in fact draw out the ‘essential’ – by which in 1966 in a letter to Rolf Tiedemann, he still Adorno meant the social relations refracted valued Benjamin’s messianic plea ‘that noth- in the slightest detail – in his texts well into ing should ever be lost’.25 In History, he drew the 1930s, this was a tendentious claim on on this demand to ground his insistence on Adorno’s part. The phenomena he sought out the viability of forms of historiography that with abandon were characterized precisely stay close to the sources, but he now viewed by the fact that they revealed the state of this not as a political but as a ‘theological society at large. argument’: ‘[T]he “complete assemblage of There can be no doubt that Kracauer’s the smallest facts” is required for the reason Weimar-era texts directly prefigured Adorno’s

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mode of philosophizing, be it in terms of judgements. Adorno’s critique of the identity the critique of language,32 the predilection principle came up against the same bound- for the essayistic form,33 or – as an (anti-) ary, but he responded to it negatively. Rather methodology – the ‘construction’ of system- than resorting to ontology, he developed the atic problems in the form of a ‘mosaic’34 of relational category of the ‘non-identical’.36 characteristic individual features in which Adorno acknowledged the problematic the logic of the whole shines through. Both nature of an all-encompassing form of dia- methodologically and in terms of its content, lectics yet recognized in it a real problem Adorno’s own Habilitation (postdoctoral of capital (as a social relation), a problem thesis), Kierkegaard, which he dedicated that genuinely pervaded ‘all concrete things to his mentor Kracauer, still reflected this and entities’ or produced them in the first micrological montage technique and the place. In his historiographical monograph, ‘motif of transformation’. Yet the impulse Kracauer, by contrast, in order to establish that for Kracauer was a way out of concep- a connection to the object and the viability tual philosophy Adorno directed back into of the writing of history, resorted to mate- philosophy, albeit a philosophy intensely rial and thus to ‘positive’ solutions. It is in critical of concepts. This move resulted not this dispute between Kracauer and Adorno least from his engagement with Hegel, which over the unbounded character of dialectics, Horkheimer initiated in the context of their the significance of the damaged individual dialectics project. For Adorno, it was the fur- phenomenon, and the claims of immediate ther differentiation of his dialectics that led experience that Kracauer’s role in the context him away from the bifurcated dialectical and of critical theory ultimately lies. Do the indi- social perspective of the 1920s; for Kracauer, vidual phenomena reveal the non-material it was his continued questioning of dialectics and yet pernicious nature [(Un-)Wesen] of on behalf of dispersed and overlooked phe- society that reproduces itself within them, nomena. The counterpart to Adorno’s cri- or does the crucial task lie in defending that tique of Kracauer’s neglect of ‘mediation’, which is irredeemably atomized against the then, was Kracauer’s critique of Adorno’s reductionist social ascription of meaning? In universalization of dialectics. The latter, on fact, if one understands the essence of society Kracauer’s reading, was no longer connected as a pernicious, non-sensuous essence that to individual sensate objects, yet they alone disregards concrete objects and individuals, could provide the point of departure for criti- Kracauer’s and Adorno’s perspectives con- cal judgements. Adorno’s ‘rejection of any verge.37 Both sought to defend the concrete ontological stipulation in favour of an infi- objects against this being. Their disagree- nite dialectics which penetrates all concrete ment concerned the extent to which the lat- things and entities’, Kracauer wrote, ‘seems ter pervaded the former. For all that Kracauer inseparable from a certain arbitrariness, an subjected the Horkheimer circle to polemi- absence of content and direction’.35 Kracauer cal criticism, especially in the 1930s, and reproached the sort of universally mediating they, in turn, viewed him with derision, their dialectics he attributed to Adorno for creat- approaches continued to intersect in terms ing precisely the night in which, as Hegel had of their micrological focus. The enthusiasm warned, all cows were black. Kracauer showed in 1964 for Karl Heinz For Kracauer, then, respect for the bound- Haag’s essay ‘Das Unwiederholbare’ [The ary set by real objects was indispensable if Non-repeatable] is a case in point.38 Nor did one was to avoid being trapped by the tau- Kracauer ever lose sight in his late works of tological immanence of dialectical logic and the fact that he was dealing with ‘construc- stand a chance of explaining why sensory tions’ of reality. Both the camera and the experience exceeds abstract generalizing work of the historian obviously represent

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mediated forms of access to physical and his- dialectics and micrology and the mediation torical reality. What truly set his German and and immediacy of experience were of funda- US writings apart was the more pronounced mental significance to the Frankfurt School, social criticism in his earlier accounts of and Kracauer was party to them, both directly reality. and indirectly. From the vantage point of criti- Kracauer’s stance regarding the relative cal theory, Kracauer’s gaze – like Benjamin’s – significance of dialectics and the individual stood for the ‘obligation to think dialectically case found its paradigmatic expression in and undialectically at the same time’.41 the works he wrote during the Second World While much can be gained from drawing War. In From Caligari to Hitler (1947),39 out the controversy concerning dialectics and like Horkheimer and Adorno in micrology so sharply, the concrete histori- of Enlightenment, he developed a historio- cal process was altogether less heroic. The sophical scheme that culminated in National dispute between Kracauer and the protago- Socialism. Its frame of reference, however, nists of critical theory sprang primarily from was not the history of civilization; instead, he personal disagreements during his exile in sought to portray the authoritarian disposi- Paris. He was commissioned to write a study tion of the specifically German unconscious, on propaganda, which Adorno rejected and an undertaking for which he has drawn con- then rewrote, effectively creating an entirely siderable flak. Ultimately, then, he was a new text (though this was actually an indi- theoretician not of the dialectic of enlight- cation of professional rather than personal enment but of the German Sonderweg. The disdain). The Institute provided him neither pessimism of his focus on Germany stood in with a living nor with an opportunity to flee marked contrast to his much more positive Europe, and Kracauer eventually viewed it assessment of Hollywood, indicating consid- with bitter disappointment. Although ‘this erable optimism regarding the course of the Institute is the only one… that… might have enlightenment in the democratic West. seemed an obvious choice all this time’, he Already in his essay ‘Das Ornament der wrote to Richard Krautheimer in 1936, it was Masse’ [The Mass Ornament], of 1927, long also ‘the only institution in the whole world before his orientation shifted from the cri- with which we neither can nor want to be tique of capitalism to democratic concerns, involved’.42 he categorized capitalist rationalization as a form of ‘turbid’ reason, implying that the latter could be distinguished from a positive, enlightened impulse, no matter how pre- Sensuous and Social Reality as carious. ‘[A]nd as history proceeds, nature, Kracauer’s Principal Theme subject to ever more disenchantment, may become increasingly permeable to reason’, Kracauer’s sustained attention to individual he suggested.40 For Kracauer, then, it was an sensuous data, to surface phenomena, and to increase in rationality that would effect the objectification took on distinct guises during disintegration of the ‘turbid nature’ of soci- his respective ideological phases. In his first ety. Almost 20 years later, Horkheimer and published monograph, Soziologie als Adorno’s take on this demythologization Wissenschaft [Sociology as a Science], he process was much more skeptical and the illustrated his critique of scientific concep- domination of nature one of the main butts of tual abstraction with the image of a cone that their critique. From this perspective, it would represented the ideal scientific order.43 The be misleading to suggest that Kracauer was contingent empirical world formed its base a proponent of the Frankfurt School’s criti- and pure consciousness its tip. In between cal theory. Yet the controversies concerning lay the various levels of conceptual

