7

11

21 I.

57 II.

79 DIGRESSION:

89 III.

135 IV.

165 V.

205

209

221

237

243
 Kracauer. Photographic Archive presents hitherto
largely unknown material from the estate of the German-American theorist of film and photography,
Siegfried Kracauer and his wife and assistant Elisabeth, known as Lili. The single and group portraits, still
lifes, street scenes and landscapes collected in this book all come from the estate of Siegfried Kracauer.
Published here for the first time, they are an extensive and representative selection from the enlargements,
contact sheets and rolls of film originally archived by Lili Kracauer. With photographs from the late nine-
teenth century to the 1960s, this book documents the life of two people closely connected for over four
decades and their joint photographic archive. The primary focus is not biographical, however, but on the
photographs as such—and the shared photographic archive. Because this has not been seen as a distinct
item up to now, it must be stressed here that it is not a mere adjunct but an integral part of the estate of
Siegfried Kracauer, and provides the “image of a precisely ordered … archive, set up by the author himself,
of his varied journalistic, literary and academic activities. This description of the written part of the estate
applies equally to its photographs. Most of these were taken not by Siegfried but by Lili Kracauer, and it
was she who ordered the material. However, her system was disbanded when the images from the Kracauer
estate, which had been in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach since 1972, were transferred into the
archive’s own system in the 1980s. This means that the photographs and contact sheets that were “roughly
sorted and distributed among labeled envelopes” by Lili Kracauer are now arranged according to visual
motifs, and the labeled envelopes and a series of related notes are stored separately, as a sort of addendum
to the photographs. On this basis it would be possible to approximately reconstruct the original order of
the photographic archive and to analyze it as a historical ensemble. The aim of this book, however, is to
illuminate the collaboration of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer. Its main emphasis thus lies on the photographs
taken by Lili (and a very few by Siegfried) Kracauer in 1934–39 and 1945–64.
Prints, contact sheets and film strips from both phases of her autodidactic photography are reproduced
in chapters I–IV. This material can be considered the result of a photographic practice in which Siegfried
Kracauer participated: on the one hand quite obviously as a preferred subject—his portrait dominates
the pictures taken by Lili Kracauer; on the other it can be assumed with some certainty that there was
an interdependence between his theoretical considerations and her practical experience. This shared
photographic practice also took in the use made of the images and their storage, and thus extended to
the photographs each brought into the marriage and their joint photographic archive. A selection of these
largely anonymous images can be seen in chapter V.
It is significant that Kracauer’s portrait was rarely taken by professional photographers. The portraits,
familiar from books, publishers’ advertising and the press were almost exclusively taken by Lili Kracauer.
One aim of her photography seems to have been to enable the couple themselves to determine which
portraits of the author Kracauer were used and to create his public image. The photographs from 1934–39
and 1945–64 should also be seen in this light. They enable us to monitor the types of portrayal that were
tried out, modified, discarded or perfected.
The photographs taken by Lili Kracauer are the most extensive and important part of the photographic
archive. This book presents them chronologically; that is, within chapters I–IV they are mostly reproduced
in the order of their respective film strip and are not grouped according to motifs, with the exception of
the street photographs of Paris. The intention was to allow the images to come into their own without
removing them from the context of their creation, and thus to bring the act of taking them into play.
In this way, for example, it can be seen what arrangements were made for the best-known portrait of Ill. 105, 109–111

Siegfried Kracauer, the number of attempts that finally brought it about—and finally, too, that Kracauer
took a photograph of his wife at the end of the sitting.

Faithfulness to the published photographic material is an essential feature of this publication, whose
structure was determined from the very beginning by the photographic archive itself. The external guide-
line was to proceed from the photographs themselves in an attempt to outline the photographic practice
of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer. The texts of the individual chapters are understood as simple commen-
taries on the images, and provide the information that seems necessary for their informed viewing and
meaningful interpretation. The recurring chapter heading “Travel and Portraits” arises from the fact that
apart from the pictures taken in Paris during the couple’s emigration there, all the photographs came
about during their travels. “Travel and Portraits” is taken from Lili Kracauer’s labeling of film canisters,
envelopes and accompanying slips of paper, which give important indications for dating and localizing
the photographs. In this respect the book often implicitly falls back on the roughly reconstructed former
order of the photographic archive. The titles for certain images are also found in Lili Kracauer’s notes.
Lili Kracauer herself, the originator of the photographs and the arrangement of their archive, has remained
largely unknown until now. The biographical digression on her in the middle of the book sketches her
career, her work and her life at the side of Siegfried Kracauer.
The chronology in the appendix provides an overview of both lives, followed by a selected bibliography
and a complete list of illustrations.
Essential facets of the author Siegfried Kracauer are highlighted in the following introduction with refer-
ence to certain names, figures, and formulas invoked by readers of his work, friends, and Kracauer him-
self. Some comments about an iconic photograph then bring the focus onto the book’s actual subject
matter: photography.
8
It goes without saying that this book does not contain
photographs from other estates.
Translated from Volker Breidecker, “Foreword,” in
id. (ed.), Siegfried Kracauer – Erwin Panofsky. Briefwechsel,
Berlin 1996, p. VII.
Translated from the description of the “Estate of
Siegfried Kracauer” by the then picture department from
November 23, 1988. Kracauer Estate, Deutsches Literatur-
archiv Marbach (hereafter referred to as KE DLA).
The Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach only holds
a portrait by Fred Stein from 1966; it is part of the DLA’s
portrait collection and was not in the Kracauer estate.
The articles on Siegfried Kracauer from newspapers and
journals collected in the media-documentation department
only show photographs that are part of the Kracauer estate;
the sole exception is a portrait marked “Conti-Press” that
appeared in Die Welt with the article “Film ist Kunst des
Wirklichen,” by Ingeborg Brandt, on July 28, 1958.
 He was a Wunderkind and enfant terrible according
to Walter Benjamin; in “An Outsider Attracts Attention,” Benjamin’s 1930 discussion of The Salaried
Masses, he is called both, and a “troublemaker” and a “spoilsport” in “one person.” These descriptive
epithets are not so much intended to identify Siegfried Kracauer’s social position as to emphasize his
unorthodox way of working. Kracauer cannot be pinned down to a single discipline: he studied philoso-
phy (with Georg Simmel in Berlin, and others), took a PhD in his main subject of architecture in 1914, and
worked for a few years as an architect before starting to earn his living on the staff of the newspaper Frank-
furter Zeitung. Between 1921 and 1933 he wrote almost 2,000 articles—news stories, reviews and essays
under several acronyms “about everything that figured under the rubric of culture, and increasingly areas
and topics that did not” —including his now most famous essay The Mass Ornament and more than 600
film reviews. So Siegfried Kracauer is preeminent among the first generation of critical theorists in regard
to film.
Kracauer certainly had a reputation in the Weimar Republic, and so it was also an open secret as to who
was the author of the anonymous novel Ginster. Written by Himself, published in 1928. Kracauer contin-
ued to play his game, however, and declared Ginster to be the author of his novel Georg, which he worked
on from 1929 to 1934. During this time he was transferred to the Berlin office of the Frankfurter Zeitung
as head of its features section. When Kracauer and his wife Lili moved from the River Main to the Spree in
1930, Benjamin’s comment was, “It is good for the city to have its enemy within its walls. Let us hope that
it will know how to silence him … by making use of him in its own best interests.”
As we know, this hope was not fulfilled. Immediately after the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933 Siegfried
and Lili Kracauer fled from Berlin to Paris, and when the Frankfurter Zeitung dropped its longstanding
editor only a few weeks later he summarized its reasons in his self-description as “Jew and left-winger,”
an observation that—despite the vagueness of the appellation “left-winger”—is quite untypical of him in
its directness. Even in his correspondence Kracauer preferred to describe himself in metaphorical com-
parisons, for example drawing analogies between himself and literary or historical figures that appear
in his writings. He also selected his subject matter according to similarity—a methodological decision
that followed the principle of “like recognizes like.” So the central figure of his “social biography” Jacques
Offenbach and the Paris of his Time (1937) is the German-Jewish composer Offenbach. When Kracauer
compares him with the carefree spirit Ariel, he outlines his own wish not to be spatially or temporally
determined. His insistence on extra-territoriality was so continuous and emphatic that his whole life can
be interpreted in this light. Kracauer’s tendency towards “inconspicuous surface-level expressions” is
also reflected in the “irresistible attachment to the surface of life as the place … of least solidification”
that he attributes to Offenbach. Here can be seen the bright reverse side of the “all-pervading fear of the
fixed” that Kracauer singles out in the humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam in his last, uncompleted
book History. The Last Things before the Last (posthumously published in 1969): “From the angle of the
world Erasmus was a fickle customer indeed.”
It is almost impossible to reduce a flexible thinker like Kracauer to common categories, and so in retro-
spect one might be tempted to see him as the “missing link between the Frankfurt School and the New
York intellectuals.” Declaring Kracauer an intermediary between these two established poles would be a
mistake, but a position as “missing link” would be appropriate in as much as what he said about Erasmus
applied to him too, namely that “his aversion to formulas and recipes … prompted him to keep his ideas,
so to speak, in a fluid state; they did not, and could not, jell into an institutionalized program.” The right
place for such ideas lies in the interstices between the doctrines of an epoch, and within these interstices
Kracauer sees an essential but elusive message: “The message I have in mind concerns the possibility
that none of the contending causes is the last word on the last issues at stake; and that there is, on the
contrary, a way of thinking and living which, if we could only follow it, would permit us to burn through
the causes and thus dispose of them – a way which, for lack of a better word, or a word at all, may be called
humane.”
Kracauer, who had been able to escape from Europe with his wife in early 1941, began to publish in Eng-
lish only six months after his arrival in New York, and after a year he was no longer writing from the per-
spective of a European observer. In his essay “Why France Liked Our Films” he addressed an American
public as an “American.” The studies he published subsequently, From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological
History of the German Film (1947) and Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960)—two of the
most important post-war film books—made him into a leading, if controversial, film theorist in America.
This reputation also reached Germany, and when a new edition of his Offenbach biography was being
prepared there Kracauer asked not to be introduced as a “film man,” adding “(as for film, it was always
only a hobby, a way of making certain sociological and philosophical statements).” If this is not sim-
ply discounted as an understatement, Kracauer’s intensive involvement with film over many decades was
methodologically equivalent to a side issue: “He praised the method, because it attached importance to
subsidiary matters and used the back alleys. It was made for detectives.” A keen reader of crime fiction,
Kracauer was not without good reason once called a “detective of the cinema.”
The fact that he was dismissed by some film theorists as an all too gullible apologist of realism is consi-
dered unproductive by others. Theodor W. Adorno must take some blame for this with his portrait “The
Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer.” This ambivalent homage on the occasion of Kracauer’s seventy-
fifth birthday, in which Adorno says he thought “with an eye that is astonished almost to helplessness,”
was the subject of several letters between the two in the fall of 1964 in which they conducted a bitter
argument that appears to be symptomatic of their tense friendship. Among other things Kracauer accuses
Adorno of having misinterpreted his work and thought in the light of a preconceived “theory of adapta-
tion.” Adorno jibes back that Kracauer shows “a tendency … to direct the reception of his concerns and
image,” which Kracauer rejects, saying that as a friend he was coming “out of his reserve for once and
12

