Siegfried Kracauer

Siegfried Kracauer (/ˈkrækaʊ.ər/; German: [ˈkʁakaʊ̯ɐ]; February 8, 1889 – November 26,

1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has
sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for
arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.

Life and career

Born to a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, Kracauer studied architecture from 1907 to
1913, eventually obtaining a doctorate in engineering in 1914 and working as an architect
in Osnabrück, Munich, and Berlin until 1920.
Near the end of the First World War, he befriended the young Theodor W. Adorno, to whom
he became an early philosophical mentor. In 1964, Adorno recalled the importance of
Kracauer's influence:
[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
codified philosophies as force fields in each case, it was certainly Kracauer who impelled
me to do so.[2]
From 1922 to 1933 he worked as the leading film 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.
Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years, building up theoretical methods of
analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout, and dance, which
he published in 1927 with the work Ornament der Masse (published in English as The
Mass Ornament).
In 1930, Kracauer published Die Angestellten (The Salaried Masses), a critical look at the
lifestyle and culture 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 Kracauer's analysis, writing that "[t]he
entire book is an attempt to grapple with a piece of everyday reality, constructed here and
experienced now. Reality is pressed so closely that it is compelled to declare its colors and
name names."[3]
Kracauer became increasingly critical of capitalism (having read the works of Karl Marx)
and eventually broke away from the Frankfurter Zeitung. About this same time (1930), he
married Lili Ehrenreich. He was also very critical of Stalinism and the "terrorist
totalitarianism" of the Soviet government.[4]
With the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Kracauer migrated to Paris. In March 1941,
thanks to the French ambassador Henri Hoppenot and his wife, Hélène Hoppenot, he
emigrated to the United States, with other German refugees like John Rewald[5].
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 film. 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 film criticism.
In 1960, he released Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, which argued
that realism is the most important function of cinema.
In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for different 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).

Theories on memory[edit]
Siegfried Kracauer's theories on memory revolved around the idea that memory was under
threat and was being challenged by modern forms of technology.[6] His most often cited
example was the comparison of memory to photography. The reason for this comparison
was that photography, in theory, replicates some of the tasks currently done by memory.[6]
The differences in the functions of memory and the functions of photography, according to
Kracauer, is that photography creates one fixed 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 significance of the event or moment.[6]
Photography can also work to record time in a linear way, and Kracauer even hints that
floods of photographs ward off death by creating a sort of permanence. However,
photography also excludes the essence of a person, and over time photographs lose
meaning and become a "heap of details."[6] 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.[6]

Reception[edit]
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 difficult to penetrate.[7] At the time of his death in 1966, Kracauer was somewhat
marginal in both American and German intellectual contexts. He had long ago abandoned
writing in German, yet his research remained difficult to place within American scientific and
academic categories.
In the decades following Kracauer's 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 Kracauer's style and gradually brought greater recognition in the United
States. His former colleague from Frankfurt, Leo Löwenthal, expressed pleasant surprise at
the newfound fame that seemed to accumulate around Kracauer in his death.[8] Since the
1980s and 1990s a new generation of film theorists and critics, including Gertrud
Koch, Miriam Hansen, Tom Levin and Thomas Elsaesser have interpreted and introduced
his work for a new generation of scholars.[9][10]
Works[edit]

 Kracauer, Siegfried (1928). Ginster.

 Kracauer, Siegfried (1947). From Caligari to Hitler.
 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.
 Kracauer, Siegfried (1973). Georg.
 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 Offenbach and
the Paris of His Time.
 Kracauer, Siegfried; Johannes von Moltke (2012). Siegfried Kracauer's American
Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture.
 Kracauer, Siegfried; trans. Carl Skoggard (2016). Georg. ISBN 9781624621406