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abstraction in hierarchical order. Ideally, one dig a tunnel beneath the ‘mountain massif should be able to move from any given indi- Hegel’ towards the naturalistic and sensualist vidual phenomenon to the general laws and materialism of the French Enlightenment.47 vice versa. At the very end of the book, While he had admired Georg Lukács’s Kracauer rejected this construction. Such a Theorie des Romans [The Theory of the correspondence between thought and empiri- Novel], Kracauer felt that Geschichte und cal reality had existed only in a lost ‘era of Klassenbewusstsein [History and Class sense’ in which thought and world, subject Consciousness], in which Lukács had and object had not yet been separated.44 The brought Hegel back into Marxism, remained harmony and order on which a ‘scientific’ – unduly caught up in idealistic concepts.48 which in the spirit of the nineteenth century For Kracauer, the experience of physical, meant ‘objectivistic’ – form of sociology was sensuous reality was a crucial corrective predicated in fact no longer existed. All one to the ‘abstract’ character of the capital- could do was describe the fluid physical and ist world of commodities. In his essay ‘Die social reality while maintaining a critical Photographie’ [‘Photography’], of 1927, he awareness of how things ‘really’ ought to be. explained his approach. He contrasted two Together with Adorno, Kracauer intensified photographs, one of a world-famous diva his focus on the contingent world of appear- whom one could see everywhere in maga- ances by engaging Kierkegaard’s apology of zines and on billboards, the other of some- the ‘individual’. In Kracauer’s posthumously body’s grandmother, portrayed when she published monograph, Der Detektiv-Roman was the same age as the diva was now. The [The Detective Novel], the cone was replaced second photograph was totally inaccessible by a recasting of Kierkegaard’s theory of to her grandchildren and, from their van- stages as a theory of spheres. The ethical tage point, could just as well show any other and religious spheres had become inaccessi- person in traditional costume. They had to ble and the theoretician – indeed, humanity take their parents’ word for it that the pho- in general – had been banished to the shady tograph really showed their grandmother as sphere of aesthetics. In the highest sphere, a young woman. It was the ‘memory image’ the religious sphere, the ‘names’ were still of the grandmother, bequeathed to them by accessible in the form of metaphysical enti- their parents or other contemporaries, that ties. Down below, this divine substance lent meaning to the photo. Yet, inevitably, remained ‘inexorably in force’, but here it what the camera had caught was in various was scattered: ‘all names are distorted to the respects at odds with this ‘memory image’, point where they are unrecognizable’. Given much more (noticeably) so than was the its contemporary popularity, the genre of case with photos whose meaning seemed the detective novel permitted a precarious instantly self-evident. In the discrepancy analysis of this distorted truth.45 The extent between the ‘mere surface cohesion’ of the and character of the distortion corresponded photograph and the ‘memory image’ (or its to the rules of the ‘thoroughly rationalized ostensibly self-evident meaning), seemingly society’.46 Here, too, as he had done in the meaningless ‘remnants of nature’ – in other sociology monograph, Kracauer constructed words, sensuous physical reality – became a collapsed metaphysical-philosophical order visible, rendering this discrepancy the with a hierarchy of planes, only to conclude (potential) locus of emancipation. Reality that the sphere of individual sensuous and only became visible in the photographs social phenomena was the only one still epis- once the status of the diva and the ‘memory temically accessible. image’ of the grandmother were forgotten. As far as Marx was concerned, Kracauer The emancipatory potential of photography argued in the mid 1920s that one needed to lay precisely in this ability to expose the