playing the pilot.” The fact that Kracauer had already had misgivings and tried to pilot Adorno is shown
in a letter of January 1964 in which he notes that it was quite false to describe him (as in a recently pub-
lished review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) as a “stimulator and conveyor of ideas,” and then,
recalling his early books Ginster and The Salaried Masses, evokes a very different characterization: “Do
you remember what Benjamin wrote about The Salaried Masses? That I went around like a ragpicker—he
meant at the dawn of the revolution, hélas.”
In the letter preceding this one he had brought another figure from his work of the 1930s into play, saying
“There’s … a lot of Sancho Panza in me.” He is referring to the character who is brought out from the
shadow of Don Quixote in Franz Kafka’s “The Truth about Sancho Panza.” Siegfried Kracuauer’s last
book, History. The Last Things before the Last, closes with a quote from this text in which Sancho Panza is
described as a “free man,” a definition that points to a utopian “terra incognita”:

Without making any boast of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of years, by devouring a great
number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from
his demon whom he later called Don Quixote, that his demon thereupon set out in perfect freedom
and the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack of a preordained object, which should have
been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody. A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don
Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a sense of responsibility, and had of them a great and edifying
entertainment to the end.

Among the photographic material in the Kracauer estate there are also some shards of a glass negative. For
the exhibition to mark the 100th birthday of Siegfried Kracauer at the Schiller-Nationalmuseum Marbach
in 1989, these fragments were put together like a jigsaw puzzle and a print taken from the roughly recon-
structed negative. This portrait, which was published for the first time in the exhibition catalogue, has Ill. 1

been widely distributed since then. But Lili and Siegfried Kracauer never saw it, and as such it is not part
of their photographic archive.
Not all the shards of the negative were preserved—the print shows that there is an L-shaped piece miss-
ing from the upper part—and the edges of the fragments run like fissures through the portrait. What can
actually be seen in this now iconic photograph is what the art historian Peter Geimer calls an accidental
image. The description is apt, even though the print was deliberately taken from the broken negative. The
accidental consists in the breakage of the negative prior to the montage. The image created in this way
shows Siegfried Kracauer but also the glass it is made of: “Thanks to an accident, what usually disappears
in the transparency of the image carrier has become visible.” What this “iconic photograph” makes vis-
ible, in that it also unavoidably displays the “real damage to the image carrier,” is the “medium of this
visualization itself,” photography. The eye inescapably takes in both “the photographic portrait and the
visibility of the material from which it is made.” Nonetheless, many interpretations of this portrait ignore
the obvious difference between image and image interference. This ranges from misunderstandings such
as the description “Siegfried Kracauer behind shattered glass” and the idea that Kracauer is reflected
here in a broken mirror, to symbolically charged readings that see in the real damage to the image carrier
the “fragmented whole, which the theorist of modernism loved so much.” Elsewhere the photograph is
seen as proof of “how little Kracauer [can be] held by the medium of the visible”: Kracauer seems “to want
to escape in the next moment—into the invisible” through the “fissures in the cracked surface.” This
kind of merging of image and interference sometimes derives from the call to leave an image “made by
those involved with [Kracauer]” untouched. The “prosaic explanation” of “montage” is thus dismissed as
irrelevant.
Yet a number of things can be said about this photograph, which has entered the visual memory of
Kracauer-readers, on the basis of the existing material. The “original accident” must have happened
somewhere on the negative’s fifty-year journey from Germany via France to the United States and back to
Germany. When the glass plate came to light during preparations for the anniversary exhibition Siegfried
Kracauer. 1889–1966, it was in fragments, and these had to be put together in order to find out what was
on the negative at all. It is only a small step from this montage to the decision to take a print and secure
the image. The result of reconstructing the image carrier is a constructed image of Siegfried Kracauer. The
portrait is streaked by many flaws, one of which, a curved black line, cuts Kracauer’s face into two halves
diagonally from top to bottom, right through one eye. The traces of damage overlay what is depicted. The
gaping L-shaped hole above center entirely disrupts the transparency of the photographic medium.
The originally intended motif of the photograph was only a bust of Kracauer from the central section, as
a print taken from the negative plate (when it was still intact) shows. The usual procedure at the time was Ill. 178

not to determine the actual image at the shoot but during development in the darkroom. Apart from the
original print, the Kracauer photographic archive contains two magazine clippings of the portrait, which Ill. 2

Kracauer also submitted for his entry in the Reichshandbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft of 1930/31. The
aim of the sitting was apparently to obtain a publishable photograph of the man then known as a journal-
ist on the Frankfurter Zeitung.
The photograph was probably taken earlier, as Kracauer’s appearance, and above all his clothing, suggests:
Kracauer had discarded the stiff white collar, the dickey and the bow tie before 1930; portraits after this
date show him in a three-piece suit and tie. A dating to the second half of the 1920s is also confirmed by Ill. 177–180

Lili Kracauer’s ordering of the archive: the original print was sorted into an envelope labeled in English
“Childhood etc,” which contained three other portraits of the young Kracauer along with photographs
of him as a youth and child. What the original print conceals comes to light in the one taken from the
broken plate, namely the situation in which the photograph was shot: Kracauer sits on a table for a por-
trait in a typical semi-profile; with his legs crossed, he stabilizes his pose by propping his hands on the
tabletop. Not much can be seen of the room, apart from the side of a tall cupboard that casts its shadow
onto a wall topped with a transom window. Kracauer is photographed in front of this wall, next to him
an oddly folded sheet of white paper. The sparse details indicate that the photograph was not taken in a
studio. The situation seems improvised; an amateur was probably at work here. This impression is con-
firmed by the presence in the Kracauer estate of the negative plate, which a professional studio would
have retained. Although it cannot be determined exactly when the sitting took place, an approximate time
can be narrowed down. The photograph must have been taken by 1930 at the latest, as this was the year in
which Kracauer submitted the portrait, that is, the print of the bust, to the Reichshandbuch der Deutschen
Gesellschaft.
14

In summary it can be said that the iconic photograph goes back to a portrait that Siegfried Kracauer had
taken around 1927 in Frankfurt am Main, perhaps in the offices of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and most
probably by an amateur photographer. In Walter Benjamin’s eyes professional studios were places that
“occupied so ambiguous a place between execution and representation, between torture chamber and
throne room,” and Kracauer certainly saw things similarly. He was extremely suspicious of the gimmicks
used by average studio photographers, because they “strive from the beginning not so much to reproduce
their subject as to demonstrate all the effects that can be teased out of it.” In giving preference to an
amateur, Kracauer made sure that his likeness was not abused for the realization of an artistic concept.
In this constellation he could gain more control over his public image, and later he was to find the ideal
personal photographer in his wife. The photographic interaction between Lili and Siegfried Kracauer over
many decades brought about portraits in which “instead of the face being forced into a strange perspec-
tive … it is the essence of the person being portrayed that determines the style.”

