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

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Siegfried Kracauer: Documentary Realist and Critic of Ideological ‘Homelessness’ 14 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 Frankfurt.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 Frankfurter Zeitung. 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 Berlin, he and Panofsky, Paul Lazarsfeld, Hans Blumenberg, his wife Elisabeth left Germany immediately and the ‘Poetics and Hermeneutics’ circle.3 BK-SAGE-BEST_ET_AL_V1-170402-Chp14.indd 234 09/05/18 9:42 PM DOCUMENTARY REALIST AND CRITIC OF IDeological ‘Homelessness’ 235 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, sociology (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 critical theory has under the spell of the early culture industry 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 cultural critic 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 BK-SAGE-BEST_ET_AL_V1-170402-Chp14.indd 235 09/05/18 9:42 PM 236 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF FRANKFURT SCHOOL CRITICAL THEORY 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.
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