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‘mere surface cohesion’, because, in con- to existing orders, a form of meaning that was trast to the hermetic ideological meanings capable of violently asserting itself against produced by society, reason could reassem- the previous reality. ble the uncovered remnants of nature and Kracauer addressed the manipulation and give them a new order.49 deletion of reality in Nazi films with his own In his monograph on salaried employees, Theory of Film, which, as the subtitle indi- Die Angestellten, Kracauer collated tableaux, cated, promised The Redemption of Physical as the book’s subtitle indicated, ‘from con- Reality. This redemption was facilitated by temporary Germany’. Here, physical reality the perspective of the camera that records featured predominantly as the locus of floun- physical life in motion. The camera’s docu- dering sociation, as the surface appearance of mentary capacity, he argued, reached beyond the corporeal lifeworld of the Weimar-era cult the human apparatus of perception and of sport, the body, and youth. To his mind, abstract thought. Successful films therefore this idealization of the corporeal represented provided people with ‘a chance of finding a form of false concretism, a fetishization of something we did not look for, something ‘mere vitality’.50 Here, too, the implication tremendously important in its own right – would seem to be that reason had to destroy the world that is ours’.56 At its best, film this fetishization. The praise of the youthful could effect in the viewer – who was half in body and debasement of age (not least on a dream-like state, half awakening to actual the job market) demonstrated ‘indirectly that reality – an awareness of the logic and lan- under the current economic and social condi- guage inherent in the objects that surrounded tions humans are not living life’.51 him, of ‘the murmur of existence’.57 For Kracauer, the conformist ‘cult of On Kracauer’s account, the epistemology diversion’ that he saw at work in Berlin’s underlying the writing of history was like Weimar-era cinemas diverted attention away the redeeming eye of the camera. In History, from social reality and colonized sensuous it was the ‘micro’ and ‘macro dimensions’ reality.52 In his relevant studies from the in the ‘structure of the historical universe’ late 1930s onwards, he argued that National that corresponded to the different layers of Socialist propaganda went one step further: the cone of abstraction and the collapsed ‘The Nazis utilized totalitarian propaganda as Kierkegaardian spheres.58 Kracauer primar- a tool to destroy the disturbing independence ily argued the case for microhistory. Only the of reality’.53 The power of the fascist images inherent logic of the slightest objects could emerges as the diametrical opposite of the be recorded and represented responsibly. To be emancipatory capacity for sensuous experi- sure, to do so one also needed cautiously to ence in which Kracauer placed his trust. In extend one’s scope and venture into broader ‘totalitarian propaganda’, decontextualized contexts. Yet the emphasis always needed to elements of reality were instrumentalized, lie on allowing the idiosyncrasies and spe- and reality was ‘put to work faking itself’.54 cific temporality of the sources and objects to Real bodies of knowledge and traditions emerge. Kracauer thus clarified the meaning were transformed into malleable narratives of his focus on the ‘figure of the collector’: that could be randomly deployed. Goebbels’s like the camera, the historian salvages the understanding of propaganda as a ‘creative hopeless fragments of physical reality and art’ had to be taken literally in the sense ‘that in so doing gains a form of contemplative a world shaped by the art of propaganda access to that reality and to the conditions of becomes as modelling clay – amorphous his or her own human existence. material lacking any initiative of its own’.55 Physical reality was not yet the ultimate This form of propaganda was creative in the point of reference, though. Films, Kracauer worst possible sense and lent a new meaning suggested, ‘penetrate ephemeral physical

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reality and burn through it’. Yet where that he wrote in 1916, ‘is a relativist only because took them, ‘their destination’, he hastened he wants to be a dogmatist’.62 From the fact to add, his study could not determine.59 that there is no one all-encompassing truth, Kracauer’s relativism, then, did not pre- the relativist concluded that there was no cipitate a critique of all epistemic claims point in even trying to attain the manifold that detract from the heterogeneous world truths that could be determined on the basis of objects. Rather, it led him to bracket this of experience. The dogmatist, by contrast, world of objects as the ‘anteroom’.60 Hence failed to comprehend the manifoldness of the subtitle of History: The Last Things reality and assumed that truth could be found before the Last. Kracauer wanted to refer to only where basic human experience clustered the ‘last things’, the objects of metaphys- around extant concepts. For Kracauer, the ics and eschatology, only ex negativo. This goal was a sense of rootedness in the world negation nevertheless indicates a theological and of ‘community’ [Gemeinschaft] attained dimension in the deep structure of Kracauer’s by the subject by arranging its experiences thought that runs through all his writings in the radiant light of ‘concepts’. This forg- from the Weimar era onwards. It was both as ing of ideational links between the subject constant and mutable as his concept of sensu- and the environment and community within ous reality. which the isolated individual found itself was Kracauer’s concern, inter alia, in ‘Über das Wesen der Persönlichkeit’ [On the Essence of Personality], written in 1913–14. He char- ‘Transcendental Homelessness’: acterized the human personality as a cos- The Shock of the First World mos of concepts gravitating around one core War and the Religious Revival concept.63 In the only text of this corpus of Movements of the Weimar Era largely neglected early philosophical works published (in part) at the time, ‘Vom Erleben In much of the secondary literature, des Krieges’ [On Experiencing the War], Kracauer’s religious early works (roughly up which came out in the Preußische Jahrbücher to 1926) are distinguished from his irreli- in 1915, Kracauer applied this scheme to gious later work. Yet initially, religion was in patriotism [Vaterlandsliebe] and argued that fact of no great interest to Kracauer. It only the latter was only genuine and durable if it became a substantive concern after the First formed the core of the personality.64 World War. The form of liberal Judaism he In the event, patriotism did not offer a suc- encountered in his parental home evidently cessful path towards either the Spirit or the instilled no pious sentiments in him. As he community. Instead, the First World War noted in one of the few early diaries that have turned out to be a catastrophe. Consequently, survived, in 1907 he demonstratively read a Ginster, in stark contrast to this early text, biography of Nietzsche on Yom Kippur became an anti-war novel. Against this back- (though he did not take to Nietzsche, either).61 drop and the sense of crisis it generated, The isolated modern subject and its Kracauer’s categories became more reflex- attempts to come to some form of accommo- ive. One of the thematic implications of this dation with its environment formed a central development was his ‘departure from inward- focus in his early writings (which, as men- ness’.65 In the early writings, he had lamented tioned, were not published during his life- the loneliness of the modern subject, sought time). Here, too, he was already grappling a sense of belonging through the attachment with the problem posed by the ‘manifold- to grand ideas and ideals, and experienced ness’ of reality. However, he still saw a way the manifoldness of external reality as dolor- from the Spirit to the world. ‘The relativist’, ous. In his subsequent works he identified