Walter Benjamin, “An Outsider Attracts Attention,”
trans. Quintin Hoare, in Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried
Masses, London, New York 1998, p. 109–114.
For the pseudonyms and acronyms used by Kracauer
see Thomas Y. Levin, Siegfried Kracauer. Eine Bibliographie
seiner Schriften, Marbach am Neckar 1989, p. 18ff. and
p. 386–388.
Miriam Hansen, Cinema and Experience. Siegfried Kra-
cauer, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno,
Berkeley 2012, p. 3f.
See Hansen, Cinema and Experience, loc. cit., p. xi.
Hansen uses the term “critical theory” in a wider sense,
common in the 1960s, which includes the members of the
Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno,
Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal along with thinkers
with various connections to Marxist theory, such as Walter
Benjamin, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer; furthermore
the younger generation of authors, such as Jürgen Haber-
mas, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge.
Excerpts from the manuscript of Georg appeared in
1929 in the Frankfurter Zeitung and the anthology 24 Neue
Deutsche Erzähler, edited by Hermann Kesten; in both
cases the author was given as “Ginster.” See Levin, Siegfried
Kracauer. Eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften, loc. cit., p. 211
and 217. The novel appeared posthumously in 1973, but not
until 1977 in a single edition.
Walter Benjamin, “Review of Kracauer’s Die Ange-
stellten,” in ibid. Selected Writings, vol. 2, ed. Michael W.
Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith, Cambridge MA
1999, p. 357.
“They want to be rid of the Jew and left-winger, nothing
more. And I worked eleven years for that,” Kracauer wrote
from Paris in April 1933; translated from Ingrid Belke and
Irina Renz (compilers), Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966, Mar-
bacher Magazin 47/1988, Marbach am Neckar 1988, p. 76.
See Martin Jay, “The Extraterritorial Life of Siegfried
Kracauer,” in id., Permanent Exiles. Essays on the Intellectual
Migration from Germany to America, New York 1985.
Translated from Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach
und das Paris seiner Zeit (1937), Frankfurt am Main 1976.
These passages are omitted in the English edition.
Siegfried Kracauer, History. The Last Things before the
Last (1969), completed by Oskar Kristeller, Princeton 1995.
Kracauer, History, loc. cit., p. 13. For the autobiographi-
cal dimension of Kracauer’s portrait of Erasmus in History.
The Last Things before the Last see Philippe Despoix, “Une
histoire autre?” in id. and Peter Schöttler (eds.), Siegfried
Kracauer. Penseur de l’histoire, Paris 2006, p. 13–28.
For Kracauer’s connection to the Institute for Social
Research in Frankfurt and the New York intellectuals (such
as Hannah Arendt, Clement Greenberg, Robert Warshow)
see Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson, Siegfried
Kracauer’s American Writings. Essays on Film and Popular
Culture, Berkeley 2012, p. 12.
See Kracauer, History, loc. cit., p. 11
Id., p. 8.
Von Moltke and Rawson (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer’s
American Writings, loc. cit., p. 33–40. (Originally published
in National Board of Review Magazine 17, no. 5 (May 1942),
p. 15–19.)
Von Moltke and Rawson (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer’s
American Writings, loc. cit., p. 4, 5.
Siegfried Kracauer to Wolfgang Weyrauch, letter of June
4, 1962, translated from Belke/Renz, Siegfried Kracauer
1889–1966, loc. cit. p. 118.
Translated from Siegfried Kracauer, Ginster, in Werke
vol. 7, p. 42.
Translated from Heide Schlüpmann, Ein Detektiv des
Kinos: Studien zu Siegfried Kracauers Filmtheorie, Frankfurt
am Main 1998.
See Gertrud Koch, Kracauer zur Einführung, Hamburg
1996, introduction.
Theodor W. Adorno, “The Curious Realist: on Siegfried
Kracauer” (1964), trans. Sherry Weber Nicholson, in New
German Critique, no. 54 (1991) 1992, p. 160.
Points of view opposed to Adorno’s description of Kracauer
are given in the portraits by Martin Jay, “Kracauer, the Magi-
cal Nominalist,” in von Moltke and Rawson (eds.), Siegfried
Kracauer’s American Writings, loc. cit., p. 227–235; and Axel
Honneth, “Der destruktive Realist. Zum sozialphilosophis-
chen Erbe Siegfried Kracauers,” in id., Vivisektionen eines
Zeitalters, Suhrkamp Berlin, 2014, p. 120–142.
Letters from October and November 1964, translated
from Theodor W. Adorno – Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel
1923–1966, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 678, 682, and 689.
Translated from ibid., p. 639. Kracauer’s memory is
quite precise; in 1930 Benjamin wrote (here in the transla-
tion from 1998): “And if we wish to visualize him just for
himself, in the solitude of his craft and his endeavor, we
see: a ragpicker at daybreak, lancing with his stick scraps
of language and tatters of speech in order to throw them
into his cart, grumblingly, stubbornly, somewhat the worse
for drink, and not without now and again letting one or
other of these faded calicoes—‘humanity,’ ‘inner nature,’
‘enrichment’—flutter ironically in the dawn breeze.
A ragpicker at daybreak—in the dawn of the day of revolu-
tion.” Walter Benjamin, “‘An Outsider Attracts Attention’,”
loc. cit., p. 114.
Translated from Theodor W. Adorno – Siegfried Kracauer.
Briefwechsel 1923–1966, loc cit., p. 633.
Kracauer first wrote about this text in 1931 in his essay
Franz Kafka, which he later included in his anthology
The Mass Ornament, published in 1963. For the importance of
the figure of Sancho Panza in Kracauer’s work see Stephanie
Baumann, Im Vorraum der Geschichte. Siegfried Kracauers His-
tory. The Last Things Before the Last, Konstanz 2014, passim.
Kracauer, History, loc. cit., p. 24f. Kracauer quotes from
Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes, New York 1966, p. 179.
Belke/Renz, Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966, loc. cit.
Translated from Peter Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen. Eine
Geschichte fotografischer Erscheinungen, Hamburg 2010,
p. 9. In the introduction Geimer discusses a view of Paris by
the Hungarian photographer André Kertész: the photograph
shows both the city and a network of fissures and a black
hole. Kertész took a print from its broken glass negative,
and called the resulting image Broken Plate.
Translated from ibid., p. 67.
This was the caption in Jochen Stöckmann, “Aufklärer
aus Passion. Zum 100. Geburtstag von Siegfried Kracauer,”
in Hannoversche Allgemeine, February 8, 1989.
“Das zersplitterte Ganze, das der Theoretiker der
Moderne so sehr liebte: Siegfried Kracauer um 1930,”
caption; Lorenz Jäger, “Freddies oder vielmehr Teddies
Lehrjahre. Der junge Adorno in Briefen Siegfried Kracauers
an Leo Löwenthal,” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
April 28, 2003.
Translated from Inka Mülder-Bach, “Schlupflöcher.
Die Diskontinuität des Kontinuierlichen im Werk Siegfried
Kracauers,” in Michael Kessler and Thomas Y. Levin, Sieg-
fried Kracauer. Neue Interpretationen. Tübingen 1989, p. 263f.
Translated from Jacques Revel, “Siegfried Kracauer
et le monde d’en bas (Présentation),” in L’histoire. Des
avant-dernières choses, ed. Nia Perivolaropoulou and
Philippe Despoix, Paris 2006, p. 9f.
16
For the definition of the original accident in the
medium of photography see Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen,
loc. cit., p. 61.
Imperial Manual of German Society.
A reproduction of the print from the broken glass nega-
tive appears on the cover of Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966,
Marbacher Magazin 47/1988; the photograph is commented
on the back as follows: “Siegfried Kracauer / photograph
from 1930 / the section in the envelope reproduces the
portrait that Kracauer gave to the ‘Reichshandbuch der
Deutschen Gesellschaft’ for 1930.” This was the two-volume
Reichshandbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft – Das Handbuch
der Persönlichkeiten in Wort und Bild [Imperial Manual of
German Society – The Manual of Personalities in Word and
Image], Berlin 1930/31.
Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” trans.
Rodney Livingstone and others, in id. Selected Writings, vol.
2, Cambridge MA 1999, p. 515.
Siegfried Kracauer, “A Note on Portrait Photography,” in
Philippe Despoix, Maria Zinfert (eds.) The Past’s Threshold,
Berlin 2014, p. 59. Originally appeared in Frankfurter
Zeitung February, 1933.
Ibid., p. 61
Ill. 1: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., print from a broken glass negative.
18

Ill. 2: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., newspaper cutting.

 Lili Kracauer began taking photographs with the
small-format Leica III in 1934 in Paris. The identification of the camera and the date are based on research
in her library, which is part of the Kracauer estate. This contains books on using the Leica that appeared
in 1934 or later, with inserted operating instructions from the manufacturers Leitz (Wetzlar) for the Leica
III, which went on sale in 1933. The fact that the camera was not used by Siegfried Kracauer but his wife Ill. 236–242

is suggested (in passing) by the newspaper cuttings about domestic appliances and the like inserted into
photography books and others; but the more substantial evidence is the presence in Lili Kracauer’s papers
of excerpts from My Experiences with the Leica, by Paul Wolff, and further commented transcriptions from Ill. 230–232

various books on photography. Lili Kracauer’s documents also contain handwritten tables on which she
notes shot-for-shot—sometimes with dates—the subject, time of day and lighting conditions, distance
from the subject, exposure time, and lens used for the photographs taken in Paris. These and other tables
on exposure time speak very clearly for the start of her autodidactic picture-taking during her years of emi-
gration in Paris. Another clear indication that Lili Kracauer was the photographer and not her husband is
given by Siegfried Kracauer himself. In July 1960 he wrote in a letter from New York:

A practical request: … could you find out the soundest, most reliable and best photographic shop? It
would have to be a recognized dealer for the Leika [sic] camera. My wife, whose Leika was stolen in
Venice two years ago, would like to buy a new one with accessories in Munich.

So the Leica belonged to Lili Kracauer. Siegfried’s insistence on the soundest, most reliable and best estab-
lishment for the purchase of the new camera is revealing. Munich probably did not have the right store,
because by all appearances the new appliance was bought in Zurich in the summer of 1960. An indica-
tion for this is a Leica brochure from a shop on the city’s Bahnhofstrasse. The importance ascribed to
photography is shown in the obvious care with which the equipment was put together. Even Lili’s first
camera of 1934 wasn’t bought just anywhere, but from Tiranty, on the rue La Fayette, the French represen-
tative of Leica since the introduction of the camera in 1925.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

The portrait Dr. Siegfried Kracauer 1930, in which the subject poses with a pipe, is a typical Kracauer Ill. 3, 4

portrait—and for its time also a typical portrait of an author. In the decades before and after the Second
World War the pipe was much in vogue as the insigne of the writer’s profession: the young Marie Luise
Kaschnitz, for example, took on the pose of a pipe smoker for a portrait photograph, and thus indicated
her affiliation to a male-dominated domain. Siegfried Kracauer, however, was so closely attached to the
pipe that he is unambiguously represented by the object in the painting Portrait of Elisabeth Kracauer-
Ehrenreich, painted in 1935. I would like to consider one of the earliest examples of this pose, dated
according to its caption to 1930, in the context of the film with which it was shot, and at the same time
as an example of how the time and place of creation of individual photographs can be determined from
archived material.
The scan of the film strip and the original contact sheets show that the portrait is one of four similar pho- Ill. 5

tographs. The one in which Kracauer can be seen with a pipe in his hand was finally chosen for enlarge-
ment. Before Lili Kracauer took the portraits she made several studies of two still lifes, which are named
as “apples” or “tulips” on the tables that go with the film. The location is indicated by pictures of the Eiffel Ill. 6, 7, 230

Tower, the Jardins du Trocadéro and the Palais du Trocadéro, of which the original contacts still exist. The
print of the portrait bears the original label “Dr. Siegfried Kracauer 1930” on the back. However, dating Ill. 4

the photograph to 1930 would contradict the verifiable beginning of Lili Kracauer’s photographic activity
in 1934. The solution is hidden in another label: the lid of the film canister reads “former Trocadéro /
14. Juillet / Café on the Luxembourg / 1st still lifes / portraits Fr.” Apart from the first still lifes and the Ill. 222

portraits [of] Fr[iedel], this identifies pictures that were taken on July 14, the French national holiday,
which excludes a dating of the photograph to 1930, as the Kracauers were not in Paris at this time (see
chronology). So how did the photograph come to be predated by four years? The addition of former on
the film canister indicates that the photographic material was not labeled immediately but at a (much)
later time. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the films shot in Paris only came into Lili Kracauer’s
hands again in 1950 in New York, and that she had new prints made and labeled the material there. In
a letter to Adorno, Kracauer wrote: “During the past few weeks Lili and I have ordered a lot of old papers
that had been lying in disorder in two boxes from Paris. It was a real sensation: the past revisited,* le temps
retrouvé.” Although the photographs are not mentioned in the list that follows, it is very probable that
they had been left behind in Paris with the manuscripts Kracauer mentions when the couple fled from the
Germans in 1940. At any rate the “[Palais du] Trocadéro” described in the labeling of the film canister as
“former” must have already belonged to the past. Its demolition began in summer 1935, so the film, and
thus the portrait Dr. Siegfried Kracauer 1930, must be dated to 1934. The note on the back may thus be
understood as identifying the decade in which Lili Kracauer began to make portraits of her husband, the
author.
While portrait photography was to become a main theme of the coming decades, nighttime photographs,
such as can be seen on the same film strip, were only taken in Paris during the couple’s emigration.
Examples are the last three shots of brightly lit cafés and the photographs taken on July 14 with artificial
light. The street lights create their own effects and sometimes outshine the motif: the Sacré-Cœur church, Ill. 12, 13

* Here and throughout the book, originally English phrases in letters or notes by Siegfried and Lili Kracauer are given in italics.
22

photographed by night from a considerable distance, can only be vaguely recognized under a magnifying
glass behind spots of light. The two photographs of the “July booths,” which each show the rear view of Ill. 10, 11

a person in front of a brightly lit fairground stall, are much more successful. A woman in one, a man in
the other, appear only as clearly defined dark surfaces. If they could be identified with certainty as the out-
lines of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, it would be an early example of their taking each other’s photograph,
of which more will be said later. But perhaps these are just two people photographed by chance on Bastille
Day 1934 in the glitter of the revolving wheel of fortune.

The 1930s, with the appearance of the small-format camera, were the start of the great era of street
photography. The Paris pictures by the keen amateur Lili Kracauer belong to this genre, concerned with
public and everyday moments of city life, which Siegfried Kracauer had written about in the previous
decade. One of the professional representatives of this branch of photography was the Hungarian André
Kertész. Lili Kracauer owned the first edition of his Paris vu par André Kertész (1934), and some of her
motifs, such as the roofs of Paris and the Seine, recall those of Kertész. But in comparison it is noticeable
that she keeps more distance from people and things. Ill. 14–17, 48

As a self-taught photographer, Lili Kracauer also imitated certain motifs. One of her night shots corre-
sponds to an example from one of her photography books. The image of the obelisk on the Place de la
Concorde is shot through the water of the fountain, after the famous Brassaï. The fact that she did not Ill. 22, 237

follow her examples slavishly is shown in her nighttime Aux Trois Quartiers. While the original, repro-
duced in her photography primer, is focused on a group of passers-by and the building simply happens
to be shown as well, Lili’s photograph of the department store—built in 1932 on the boulevard de la
Madeleine—makes it the chief subject matter. In another of her night photographs a woman can be seen Ill. 23

in front of the entrance to a cinema, in silent dialogue with a liveried doorman. She seems undecided.
The illuminated letters announce the comedy New York–Miami (1934), with Claudette Colbert and Clark Ill. 24

Gable. The film has already begun. The street is empty, the tables in front of the little café next door are
unoccupied. It is winter, January 1935. Ill. 231

Benjamin emphasized the essential desertedness of the streets and café terraces in the photographs of
Eugéne Atget: “They are not lonely, merely without mood; the city in these pictures looks cleared out.”
Atget’s achievement, Benjamin continues, “gives free play to the politically educated eye, under whose
gaze all intimacies are sacrificed to the illumination of detail.” Some of Lili Kracauer’s photographs
are also characterized by such emptiness, for example the one of the street corner with the little bar
Au Petit Quinquin, or the images of the town hall square in the 19th arrondissement: suburban mood, Ill. 29–33

nothing special, isolated passers-by, a bus, fire walls, and a chimney. Taken on a Sunday in January 1935; Ill. 231

“Misty sunny day / Cold!” notes Lili Kracauer in her table. The emptiness is the most impressive in the
Les Halles. The freshly-cleaned pathway between cleared butchers’ stalls feels like a hollow echo of the Ill. 25

bustling activity usually associated with the place.

As Benjamin says, “Atget almost always passed by the ‘great sights and the so-called landmarks’,” and
so he photographed Saint-Sulpice from a small side street, and the high dark wall on the left is no less
I. PARIS. 1930 S

important a part of the image than the brightly-shining church at the right-hand edge of the picture. This
description also applies to Lili Kracauer’s photographs of Saint-Sulpice; she too photographed the church Ill. 21

from the rue Férou, standing next to the same high wall as Atget, but about thirty yards closer in. During
the three decades between her photograph and Atget’s the reality of the city has changed. In the 1930s the
once bare wall is thickly covered with posters; a car is parked on the edge of the road. Lili Kracauer’s eye
also seems to have been schooled by Atget when she shoots a landmark head on. Of the three large portals
of Notre Dame she photographs the ones in the centre and on the right, while passers-by go about their Ill. 27, 28

daily business as if in front of a showy stage set.

Other Paris photographs by her seem more animated: facades covered with shop signs, busy people; like Ill. 18

the passers-by, the newspaper salesman who has detached himself from the little bunch of colleagues
with his pile of papers is not the central visual element. But his light clothing draws attention to him. We Ill. 20

do not overlook his artificial leg—a veteran of the First World War. Lili Kracauer has an eye for this, too;
it is her generation. But she keeps her distance. Even where she captures a crowd of people, as in the view
from the window of her furnished room in the avenue Mac-Mahon. Everyone is walking or looking in one Ill. 36

direction; something must be going on. Whether it is a military parade, whose tanks and airplanes she
also photographed from the window, remains uncertain, although the photographs are from the same roll Ill. 37, 38

of film from 1937. In retrospect these images seem disturbing, as viewing them involuntarily evokes pic-
tures of the entry of the German army into Paris in 1940, and we think we see an announcement in them
of the impending catastrophe. This similarly applies to the photographs of demolition sites. These images
also threaten to be superimposed by remembered ones of war damage and falsely interpreted in retro- Ill. 39–42

spect. What can in fact be seen are impressions of a lively city that demolishes in order to build anew and
uses building facades, fire walls and palisades as surfaces for posters. The contrasts they capture make Ill. 43, 44