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‘objectless inwardness’ as a form of idealistic the world into a meaningful totality and in ideological deception: ‘The fact that the art- which subject and object, content and form istry with which the book elucidated mental were still coextensive. Lukács called these states was praised’, he wrote in Georg, ‘led ‘blissful times’ [selige Zeiten];68 Kracauer Georg to suspect that it obscured the external referred to them as ‘meaningful eras’ [sin- circumstances all the more intensely’.66 nerfüllte Epochen].69 Yet this holistic unity Kracauer focused on the question of why of a mythical golden antiquity had fractured. the extant forms of human sociation were so This notion implied a pessimistic theory of deficient, resorting to a new discipline and an modernization as a process of anomic dif- old promise: sociology as the quest for the ferentiation. For the implications of this logic of sociation, on the one hand, and the development, Lukács had coined the term quest for a religious community that would ‘transcendental homelessness’;70 Kracauer’s transcend the mundanities of earthly exist- utopian notions in these years were authori- ence, on the other. In the early 1920s, like tarian and reactionary to match. Given his and Leo Löwenthal, Kracauer desire for an objective and irrefutable foot- was drawn to the charismatic Frankfurt Rabbi ing and his yearning for meaning anchored in Nehemias Anton Nobel and subsequently, for attempts at religious restoration and revival, a short while, to the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus he in fact had more in common with the mod- [Free Jewish Academy], established, also in ern prophets he criticized than he would have Frankfurt, by and Martin cared to admit.71 Buber. In his features, he reported critically Kracauer’s quest for a meaningful foot- on other neoreligious movements and pro- ing in the absolute ultimately clashed with phetic figures such as Hermann Keyserling, the insight that the religious revivalist move- Eugen Diederichs, Rudolf Steiner, and their ments never delivered what they promised. esoteric ‘circles’. Kracauer’s novel Georg He remained an agnostic who, despite want- also bears eloquent testimony to the Weimar ing to, could not believe. Every spiritual smorgasbord of worldviews. Its principal proposition seemed to short-circuit the issues protagonist jauntily moves through various it claimed to address.72 In ’s 1918 religious and political sects before finally theosophical narrative of illumination, Geist blurting out, mid-conversation, the tenets of a der Utopie [Spirit of Utopia], for example, he social critique tinged with Marxism. saw ‘God running amok’,73 and he soon con- In the end, Kracauer viewed all religious cluded that new religious formations were attempts to lend meaning to human life with ‘illusive and romantic’ and that ‘the positive skepticism. Yet in the early 1920s, he was word’ was therefore ‘not ours’. Instead, one convinced that only religion could provide needed to be ‘a thorn’ in others’ sides; it was a solution to the crisis of modernity. As he better ‘to drive them, with us, to desperation wrote in 1922, philosophy could only point to than to give them hope’.74 The only contri- the chaotic and lawless present in self-critical bution one could make to redemption lay in terms and thus ‘help prepare, within narrow the forthright denunciation of false promises limits, the transformation, which can already of redemption. Kracauer thus initiated the be sensed faintly on occasion and will lead Bilderverbot [prohibition of the image] that an expelled humanity back into the new-old would later feature prominently in critical the- realms suffused with divinity’.67 For life that ory. As Kracauer put it in 1926 in his critique still had meaning, this had not been a con- of Buber and Rosenzweig’s ‘Germanization’ cern. Kracauer’s point of reference for this [Verdeutschung], i.e., their German transla- idea was a neoromantic notion Lukács had tion, of the Tanakh, the religious revivalist developed in Die Theorie des Romans. It con- movements merely immobilized the vex- cerned periods in which the deity had melded ing heterogeneity of the world, substituting

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a false harmony for the totality of meaning The articulation of social criticism was thus that had been lost. Precisely because of their equated with the Kafkaian ‘theological’ per- conceit that the translation should make the spective: ‘The true law is thrown into relief word of God audible in a new way, Buber and only by the untruth that surrounds it’.80 Rosenzweig resorted to neoromantic phrase- If one takes the theological discourse ology.75 Kracauer directed the same critique between Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, and at the völkisch religious publisher Eugen Bloch into account, the conventional account Diederichs, who claimed that the germani- that has Kracauer swap his religious for a cizing ‘word agglomerations’ with which he political stance in the mid 1920s turns out advertised his ‘religious propaganda weeks’ to be imprecise. Both phases were in fact originated organically in the very essence of political and religious at once. The conserva- the German people [Volk].76 tive-authoritarian episode, with its historico- In order to uncover the original meaning metaphysical notion of the shattered absolute of the religions, one needed to take a detour and the yearning for community, was super- that entailed secular criticism. Kracauer’s seded by a vision of utopia that drew on both critique of Buber and Rosenzweig hinged Marxism and messianism. As he wrote to an on a theoretical assumption he shared with author whose book he reviewed in 1929: ‘But Adorno and Benjamin – namely, that of the theology exists and, like you, I acknowledge ‘migration’ of theological ‘truth’ into the the reality of the term eternal’.81 ‘profane’. ‘Economics instead of explicit theology!’ he demanded in ‘Zwei Arten der Mitteilung’ [Two Types of Communication]. ‘First the outrage in the material realm, then ‘Homeless Shelter’: The Masses the contemplation which, for heaven’s sake, of Salaried Employees and must not detract from that realm’.77 Those the Cult of Diversion categories in the religions and myths in which truth had once inhered now had to be Like the implicit theology, the concept of demythologized, and the content of theologi- ‘homelessness’ he had appropriated from cal categories had to change in tandem with Lukács’s Theorie des Romans also ran social transformations until it could ‘hold its through Kracauer’s subsequent work. The ground… in the face of the lowliest needs… way in which his utilization of this concept One would need to come across theology in changed over time allows us to chart the the profane and point to the holes and fis- development of his philosophy overall. In the sures of the profane into which the truth has early 1920s, he still used the concept as a sunk’.78 Only on rare occasions did Kracauer means of expressing the metaphysical pessi- clarify that the ‘indirect path’ of profanity mism with which he viewed his own situa- implied not only a critique but also a prac- tion. By the end of the decade, the concept tical attempt to establish this-worldly truth. had gone from being an expression of his Thus Kracauer argued that the ‘concept… vantage point to forming the object of his of the classless society’, for instance, ‘rep- investigation. Kracauer now pointed to the resents not least a contemporary transforma- authoritarian potential that lay in the desire tion of theological fixations’.79 Drawing on for a definitive footing and used the concept Kafka, Kracauer described the structure of to characterize the socially unaware and his- capitalist society as a ‘burrow’ and a self-cre- torically hopeless salaried employees of the ated prison of humanity. For the time being, .82 As Kracauer added later, only its critique was indirectly preparing the it was precisely the middle-class salaried way for its destruction, which would amount employees in their state of homelessness who to the uncovering of the obscured reality. formed the first and principal target audience