them look entirely modern and brings to mind the poster tear-offs of Raymond Hains in the Paris of the
1950s and 60s. Siegfried Kracauer has seen all of this with his wife, whom he accompanied on her photo-
graphic surveys through the city. Two photographs of demolition sites feature the same small gentleman
in a dark suit and white flat cap. Once he seems to have walked into the shot more by chance (from the
right); the other time he stands before the exposed structures of a block of houses as an observer, his arms
behind his back. The typical head-covering gives rise to the supposition that this passer-by is Kracauer.
And indeed Siegfried Kracauer is recognizable in stature and pose, who like Ginster, the architect hero
of his autobiographical novel, preferred “to dismantle all useful objects back into figures … instead of
having strangely convoluted figures end up as buildings,” and for whom “the appearance of alien worlds
of lines in random places” was a “wonderful experience.”
24
Marcel Natkin, Leica. Sa technique, ses usages, Paris
1933 (second revised and extended edition, undated);
Curt Emmermann, Leica Technik, 8th–11th revised and
extended edition, Halle/Saale undated [the first edition of
1934 was reprinted several times up to 1951]; Paul Wolff,
Meine Erfahrungen mit der Leica, Frankfurt am Main 1934;
W. D. Emanuel, Leica Guide. How to work the Leica and how
to work with the Leica, London, New York 1945. KE DLA.
Instruction complémentaires pour l’emploi du LEICA
modèle III [supplementary operating instruction for the
Leica model III], Wetzlar June 1933; these are inserted into
Appareil Leica avec nouveau chassis Modèle D Mode d’emploi,
[Leica camera with new casing Model D Instructions],
Wetzlar January 1933. In addition there are brochures in
French and German explaining various accessories, also
from the Leitz corporation, printed in Germany between
1932 and 1935, and explanations about the Perutz
Leica-Spezial film that Lili Kracauer used at this time
(ill. 240). KE DLA.
Meine Erfahrungen mit der Leica. Lili Kracauer’s reading
on the history and theory of photography in the Biblio-
thèque nationale in Paris is detailed in a bibliography
among her papers. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer had not practiced photography before the
purchase of the Leica III in Paris. This comes out of a letter
from Hedwig Kracauer, who asks whether there is an ama-
teur photographer among Siegfried and Lili’s acquaintances
who could photograph their new flat (Sybelstraße 35, Berlin-
Charlottenburg, letter of September 24, 1931). KE DLA.
This is emphasized here because Siegfried Kracauer is
falsely given as the author of the photographs from Paris in
Heike Gfrereis (ed.), Reisen. Fotos von unterwegs, exhib. cat.
Deutsche Schillergesellschaft Marbach am Neckar 2014,
p. 498f.
Translated from Siegfried Kracauer to Wolfgang
Weyrauch, letter of July 5, 1960. KE DLA. I thank Volker
Breidecker for pointing out this letter, which confirmed my
theory on completion of my research.
Brochure on the Leica IIIg and Leica Ig, Ernst Leitz
GmbH, with an inserted price list in German and French,
valid from April 1958, with the imprint “Foto Monsted ciné
Zürich Bahnhofstrasse 37” on the last page. KE DLA.
Indicated by the stamp “Tiranty 91 rue La Fayette
Paris IX” on the title page of the brochure Leitz Filtres pour
l’appareil Leica, Wetzlar November 1935; someone buying the
filters there will have bought the camera there too. KE DLA.
Bildnis Elisabeth Kracauer-Ehrenreich (1935), index
no. 24, Hanns Ludwig Katz. The painter was married to
Lili Kracauer’s elder sister Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich. The
portrait shows Lili Kracauer sitting at a large table in front
of an open window. A pipe is painted by her hand on the
tabletop.
A form of Kracauer’s (unloved) first name reserved for
his wife and very old friends.
Translated from Siegfried Kracauer to Theodor W.
Adorno, letter of October 1, 1950, in Theodor W. Adorno –
Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel 1923–1966, loc. cit., p. 449.
The terms “Glücksbude” (lucky booth) and “Juli-Bude”
(July booth) are alternately found in the handwritten mate-
rial. See the list of nighttime photographs glued to the bind-
ing of Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle. Guide pratique de
la photographie dans les intérieurs, au théatre, la nuit dans
la rue, etc., Paris 1934 (ill. 238) and the table of the film
(ill. 230). KE DLA.
J. and R. Wittmann (eds.), Paris vu par André Kertész.
Texte de Pierre Mac Orlan, Paris 1934. This illustrated
book is in the Kracauer library with inserted newspaper
articles from the 1930s, mostly on the subject of the por-
trait; the fact that the book belonged to Lili Kracauer is
indicated by the advertising brochure Wie erklären sich
große Bucherfolge? [How Can Big Literary Successes Be
Explained?] for the literary supplement of the Frankfurter
Zeitung with a handwritten dedication from Siegfried
Kracauer: “For my [illeg.] Lili |illeg.] 25 November 1931.”
The brochure published three articles by Kracauer. See
Levin, Siegfried Kracauer. Eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften,
loc. cit., p. 253, 257, 260.
Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle. Guide pratique de la
photographie dans les intérieurs, au théatre, la nuit dans la rue,
etc., Paris 1934. Brassaï’s photograph is reproduced on p. 62.
I. PARIS. 1930 S
This was the French title of the American film
It Happened One Night, by Frank Capra. Kracauer wrote
about this film: “One still remembers his charming comedy
New York–Miami, which surpasses the Lubitsch comedies in
freshness and observation.” Translated from “Frank Capra”
(1939), Werke, vol. 6.3, loc. cit., p. 271.
Walter Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography,”
trans. Rodney Livingstone and others, in id. Selected
Writings, vol. 2, Cambridge MA 1999, p. 519
This and other Paris photographs are marked on the
back with their title and the address of the apartment the
Kracauers occupied in New York from 1941 to 1955.
KE DLA.
Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography,” loc. cit.,
p. 519.
Église Saint-Sulpice vue de la rue Férou, reproduced in
Laure Beaumont-Maillet (ed.), Atget Paris, Paris 1992, p. 466.
From 1936 to 1939 the Kracauers lived in a furnished
room in the avenue Mac-Mahon, not far from the Arc de
Triomphe, and it can be assumed that this and other photo-
graphs were taken from one of its windows.
Translated from Kracauer, Ginster, in Werke, vol. 7, p. 25.
26

Ill. 3: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris, 1934, paper print.

I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 4: Verso paper print, inscription by Lili Kracauer.

28

Ill. 5: Various motifs, Paris, 1934, contact strips and individual contacts.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 6: Tulips, Paris, 1934, contact.

Ill. 7: Apples, Paris, 1934, contact.
30

Ill. 8–9: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris, 1934, contact.

I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 10: Lucky Booth, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili or Siegfried Kracauer, contact.
Ill. 11: Lucky Booth, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
32

Ill. 12: Café Helvetia Luxembourg, Paris, 1934, paper print.

Ill. 13: Café Helvetia Luxembourg and Café Mephisto, Paris, 1934, contact strip.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 14: Seine embankment, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
Ill. 15: Barge on the Seine, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
34

Ill. 16: Barge at a Seine wharf, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 17: The Roofs of Paris, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
Ill. 18: Facades, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
36

Ill. 19: Photographer in a park, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 20: Newspaper salesman, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
38

Ill. 21: Saint-Sulpice (seen from the rue Férou), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 22: Obelisk on the Place de la Concorde, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
Ill. 23: Aux Trois Quartiers, Paris, January 3, 1935, paper print.
40

Ill. 24: Cinema, Paris, January 16, 1935, paper print.

I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 25: Les Halles, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
Ill. 26: Verso paper print, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Les Halles,” address label, “56 West 75th Street New York City.”
42

Ill. 27: Notre-Dame (portals), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
Ill. 28: Notre-Dame (portals), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, two contacts.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 29: Buttes-Chaumont: Back Wall / Chimney, Paris, January 20, 1935, paper print.
44

Ill. 30–31: Buttes-Chaumont: Town Hall Square, Paris, January 20, 1935, contacts.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 32: Buttes-Chaumont: Chalet and Fire Wall, Paris, January 20, 1935, contact.
46

Ill. 33: Buttes-Chaumont: Rue d’Hautpoul, Paris, January 20, 1935, contact.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 34: Passers-by, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
48

Ill. 35: Anglers, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 36: Café terrace and passers-by, Paris, 1937, paper print.
50

Ill. 37–38: Military parade, Paris, 1937, contacts.

I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 39: Unknown man by the Seine / Eiffel Tower, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, contact.
Ill. 40: Building site, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, contact.
52

Ill. 41–42: Demolition Sites, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, contacts.
I. PARIS. 1930 S

Ill. 43: Demolition Site (right, Siegfried Kracauer?), between 1934 and 1939, contact.
54

Ill. 44: Demolition Site (centre, Siegfried Kracauer?), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, paper print.
 Apart from the images of Paris during the 1930s,
there are no others among Lili Kracauer’s photographs that were taken at the couple’s places of residence.
In later years photography was to be reserved for the summer months and form a unity with traveling. So all
the portraits, with the exception of those taken in Paris, were made on holiday.
Two photographs from a film largely exposed on a journey very probably belong to the portraits of Siegfried
Kracauer taken in Paris. At any rate this is suggested by the shot of Saint-Sulpice that directly precedes them.
The view from the open window corresponds to the background of the already-mentioned portrait by Hanns
Katz, painted after a visit to Paris in 1935, showing his sister-in-law Lili in front of an open window of the
room in the Hotel Madison. Ill. 45, 48