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of ‘totalitarian propaganda’. Their quest for streamlined and atomized at the same time. an absolutely secure shelter was a precursor Where the repressive authority of tradition of the conformist rebellion of the Nazis.83 had died away, images from films and maga- In the essays on the salaried employees zines came to define culture.87 From its anal- he wrote in 1929 and 1930, Kracauer’s phi- ysis of the pseudo-authenticity required at job losophy reached its initial apex, both in terms interviews (‘virtuous pink complexion’) to its of style and acuity. In the introduction to focus on the integration of leisure activities the book version, he juxtaposed his account as workplace amenities, Die Angestellten is both to merely descriptive reportage and to Kracauer’s most topical book. merely deductive ‘idealism’, and emphasized For Kracauer, the concurrence of conform- its constructed, mosaic-like structure.84 He ism and atomization was closely connected had condensed, once again indirectly, ethno- to the – at the time much discussed – graphic observation of the relevant milieux, sociological concept of the masses. The First advertisements and death notices, leisure World War and the rapidly rising number of opportunities, the self-promotion of certain salaried employees in the cities were widely associations, and the content of personal seen as the dawn of an age of the masses. conversations to arrive at a comprehensive Unwittingly, the atomized individuals – for cultural diagnosis. Kracauer portrayed a new whom the ideologically malleable salaried class, which, in the eyes of both the right and employees stood paradigmatically – lined the left, should never have emerged and which themselves up as a ‘mass ornament’.88 The no longer trusted in the utopian promises of organic solidarity of the pre-capitalist eras either left-wing or bourgeois-liberal politics. had been shattered by the capitalist mode of The number of salaried employees had grown production. What remained were subjects exponentially after the First World War, and who were like dots clustered into pseudo- they formed a ‘new middle class’: the ‘white- geometrical structures that matched the func- collar proletarians’ and petty bourgeoisie of tions of economic rationality. The Tiller Girls the Weimar Republic. They were in fact pro- or the assembly-line workers laboring in per- letarianized but superficially aspired to bour- fect synchronicity were cases in point. geois cultural values. It was the task of the As Kracauer noted elsewhere, the largest emerging culture industry to meet these aspi- mass was the proletariat. Its emancipation rations. Kracauer illustrated this by pointing had to consist precisely in the shedding of its to Berlin’s nightlife. In the popular enter- state as an amorphous agglomerate of ‘mass tainment venue ‘Haus Vaterland’ he saw a particles’.89 Fascist propaganda intention- ‘homeless shelter’. ‘Nothing is more charac- ally treated human beings as masses within teristic of this life, which can only be called which the individual was interchangeable life to a limited extent’, he wrote, ‘than the and which, in their entireties, were easily way in which it perceives of higher things. manipulable.90 From Kracauer’s point of In them it sees not substance but glamour. It view, the transition from the capitalist ‘cult grasps them with the means not of concen- of diversion’ to reactionary propaganda, tration but of diversion’.85 The ‘geography of then, was a fluid one. The atomized individu- the homeless shelters’ was shaped by dance- als were diverted so they did not congregate, hall music, enthusiasm for sport, cinemas, the masses so they did not rally. In the first and the allure of fairground booths: in short, part of Erbschaft dieser Zeit [Heritage of Our by the ‘cult of diversion’.86 As the erosion Times], published in 1935, Ernst Bloch dis- of traditional modes of sociation gathered cussed Kracauer’s Die Angestellten and the pace, the salaried employees epitomized the ‘cult of diversion’ in detail. ‘Cinema or race’, transformation of human beings into append- he concluded succinctly, were apparently two ages of capital. They became more and more homologous modes of that cult.91

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Kracauer’s notion of the ornament formed literally be watched. Traces of this ideology- by the masses was underpinned by a descrip- critical understanding of the cinema were still tion of the ways in which socially produced present in his later film theory; for instance, economic forms became second nature, plac- when he wrote: ‘The film screen is Athena’s ing human beings at the mercy of its laws and polished shield’.95 By watching her reflection the structures it stipulated. To be sure, com- in this shield instead of looking at her directly, pared to pre-modern organic forms of asso- Perseus was able to approach Medusa without ciation the geometry of the mass ornament turning into stone. For Kracauer, this allegory amounted to a form of rationalization. Yet implied that, even where the human apparatus given that people were unaware of its func- of perception and conceptualization had shut tioning and it was not instituted by reason, it itself off ideologically, say, in the face of the still belonged to the realm of nature; indeed, unimaginable horror of National Socialism, from the perspective of reason it represented that horror could still be confronted with the a ‘relapse into mythology so massive that gaze of cinematic realism. a greater one seems inconceivable’.92 His strong concept of reason notwithstanding, then, in Das Ornament der Masse Kracauer observed elements of the dialectic of enlight- Ahasver, Charlie Chaplin, enment: phenomena and relations that have and Jacques Offenbach and developed historically, specifically economic the Epistemic Subject in ones, gain a momentum of their own that Kracauer’s Theory determines human existence no less compre- hensively and mercilessly than did fate in the Whether Adorno was right in assuming that mythical mindset. Kracauer had derived his idiosyncratic In keeping with the theological concept ‘gaze’, which viewed even the familiar as ‘an of the migration of truth into the profane, object of amazement’, from the sublimation which could not simply be leapfrogged but of a ‘childhood trauma of dubitable belong- needed to be subjected to critique, Kracauer ing’ is a moot point.96 Certainly, it was not warned against a premature quest for an only his contemporaries and subsequent alternative in the existing order or scholars who described him as a loner and a in the context of escapist forms of commu- maverick. As his early self-identification as nity. This would amount to ‘disrespect for ‘transcendentally homeless’ indicates, he too our historical locus’. The only viable way saw himself in these terms. Later, he would led ‘right through the mass ornament, not describe his existence as ‘exterritorial’. This backwards from it’.93 Against the bourgeois sense of alienation was owed not least to critique of the thoroughly capitalized mass the antisemitic animosity he encountered culture Kracauer consequently insisted that at school. ‘aesthetic enjoyment of the ornamental mass This outsider perspective has repeatedly movements is legitimate’.94 At least this been interpreted as a specifically Jewish form form of mass entertainment was in touch of subjectivity. It should be borne in mind, with the current state of reality, which was though, that the characterization of ‘the more than could be said for the elitist enjoy- Jew’ as an alien and outsider resonates pro- ment of high culture. foundly with fundamental antisemitic tropes. This also helps explain Kracauer’s focus Kracauer grappled with this problem in an on film as a modern, mechanized art form. intensely reflective manner.97 His references The screen was the paradigmatic surface on to the anti-Judaic Christian myth of the ‘eter- which the logic of society – from the Tiller nal Jew’ Ahasver are a case in point. An early Girls to totalitarian mass rallies – could quite unpublished note bore the title ‘Die ewigen

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Juden’ [The Eternal Jews]. Here, Kracauer with the mass ornament, the gaze of the described the Jews as isolated and displaced, outsider focused on the essential surface as ‘vagrant souls’. They ought to find their appearances and recognized their patterns. ‘realm’ [Reich] among their fellow human The principal protagonists of his two nov- beings yet are not granted access to them.98 els, Georg and Ginster, also embody this Ahasver repeatedly turned up again at cru- vantage point. There is one caveat, though. cial junctures. In the theses on antisemitism Elsewhere, Kracauer portrayed the objects of Kracauer published anonymously in 1933, his investigation as clear-sighted outsiders of he cited the eternal Jew as the exemplary this kind. In 1919, Kracauer credited his first cosmopolitan who transcends humanity’s teacher, Georg Simmel, with the gaze of the natural separation into races and classes. He rootless stranger, who, for that very reason, characterized this ‘explosion of an existence can observe the state of the world with the beholden entirely to nature’ and reorganiza- requisite distance.103 In 1926, he ascribed tion of nature with the means of reason (which this estranging gaze to ‘the Jew Kafka’, he had also outlined in ‘Die Photographie’ whose writings brought ‘dread into a world’ and ‘Das Ornament der Masse’) as a ‘Jewish from which ‘the countenance of truth is with- trait directed towards redemption’.99 In drawing’.104 This is exactly the position of From Caligari to Hitler, Kracauer inter- Adorno’s later ‘inverse theology’, which can preted Paul Wegener’s second Golem film reveal no divine secrets but only the utter (1920) as one of the few attempts in the his- negativity of the existing order.105 tory of Weimar film to leverage reason and For Kracauer, nobody represented this liberate the oppressed. In the film, Ahasver figure of the outsider more incisively than is among those whom the legendary Rabbi (the non-Jew) Charlie Chaplin. Kracauer’s Löw invokes in defense of Prague Jewry. For take was in some ways similar to Hannah Kracauer, both the eternal Jew and the Golem Arendt’s claim on Chaplin for her hidden tra- symbolized reason.100 In History, finally, dition of the Jew as pariah.106 To Kracauer’s Ahasver represented the dialectic of time and mind, Chaplin demonstrated that the experi- historical nonsimultaneity.101 Condemned for ence of one’s hostile environment could be all eternity and wandering through all ages, processed aesthetically and reflected upon in he embodies the paradoxical unity of conti- an emancipatory manner. As the (ostensible) nuity and discontinuity in history.102 Ahasver preacher in The Pilgrim, Kracauer wrote in was just one of the allegorical figures with 1929, Chaplin discredited sectarianism by which Kracauer illustrated systematic prob- outwardly imitating it. lems in his late work. Uniquely, though, he can also be interpreted in autobiographical Finally, he walks off, one foot in the USA, the other in Mexico. Religion is no more his home than terms. The way in which Kracauer’s Ahasver any fatherland. Nor do his fellow humans offer changed over time perfectly encapsulates the him a genuine home… One has to fear and outwit development of his theoretical and political them like the things… for him, organic and inor- point of view, from his early lament about the ganic nature are one and the same thing… He rootlessness of modernity via the ‘explosion’ simply does not know his way around life; he has no religion and no fatherland.107 And yet, for all of social relations beholden to nature to the that, he does still have a home, one that seems involuntary witness of the involute course of palpable to anyone who sees him.108 history that leads to no redemption. Within the context of Kracauer’s change- Kracauer’s construction of Chaplin reflected able theory, the empathic outsider was the his assumption of a form of human impo- epistemic subject and, in turn, inseparable tence that was experienced involuntarily from the empirical subject. As opposed to by Jews and that everybody could grasp the deluded people who aligned themselves on the screen.109 In film, he found the

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epistemological reliability he had sought in and occasional and wandering musicians vain elsewhere. Through Chaplin’s perfor- [Spielleute], on the other – namely, that mance, a trace of rootless rootedness could ‘they played and engaged in tomfoolery at be experienced in a tangible manner all worldly festivities with the same dedication over the world, or at least wherever the film they displayed when performing their duties was shown. in the synagogue’.114 Kracauer also invoked In his second-most controversial book, the problematic Jewish motif of peregrina- after From Caligari to Hitler, his monograph tion [Wanderschaft]115 and a form of home- Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit sickness with metaphysical connotations for [Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His which the boulevards of Paris – as a ‘home Time], written while in exile in Paris, Kracauer for the homeless’116 akin to the ‘home- took a similar approach. His major concerns less shelter’ – offered poor compensation. throughout his work converged in this ‘social Kracauer attributed Offenbach’s operettas to biography’ [Gesellschaftsbiographie]. It too a society that had itself become operetta-like was a product as much of construction as of under the dictatorship of Napoleon III. They reconstruction. It comprised historiosophy, offered ‘intoxicating illusions’ to the citizens assemblages of single frames, sociology, who, having been expelled from politics, and indirect-allegorical contemporary analy- were now confined to the private sphere.117 sis. Given that the book focused on a Jewish Here, then, all the characteristic tenets immigrant in Paris and Kracauer portrayed of Kracauer’s early theory – emancipation, Napoleon III as a tyrannical dictator, one can sensuousness, homelessness, and ideological even discern an autobiographical dimension diversion that serves authoritarian domination – to the project.110 Written when he was in great were assembled. Kracauer’s mockingbirds – financial difficulties, it was pitched at a broad the principal protagonists of his novels and readership. This, and the fact that Offenbach’s Chaplin, Kafka, Simmel, Offenbach, and music barely featured in his account, precipi- Ahasver – had (at least) three functions: tated profoundly polemical responses from the first was epistemological, the second both Adorno and Benjamin.111 directed towards the critique of society, and Like Kafka, Chaplin, and Ginster, the third existential. Their status gave rise to Kracauer’s Offenbach achieved a satiri- social criticism and as excluded figures they cal estrangement from the society that sur- were credited with a gaze well suited to that rounded him, whose contours he threw all criticism. At the same time, their quest for a the more sharply into relief for it: ‘He is a ‘home for the homeless’ reflected Kracauer’s mockingbird’.112 As such, he did not destroy grappling with his own existence. or profane the lofty and sacred, but he did Today, Kracauer is discussed predomi- discredit that which unjustly donned the nantly as a pioneer of film and media studies. mantle of sanctity. From the perspective of A second line of reception takes the perspec- the mockingbird, one saw an inversion ‘of tive of intellectual history and reads him as a the customary image of the world. Many critical social philosopher akin to Benjamin things that seem to be at the bottom are in and the proponents of critical theory. In both fact on top; many things generally consid- cases, he is considered a classic. Yet this gen- ered great turn out to be small’.113 Later on erally leads to his no longer being engaged in the book, Kracauer described Offenbach’s as a thinker who has a genuine contribution qualities in terms of the confluence of two to make to current debates. He continues to Jewish backgrounds: emancipation in the be discussed in university seminars and doc- spirit of the tolerance that Offenbach’s father toral dissertations, and a first biography was represented, on the one hand, and an inclina- published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of tion Kracauer ascribed to Jewish bandsmen his death. Whether he really could be used to