During their years of emigration, Lili and Siegfried Kracauer undertook two extended journeys. They
spent the summer of 1934 in Combloux (Haute-Savoie), and two portraits of Siegfried Kracauer were made Ill. 45–52

on walks in the area. One shows him crossing a field, a typical flat cap on his head, his coat thrown over
his right arm, a book in his left hand. In the preceding photograph he uses the book as a prop to write on.
With his eyes lowered he sits on a rock in the sunshine, writing. The view of the valley opens up beneath
the branch of a tree. An almost identical image shows Lili in the same place, photographed by Siegfried.
Although it was Lili’s job to handle the camera, the two often exchanged positions to take each other’s
photograph. This gave rise to a series of very similar photographs each taken at the same spot. Because of
their clear correlation these pictures can be seen as photographic twins. The estate contains a few original Ill. 46, 47

prints of the photographs Kracauer took of his wife, but not of those in Combloux. Conversely, there is
only a print of a portrait of Lili taken by Siegfried during a sitting in the Hotel Madison in Paris Saint-
Germain, where the Kracauers lived between 1934 and 1936 (see chronology). Only the shots considered Ill. 52

to have been successful were enlarged. As the film strip shows, the portraits of Kracauer taken in the hotel
room are blurred. So too are the three close-ups of Kracauer’s typewriter on the same film, and the inserted Ill. 51

piece of paper shines above the keys as a patch of ghostly white in the dark. These pictures belong to a
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

small series of still lifes created in Paris. This genre no longer appears in the photographs from later years.
But the Kracauers did continue to photograph each other in the post-war decades.
One of Lili Kracauer’s main photographic aims was obviously to make portraits of her husband. The pic-
tures taken in Combloux may have been thought of as private souvenirs, but other images unequivocally
portray the author and were potentially designated for publication. A frequently published photograph
from the years in France can be seen in the Wikipedia article on Siegfried Kracauer; the entry dates it
before 1925 and describes it as anonymous. It was in fact taken by Lili Kracauer in Paris in 1937. This Ill. 53, 54

is shown by her handwritten description, “portrait, Parc Monceau,” on an envelope into which she had
sorted a negative and print of the photograph. Similarly to the portrait described at the beginning of
this chapter, it is the result of several attempts, and here, too, the choice fell on one of the photographs
in which Kracauer poses with a pipe. It can be seen why the picture is falsely described on Wikipedia as
“photo of a young Siegfried Kracauer,” as he does not give the impression of being almost fifty. Also cre-
ated in Paris at more or less the same time is a less well-known portrait that has something of a staged
studio shot. The things reflected in the tabletop are certainly not there by chance. Arranged for the portrait Ill. 55, 56

sitting, book, pipe, ashtray, and box of matches serve as the props for a quite conventional portrayal of a
man of letters. It remained the only experiment of this kind in Lili and Siegfried Kracauer’s collaborative
work on the image of the author.

From July to September 1936 Lili and Siegfried Kracauer were in Italy, stopping in Bolzano and before that
in Verona. In both places photographs were taken that are comparable with those of the streets in Paris. Ill. 59, 60

Striking buildings and alleyways in Bolzano are shot in such a way that they convey architectural details
and at the same time give an impression of the everyday life of their inhabitants. In Verona the interest is Ill. 57, 58

focused on the ancient arena, which is photographed in long shots and close-ups of the seating.
Most of this holiday, which Kracauer as usual also used in order to write, was spent in Upper Bolzano
(South Tyrol). Here the photographs preserved in an envelope labeled “Reportage – kermis / Assunta –
P. P.” were taken. Kermis / Assunta refers to the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August Ill. 61, 62

15, which is marked with traditional festivities in the district of Assunta (Assumption). The description
reportage leads to the supposition that Lili took the photographs for publication, but there is no further
evidence for this. Perhaps this is her characterization of the attitude in which she photographed the
parade of the performers in traditional costume, the bands and the party in the forest tavern. The photo- Ill. 63–69

graphs show Lili Kracauer to be a good observer, a photographer in Kracauer’s sense: “[The photographer]
resembles perhaps most of all the imaginative reader intent on studying and deciphering an elusive text.”
Lili Kracauer followed the festival procession with a keen sense of the incidental and momentary, keeping Ill. 67

her eye on the musicians even after their performance and capturing the comedy of chance constellations. Ill. 68, 69

Several photographs pay tribute to the young hero who attaches the garland to the top of the festive pole. Ill. 63–65

Other boys pose for the photographer in their Sunday best, while the people gathered on and around the
dance floor take as little notice of her as the couple chatting to one side. The varied aspects of the festival,
58

which also include moments of melancholy, are brought together like scenes from a documentary of the
day’s festivities in Maria Assunta. Ill. 66

Fleeing from the Germans in 1940/41, Lili Kracauer stopped taking photographs. There are none from
the years 1940 to 1945, which were spent in great distress in Marseille and under difficult starting circum-
stances in New York.

According to Jörg Später, who is working on a biography
of Kracauer and allowed me access to his research, no other
long journeys were made at this time apart from the ones
mentioned here.
One of these photographs is reproduced on the cover of
Siegfried Kracauer. Eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften, loc.
cit.; here (p. 4) it says “Siegfried Kracauer’s typewriter, pho-
tographed by him.” Indeed it cannot be said with certainty
whether Siegfried or Lili Kracauer took this photograph.
As attested to by the numerous portraits and a special
book on the subject in the Kracauer library, Marcel Natkin,
Manuel du portrait, Paris 1938. This is an introduction
to portrait photography with many examples; among the
papers inserted into the book are several portraits of Oscar
Barnack, “l’inventeur du LEICA,” from Leica brochures.
KE DLA.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Siegfriedkra-
cauer.jpg (accessed March 15, 2014).
The dating results from the film that also contains the
images of the military parade (see note 20, chapter I); the
place is given by the label of an envelope holding prints and
negatives of the portrait, and describes it as a “portrait Parc
Monceau.” KE DLA.
The place results from the film that contains the night-
time photographs of the Place de la Concorde discussed in
chapter I.
As long as no further journeys can be established for the
years of emigration, the photographs from Verona must be
assigned to the summer of 1936. See note 1 of this chapter.
A handwritten list by Lili Kracauer dates the photographs
from Verona as July 6, without a year. KE DLA.
During the couple’s stay in Combloux in 1934,
Kracauer worked on his second autobiographical novel,
Georg; in South Tyrol in 1936 on Jacques Offenbach and the
Paris of his Time.
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film. The Redemption of
Physical Reality, ed. Miriam Hansen, Princeton 1997, p. 16.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 45: Various motifs, Paris and Combloux, 1934, negative scans.
60

Ill. 46: Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print.
Ill. 47: Lili Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 48: View from the window onto Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1934, from a negative scan.
Ill. 49: House, Combloux, 1934, from a negative scan.
62

Ill. 50: Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, paper print.

II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 51: Various motifs, Paris, between 1934 and 1936, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
64

Ill. 52: Lili Kracauer, Paris (Hotel Madison), between 1934 and 1936, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, paper print.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 53: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (Parc Monceau), 1937, two contact strips.
Ill. 54: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (Parc Monceau), 1937, paper print.
66

Ill. 55: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (?), between 1934 and 1936, four contacts.
Ill. 56: Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (?), between 1934 and 1936, paper print.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 57–58: Verona arena, 1936, paper prints.

68

Ill. 59: Building on Weggensteinstraße, Bolzano, 1936, paper print.

Ill. 60: Dr. Streiter Gasse, Bolzano, 1936, paper print.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 61: Various motifs, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
70

Ill. 62: Various motifs, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 63: Women and boys in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
72

Ill. 64: Women and boy at a beer table, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 65: Boys and party guests in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, paper print.
74

Ill. 66: Musician and woman in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, paper print.
II. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. 1930 S

Ill. 67: Girl in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, paper print.
76

Ill. 68: Boy climbing the kermis pole, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
Ill. 69: Boy on the kermis pole and party guests, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, from a negative scan.
 “With a woman like that you can even live in Berlin,”
Ernst Bloch remarked in the summer of 1931 to his friend Siegfried Kracauer. The woman in question
was none other than Lili Kracauer. She had met Siegfried in the mid-1920s in Frankfurt am Main, and
moved with him to Berlin after their wedding in March 1930. Further stages of their life together were
spent in Paris and—after fleeing the Germans via Marseille and Lisbon—New York, where Lili Kracauer
died on March 30, 1971, having dedicated the remaining years of her life to the literary estate of Siegfried
Kracauer. His assistant and colleague since 1930, she remained so after his death on November 26, 1966.

The following pages sketch the life of Lili Kracauer on the basis of various documents from her papers,
which are preserved in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach as part of the Kracauer estate. Under the
heading of CURRICULUM VITAE a typescript signed “Elizabeth Kracauer” (with a Z) summarizes Lili Ill. 244

Kracauer’s career until the late 1940s. This short text begins with the established wording “Born at Stras-
bourg (then Germany” and ends with the statement “I am an American citizen.” Lili and Siegfried Kracauer
had been American citizens since September 1946. After their “dreadful flight from Paris from the
Germans [and] eight difficult months hungering in Marseille, with unsuccessful attempts to go through
Spain illegally,” they finally reached Lisbon in early March 1941 and gained a passage on the completely
overcrowded steamship Nyassa, finally landing at New York on April 25 after a ten-day crossing. Thereafter
April 25 was “a kind of private holiday” for the couple, and American citizenship the patiently awaited
end of over thirteen years of statelessness. “Yes, it’s really only a year until our zid-tissen-shipp,” Kracauer
announces in a letter in the spring of 1945. The jokey spelling of the word is a reminder that immigra-
tion to the United States was also linked to the learning of a new language. Lili Kracauer had grown up
bilingual in Alsace, and Siegfried Kracauer also spoke German and French. English became their third
language, and the one in which Kracauer wrote almost exclusively from 1941 onwards. He “worked ter-
ribly hard” for his “big adventure of becoming an English writer.” And in the same letter: “I don’t want
to concern myself with Germany any more. It is over. But we’re still deeply interested in France.” The
fact that Kracauer jumps to we from one sentence to the next shows that what he says about himself also
DIGRESSION: LILI KRACAUER. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

applies to his wife. She shared their continued interest in France, and certainly their decisive rejection of
Germany as well—although as someone born in Alsace this must have had a different kind of emphasis.
The opening words of her résumé, Born at Strasbourg (then Germany), seem strangely indeterminate. The
omission of a subject stands out, and the lack of a date of birth even more so. The usual sentence would
be I was born at Strasbourg, France, on May 6, 1893. The unexpected addition in brackets, (then Germany),
covers up a gap—the initial stages of her career not mentioned in the CV—and at the same time marks the
first great disruption in the life of Lili Kracauer.
As capital of the imperial land of Alsace-Lorraine, Strasbourg belonged to the German Empire when Elisa-
beth Ehrenreich was born there on 6 May, 1893, and still did while she attended the city’s college for girls
and completed a three-year training as a teacher for girls. From 1912 onwards she worked as a substitute
teacher in several small towns in Alsace-Lorraine until in early 1917 she was finally appointed, “in the
name of the emperor,” to the Municipal College for Girls in Saarburg. When the regions of Alsace and
Lorraine, which had been ceded to Germany after the Franco-German War of 1870/71, were returned to
France as a result of the First World War, Elisabeth Ehrenreich was dismissed from the teaching service
by the French school board in June 1919. After years in the teaching service she was now out of an occu-
pation at the age of twenty-six. Compelled to adopt a new career, she went in the same year to Leipzig,
where she studied violin and piano at the Conservatory of Music and attended lectures in her principal
subject of art history at the university. Until she was obliged to give up these studies after only a few years,
Elisabeth Ehrenreich was one of the very few women enrolled in a German university at this time. The
fact that as a young woman she had spent a decade in the teaching profession is not mentioned in her
American résumé. She only records: “Education: College, Universities and Academies of Music at Strasbourg
and Leipzig, taking my degrees in art history and philology.” Her studies in Strasbourg and Leipzig are run
together in her summary, but in fact they were separated by a decisive turning point. After the turmoil of
the First World War, the country in which Elisabeth Ehrenreich had grown up no longer existed as such.
Her decision to leave France meant staying in Germany.
The only relic in Lili Kracauer’s papers from her Catholic Strasbourg family home is a thin notebook in
which her father, August Ehrenreich, wrote adages and poems by Goethe, Schiller, and now barely known
nineteenth-century authors in ornate handwriting. With poems such as Versailles in the Year of 1870,
by Hans Wachenhusen, and New Year 1871, by Julius Rodenberg, this collection of texts testifies to the
typical nationalism of the period shared by a man from Rhenish Hesse who must have come to Alsace-
Lorraine in the 1880s. He was employed as a secretary by the Imperial Directorate-General of the Railways
in Alsace-Lorraine, based in Strasbourg. Born in Mainz in 1848, he married Marie Caroline Vorhauer, née
Amann, in January 1891 in Strasbourg. Their first daughter, Franziska Josephine Elisabeth, called Fränze,
was born in 1892, followed by Anna Elilsabeth, called Lili, in 1893. Lili and her sister Fränze attended
a college for girls; Fränze then studied the piano, while Lili trained as a teacher. Lili seems to have been
more attached to her father, August Ehrenreich, than to her mother, who was born in Alsace in 1855. Her
estate contains no trace of her mother other than an extract from a register of births.
Following the death of her father in April 1919 and her dismissal from the teaching service shortly after-
wards, Elisabeth Ehrenreich went to Germany, that is, to the Weimar Republic being constituted that year.
Her move to Germany may have been suggested by the equality of the sexes enshrined in the Weimar
80

constitution, through which women had been given the right to vote and had done so for the first time on
a national level in January (in France this took until 1945). But at the same time Lili Ehrenreich had good
reason to leave France. The post-war division of the population of Alsace-Lorraine into four categories
based on ancestry restricted her civil rights. Because of her mixed background she was assigned to cat-
egory B: her mother was a born a Frenchwoman, her father a German.
She seems to have had to break off her studies fairly soon, in 1921, and to concentrate entirely on the pri-
vate tuition in art history, languages and music she had hitherto given on the side. Her earnings from this
would have been an increasingly insufficient livelihood during these years, and her inheritance was ulti-
mately swallowed up by the hyperinflation, which was only stopped in November 1923. Compelled once
again to put her life on a new footing, Lili Ehrenreich moved from Leipzig to Frankfurt am Main, were
she was reunited her with her sister Franziska, with whom she had a very close relationship. In 1924 she
began to work as librarian at the newly founded Institute for Social Research at the University of Frank-
furt. Sometime before the end of 1925, and possibly within the sphere of the institute, she met Siegfried
Kracauer. In the second half of the 1920s the two were already holidaying together, and Kracauer’s novel
Ginster, which appeared anonymously in 1928, was dedicated to Lili: “For L. in memory of Marseille 1926
and 1927.” After her marriage in 1930 Lili Kracauer gave up her job as librarian and became her husband’s
assistant. In April the couple moved to Berlin, where Kracauer took over the editorship of the features
section of the Frankfurter Zeitung. Her CV of the late 1940s contains a remarkable lapse here, saying that
Kracauer had been an editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung until 1930. This false dating obliterates the years
in Berlin, which abruptly ended in February 1933 with the couple’s flight to Paris. Immediately after the
Reichstag fire Siegfried Kracauer had been warned that as an opponent of the Nazis he was threatened
with arrest, upon which he and his wife immediately left Berlin by different routes. They met up again in
March 1933 as emigrants in Paris. This biographical break remains as invisible as the flight from Europe
in 1941 behind the phrase “From 1930 to 1945 I did extensive research for my husband.” The short résumé
is not intended to illustrate existential dislocations but rather to underline professional qualifications.
Mention is made of Lili’s work as translator, linked with a vague reference to contributions to newspapers
and anthologies. It should be noted that in conclusion she gives precedence to her French side when she
writes: “In sum, I am a trained librarian and research worker, with a solid cultural background and an inti-
mate knowledge of Europe, in particular France and Germany. I command three languages: French, German,
English.” Through her origins in Alsace, Lili Kracauer was intimately acquainted with the culture and lan-
guage of France, which was certainly an advantage for her and her husband in their years of emigration.
In their precarious situation Kracauer set about a project intended to remedy their financial plight. In the
fall of 1936 he was able to complete the biography Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of his Time. His wife must
have made a not insignificant contribution to the vast collection of material on which this “social biogra-
phy” was based. At the same time Lili Kracauer began to take photographs, and to read about the history
and theory of photography in the Bibliothèque nationale. It is likely that her reading followed an interest in
giving her practice a historical and theoretical basis rather than the requirements of her work for Kracauer.
But it is not necessary to make a clear distinction between the assistant and the photographer; one can in
fact pursue the idea that Lili Kracauer was a photographer in her function as assistant. Photography was
also the area in which she stepped out of her subordinate position to become an author herself.
DIGRESSION: LILI KRACAUER. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

After Siegfried Kracauer was interned as an “enemy alien” outside Paris in September 1939, Lili made
every possible attempt to obtain his release, finally succeeding two months later. Kracauer’s instructions
and Lili’s efforts in this regard are documented in six letters and fifty postcards that the couple wrote to
one another in French during these weeks. In his desperate situation, Kracauer was able to rely on his wife
entirely: “Je suis si ému de tes efforts inlassables et du courage avec lequel tu téléphone à tout le monde
et fais tant de visite. Tu es la meilleure des femmes; je t’adore, mon Toutou, je t’aime. En pensant à toi, je
me sens si léger, si confiant, si heureux.”
During the couple’s first difficult years in New York, Lili Kracauer contributed to their livelihood through
jobs for which she was overqualified as an academic. The job description research worker in the résumé
stands on the one hand for her activities on behalf of organizations looking for displaced persons in
Europe during the 1940s, on the other for the work she undertook for her husband, the collection and
editing of material. She read and extracted, prepared indexes, corrections, and proofs for Siegfried Kra-
cauer. In short, she was involved in his work from its preparatory research to its printing. Kracauer not
only mentioned this often in letters but honored it in public, as in the opening remarks to From Caligari
to Hitler (1947): “Finally, I wish to thank my wife, though whatever I may say to thank her is insufficient.
As always, she has helped me in the preparation of this book, and as always I have benefited greatly from
her faculty of perceiving the essential and penetrating to its core.” There is a corresponding passage in
the acknowledgements to Theory of Film (1960): “Even though I am fully aware that my wife would prefer
to remain in the background, I cannot possibly avoid naming her here: the sureness of her judgment and
the breadth of her insight were invaluable to me.”
In their collaboration the couple were obviously a perfect team. The tasks were clearly distributed. Lili
Kracauer contributed her abilities and points of view to the publications of the author Kracauer. This divi-
sion of labor followed conventional gender roles, as did the fact that the assistant as such stayed in the
background. But this simply describes the outward aspects of the connection. Notes by Lili Kracauer from
the years following the death of her husband give another perspective on her role. Small handwritten pieces
of paper contain various lists of things to do, codes of conduct and precepts relating to her inner attitude:

– Work for books … sort letters … – apartment: tidy books – re-arrange cupboards … – sort photographic
material lower drawer – lie down often for 1/4 hr, especially before important tel. conversations. If still
tired, then pay attention, very gentle: and above all, short-sweet. Ill. 243

Never think of myself as a single person, who I never was, as I can only exist as 2. This hugely shifts the
perspective (Proust) on life and oneself. Continue to live as a unity … Disciplined, Dignified … Now too
radiate his aura and love, which nourished me for my whole lifetime.