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initiate broader debates seems a moot point, 7 Später, Siegfried Kracauer, 605. though. On the one hand, his fundamental 8 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Ginster’, in Werke vol. 7 critique of theoretical endeavors on behalf (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), 1–256, here 37. 9 See Später, Siegfried Kracauer, 532–3. of the individual objects has lost nothing of 10 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Die Angestellten’, in Werke its topicality. The ignorance of academic and vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 211–310, ideology-critical analyses regarding incon- here 304. spicuous everyday phenomena remains a 11 See Helmut Stalder, Siegfried Kracauer (Würz- constant challenge. Taking up Kracauer’s burg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003). 12 See Henrik Reeh, Ornaments of the Metropolis legacy means learning to engage in exact- (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). ing observation rather than simply allowing 13 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Das Monokel’, ‘Falscher explanatory patterns and concepts to click Untergang der Regenschirme’, ‘Das Scheibmas- into place. On the other hand, the work of this chinchen’, in Werke vol. 5.2 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, ‘collector’ radiates a sense of cultural anti- 2011), 495–7, 364–5, 585–9. 14 See Sven Kramer, ‘Vergesellschaftung durch quarianism. One encounters typewriters, tatty Sprache’, in Doch ist das Wirkliche auch verges- umbrellas, silent movies, forgotten micro- sen, 59–80. historical events, and missed opportunities. 15 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Notes on the Planned History Where Kracauer offered thick phenomeno- of the German Film’, in Volker Breidecker (ed.), logical descriptions rather than engaging in Siegfried Kracauer – Erwin Panofsky: Briefwech- sel, 1941–1966 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996), theoretical argument, his texts appear irre- 15–18, here 16. coverably historical. The question, then, is 16 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Totalitäre Propaganda’, in not whether they can be short-circuited with Werke vol. 2.2 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012), 17–173, the current state of academic thinking but here 20. what current readers can learn from them 17 Ibid. 18 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Conclusions’, in Werke about their own conditions. vol. 5.4 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 467–73, here 470. 19 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, in Notes Werke vol. 5.2, 612–24, here 612. 20 Ibid. 1 For good general surveys, see Gertrud Koch, Kra- 21 See Kracauer, ‘Falscher Untergang der Regen- cauer zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 1996); schirme’, 364. Graeme Gilloch, Siegfried Kracauer (Cambridge: 22 Siegfried Kracauer, History (Princeton: Markus Polity, 2015); Gerd Gemünden and Johannes Wiener, 1995), 4. von Moltke (eds.), Culture in the Anteroom (Ann 23 See David Frisby, Fragmente der Moderne Arbor: University of Michigan, 2012); Jörn Ahrens (Rheda-Wiedenbrück: Daedalus, 1989); Mülder, et al. (eds.), Doch ist das Wirkliche auch verges- Siegfried Kracauer, 103–15. sen, so ist es darum noch nicht getilgt (Wies- 24 , ‘Ein Außenseiter macht sich baden: Springer, 2016). bemerkbar’, in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 3 2 His lifelong friendship with Leo Löwenthal has (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), 219–25, here 225. received rather less attention. 25 Quoted in Später, Siegfried Kracauer, 551. 3 See Jörg Später, Siegfried Kracauer (Berlin: 26 Kracauer, History, 136. Suhrkamp, 2016). 27 Ernst Bloch, Briefe 1903–1975 vol. 1 (Frankfurt: 4 See Inka Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer (Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1985), 281. Metzler, 1985); Johannes von Moltke, The Curi- 28 Ibid. ous Humanist (Oakland: University of California 29 See, for example, Axel Honneth, Vivisektionen Press, 2016). eines Zeitalters (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 141. 5 See Miriam Hansen, Cinema and Experience 30 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Der wunderliche Real- (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), xi. ist’, in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 11 (Frankfurt: 6 Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, Brief- Suhrkamp, 2003), 388–408, here 394. wechsel 1923–1966 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 31 Ibid., 397. 2008), 658–9. On relations between the four 32 See Max Beck and Nicholas Coomann, ‘Adorno, men, see Später, Siegfried Kracauer, chapters 15, Kracauer und die Ursprünge der Jargonkritik’, 21, 38. in Sprachkritik als Ideologiekritik (Würzburg:

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Königshausen & Neumann, 2015), 7–27. See also 63 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Über das Wesen der Persön- Kramer, ‘Vergesellschaftung durch Sprache’. lichkeit’, in Werke vol. 9.1, 7–120, here 41 and 33 See Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer, 103–15. passim. 34 Kracauer, ‘Die Angestellten’, 222. 64 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Vom Erleben des Krieges’, in 35 Kracauer, History, 201. Werke vol. 5.1 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 11–24. 36 See the contribution by Nico Bobka and Dirk 65 See Dirk Oschmann, Auszug aus der Innerlichkeit Braunstein (Chapter 11) to this Handbook. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999). 37 See also , ‘Ökonomisch-Philosophische 66 Kracauer, ‘Georg’, in Werke vol. 7, 257–516, Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844’, in Marx Engels here 488. Werke vol. 40 (Berlin: Dietz, 2012), 465–588, 67 Kracauer, ‘Soziologie als Wissenschaft’, 11. here 578–9. The usage of the term Unwesen here 68 Georg Lukács, Die Theorie des Romans [1920] plays on the double meaning of the term. In com- (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009), 21. On the context, mon parlance it denotes unruly, mischievous and see Gerhard Scheit, ‘Der Gelehrte im Zeitalter der pernicious behavior. At the same time, it denotes “vollendeten Sündhaftigkeit”’, in Nicolas Berg the logical opposite of (though possibly also dia- and Dieter Burdorf (eds.), Textgelehrte (Göttin- lectical counterpart to) Wesen (meaning being, gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 39–64. nature or essence). 69 Kracauer, ‘Soziologie als Wissenschaft’, 12. 38 Karl-Heinz Haag, ‘Das Unwiederholbare’ [1963], 70 Lukács, Theorie, 30. in Kritische Philosophie (Munich: etk, 2012), 71 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Georg von Lukács’ Roman- 97–107. See also Später, Siegfried Kracauer, 552. theorie’, in Werke vol. 5.1, 282–8. 39 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler [1947] 72 See Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Die Wartenden’, in (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). Werke vol. 5.1, 383–94. 40 Kracauer, ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, 617. 73 Siegfried Kracauer and Leo Löwenthal, In steter 41 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘’, in Werke Freundschaft… (Münster: Zu Klampen, 2003), vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003), 173. 31. 42 Quoted in Momme Brodersen, Siegfried Kracauer 74 Ibid., 54. (Rowohlt: Reinbek, 2001), 117. 75 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Die Bibel auf deutsch’, in 43 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Soziologie als Wissenschaft’, Werke vol. 5.2, 374–86. in Werke vol. 1, 9–101, here 39. 76 See Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Volkheit! Goethe! 44 Ibid., 95. Mythos!’, in Werke vol. 5.2, 371–2. 45 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Der Detektiv-Roman’, in 77 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Zwei Arten der Mitteilung’, in Werke vol. 1, 103–209, here 109. Werke vol. 5.3 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 180–7, 46 Ibid., 143. here 180–1. 47 Bloch, Briefe, 282. 78 Kracauer, Letter to Bloch, in Bloch, Briefe, 274. 48 Ibid., 283. 79 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Theologie gegen Nationalis- 49 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Die Photographie’, in Werke mus’, in Werke vol. 5.4, 344–9, here 347–8. vol. 5.2, 682–98. 80 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Franz Kafka’, in Werke vol. 50 Kracauer, ‘Die Angestellten’, 211–54, here 248. 5.3, 65–7, here 67. 51 Ibid. 81 Kracauer, ‘Zwei Arten der Mitteilung’, 181. 52 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Kult der Zerstreuung’, in 82 See Kracauer, ‘Die Angestellten’, 288. Werke vol. 6.1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), 83 See Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 107, 132, 208–13. 288; ‘Notes on the Planned History of the Ger- 53 Kracauer, From Caligari To Hitler, 295. man Film’, 17. 54 Ibid., 299. 84 Kracauer, ‘Die Angestellten’, 222. 55 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 288. 56 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film (Oxford: Oxford 86 Ibid., 293; ‘Kult der Zerstreuung’. University Press, 1960), 296. 87 See Henri Band, Mittelschichten und Massenkul- 57 Ibid., 165. tur (Berlin: Lukas, 1999). 58 Kracauer, History, 105–6 and passim. 88 See Kracauer, ‘Das Ornament der Masse’. 59 Kracauer, Theory of Film, 311. 89 Kracauer, ‘Totalitäre Propaganda’, 91–2. 60 Kracauer, History, 191–217. 90 Ibid., passim. 61 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Aus dem Tagebuch des Stu- 91 Ernst Bloch, ‘Erbschaft dieser Zeit’, in Gesamtaus- denten (1907)’, in Marbacher Magazin 47 (1988), gabe vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), 31. 9–13, here 10. 92 Kracauer, ‘Das Ornament der Masse’, 621. 62 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Von der Erkenntnismöglich- 93 Ibid., 623. keit seelischen Lebens’, in Werke vol. 9.1 (Frank- 94 Ibid., 615. furt: Suhrkamp, 2004), 121–68, here 157. 95 Kracauer, Theory of Film, 305.

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96 Adorno, ‘Der wunderliche Realist’, 399. Suhrkamp, 1984), 9–56. Löwenthal did not dis- 97 See Matthew Handelman, ‘The Dialectics of cuss Chaplin, though. Otherness’, in Yearbook for European Jewish 107 Kracauer referred to Chaplin as ‘ein religions- Literature Studies vol. 2.1 (2015), 90–111. und vaterlandsloser Geselle’, playing on the 98 Ibid., 96–7. pejorative term ‘vaterlandslose Gesellen’, which 99 Kracauer, ‘Conclusions’, 471–2. was historically used to denounce the Social 100 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 112–13. Democrats, especially in imperial Germany. 101 Kracauer, History, 148. It is worth noting that 108 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Chaplin als Prediger’, in Kracauer’s explicit point of reference for this Werke vol. 6.2, 312–14, here 314. concept, even in this late work, was Karl Marx. 109 See Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Chaplins Triumph’, in 102 Ibid., 163. Werke vol. 6.2, 492–5, here 492. 103 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Georg Simmel’, in Werke 110 See Harald Reil, Siegfried Kracauers Jacques vol. 9.2, 139–280, here 270–1. Offenbach (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). 104 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Das Schloß’, in Werke vol. 111 See Später, Siegfried Kracauer, 330–3. 5.2, 491–4, here 494. 112 Siegfried Kracauer, Jaqcues Offenbach und das 105 See the contribution by Julia Jopp and Ansgar Paris seiner Zeit [1937] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, Martins (Chapter 41) to this Handbook. 1994), 11. 106 Hannah Arendt, ‘The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden 113 Ibid. Tradition’, in Jewish Social Studies 6, 2 (1944), 114 Ibid., 50–1. 99–122, here 110–13. For a similar approach, 115 Ibid., 22. see also Leo Löwenthal, ‘Judentum und 116 Ibid., 67. deutscher Geist’, in Schriften vol. 4 (Frankfurt: 117 Ibid., 187.

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