One of these many small pieces of paper bears the words “Love is there” in the margin. This love became
productive in the couple’s collaboration. This is no idealization but corresponds to reality: Kracauer’s life
could only be shared by a woman who was willing and able to contribute to his thinking and writing, as
he worked for long periods every day. For friends it was beyond question that Lili Kracauer shared her
husband’s “intellectual existence,” and they admired the “clear and calm awareness” with which he was
able “to bring about the result of such a connection.”
82

Kracauer’s death altered nothing in the central place in Lili Kracauer’s life of her husband’s work. She did
not want to conceive of herself as an individual person, and continued to live with Kracauer “in the mind.”
Through writing down Kracauer’s figures of speech, such as “Keep well. You’ll do it fine. You always do
it fine” or “Take care of yourself, so you can fight for me,” she reminded herself of both his encourage-
ment and his demands. This must have seemed all the more necessary to her, as in her view Kracauer’s
work and thought needed defending—also against attacks by friends, above all Adorno: “It’ll suit the
T-ies and consorts if I were to break down in pain.” The resolution and skill with which she confronted
T[eddie] Adorno is primarily shown in the letters in which she criticized an obituary by Adorno in detail.
She wrote, for example, about her astonishment at Adorno’s mention of many “handicaps,” as she only
knew of his “nervous speech,” and “this completely disappeared during the time in Berlin”; in her reply to
Adorno’s subsequent explanation she insisted: “Of course I am in favor of not ignoring anti-Semitic injus-
tices at school … I am simply afraid that these injustices are no longer visible in the words ‘under many
handicaps.’ Friends and others ask me in distress about infirmities they had never noticed in Friedel.”
Courageously speaking up for Kracauer was nothing new for Lili, even though she remained in the back-
ground as an assistant. In her notes she says: “We’ll struggle through everything that comes together, and
I, as always for T. T. like a lioness for her cub … and as always I have to take these reins. I have to find the
formula of being for him as he so wants me to be seen by his friends.”
As can be inferred from these notes, Lili Kracauer seems to have acted from a position of strength in
her collaboration with her husband, and at times to have set the agenda, even though her role, that is,
her outward appearance, was defined according to Kracauer’s wishes. The close connection between the
two survived Siegfried Kracauer’s death, and his widow continued to seek her footing there in reminding
herself “What would Toutou say if I let my despair weaken me so much that I wasn’t able to take on the
responsibility for his work, his legacy to me?” Accepting this inheritance meant dedicating her life to the
tasks arising from it.
After Kracauer’s death in November 1966 Lili Kracauer worked on his literary estate. This also included
sorting through the photographic material, which she labeled and arranged in such a way that it could
become the basis of research into a shared photographic practice. But she was primarily concerned with
the more weighty, written part of the estate. Kracauer had been unable to finish his last book, the prep-
aration of which she had also been involved in. First she helped Oskar Kristeller edit History. The Last
Things Before the Last (1969), and was also involved in preparations for the German edition, published by
Suhrkamp in 1971. A few weeks before her death she wrote to Siegfried Unseld: “May I draw your atten-
tion to the fact that in the announcement [in Suhrkamp’s spring catalogue] the translation of the subtitle
is not correct, to my dismay. It should of course read ‘die vorletzten Dinge.’ The Last Things Before the
Last are the essence of the theory, contrary to the last things.” This substantial objection seems not to
have been considered: the title of all German editions so far has been Geschichte. Vor den letzten Dingen
[History. Before the Last Things].

In 1970, at the age of 77, Lili Kracauer had again visited Germany for discussions with Siegfried Unseld,
among other things. She discontinued the journey with great urgency in September, reminded by the air-
plane hijacks and events in the Middle East of her “own experiences during the Hitler era and the last world
DIGRESSION: LILI KRACAUER. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

war.” In her diary she noted: “Unscheduled quick departure. Everything went well.” Her hurried return to
New York was motivated by the fact that there was one thing Lili Kracauer did not want, and that was “to
be separated … from [her] husband’s literary estate,” which she worked on to the last. Another reason
for her journey to Europe had been to pursue “inquiries” in the Frankfurt City Archive and at the former
Frankfurter Zeitung “for a possible work about [her] husband.” This probably had to do with one of the
three books planned by Kracauer before his death, “including an entirely new type and form of an autobi-
ography. Hélas …” as Lili Kracauer wrote in a letter in late 1969. Her regret about this no longer coming
about may have prompted her to take on something like it herself. Her researches in the Frankfurt City
Archive could be an indication of this, even though there is no trace of such a work among her papers—
unless an envelope archived with the photographs is interpreted in this context. It is labeled “Curriculum
vitae in pictures (Friedel),” but by all appearances entered the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach empty. Ill. 218

Yet it strongly suggests that there must at least have been a plan to trace Kracauer’s life in pictures. In the
Frankfurt City Archive Lili Kracauer requested photographs of the Philanthropin—the secondary school
attended by Kracauer, and run by one of Frankfurt’s Jewish congregations—and the Frankfurter Zeitung
building, and had prints made of Kracauer portraits in 1970. We can only speculate about the project
of an entirely new type and form of an autobiography or biography. The portrait photographs were prob-
ably intended for a dossier planned by Suhrkamp to announce the German edition of History. In late
1970 Lili Kracauer sent some photographs to Siegfried Unseld at his request: “I am sending you five (5)
photographs of my husband. They are numbered chronologically.” One of these five photographs must
have been the one Suhrkamp has used ever since. The portrait still gives the name of Siegfried Kracauer Ill. 105–107

its public face.

Extract from a letter found in transcript in Lili
Kracauer’s papers. KE DLA.
Siegfried Kracauer to Friedrich Gubler, translated
from a letter of September 10, 1945. KE DLA.
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer to Marlise and Eugen
Schüfftan, letter of April 22, 1944; translated from Helmut
G. Asper (ed.), Nachrichten aus Hollywood, New York und
anderswo. Der Briefwechsel Eugen und Marlise Schüfftan
mit Siegfried und Lili Kracauer, Trier 2003, p. 57.
Ibid., Kracauers to the Schüfftans, letter of March 31,
1945, p. 60.
See von Moltke and Rawson (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer’s
American Writings, loc. cit., p. 2.
Siegfried Kracauer to Friedrich Gubler, translated from
a letter of May 20, 1946, KE DLA.
In the preprinted line “I solemnly swear that I was
born at …” in her passport application of 1956, she wrote
“Strasbourg, France, on May 6, 1893.” KE DLA.
Her graduation in the summer of 1909 is verified by a
school-leaving certificate, her teacher training by an
examination certificate from June 1912. A tabular overview
of her teaching activities in girls’ colleges during these years
lists the following places: Weißenburg, Dorlisheim, Barr,
Saarburg, Forbach and again Saarburg. KE DLA.
This is verified by a “Letter of Appointment for the
Teacher Elisabeth Ehrenreich.” KE DLA. Saarburg is the
French town of Sarrebourg, département Moselle, région
84
Lorraine, not the German town in the Rhineland-Palatinate.
“As shown in the documents, in September 1915
I was entrusted with the administration of a teaching
position at a municipal college for girls in Saarburg; in
January 1917 I was officially appointed as a teacher at said
college. Following the end of the First World War—in
mid-June 1919—I was relieved of my position by the French
authorities.” Lili Kracauer, “‘Declaration’ to a German
Public Authority,” typescript, undated. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer, “Curriculum Vitae,” typescript, undated.
KE DLA.
There was another older sister, Maria Mathilde, born
in 1882, from her mother’s first marriage to the train driver
Oswald Vorhauer.
The extract was issued on October, 25 1939. KE DLA.
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich (1892–1934) was a pianist
and married to the painter Hanns Ludwig Katz (1892–1940).
Information about their lives can be found in the exhibition
catalogue Hanns Ludwig Katz, Jewish Museum Frankfurt am
Main, 1992.
“Because the inflation caused the loss of the inherited
assets that would have enabled the intensive continua-
tion of my studies, in 1924 I took a job as a librarian at the
Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt
am Main, which I held until 1930.” Lili Kracauer, “Declara-
tion” to a German Public Authority,” typescript, November
8, 1963. KE DLA. In the “Curriculum Vitae” she names
“Professor Max Horkheimer, now affiliated with Columbia
University” as a reference for her activity at the Institute for
Social Research. KE DLA.
The first meeting is not dated exactly, but it must have
occurred before the end of 1925: in the Kracauer library
there is a first edition of Franz Kafka, Ein Landarzt, with the
handwritten dedication “For Lili / Christmas 25. / Friedel.”
KE DLA.
“On March 5, 1930 I married Dr. Siegfried Kracauer,
who in his extensive activities as a journalist on the ‘Frank-
furter Zeitung,’ as a social scientist, and as an author was
dependent on assistants. Thanks to my long experience
and varied professional training I was in a position to take
over all the work my husband required. My activities for
him consisted in the search for material, the production
of excerpts, proof-reading, extensive correspondence, etc.”
Lili Kracauer “Declaration to a German Public Authority,”
typescript, November 8, 1963. KE DLA.
See Belke/Renz, Marbacher Magazin 47/1988, loc. cit.,
p. 70. It seems that Kracauer had been warned by one of
the staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung and sent on a working
holiday to Paris. While Lili Kracauer traveled directly
to Paris, Siegfried went via Frankfurt am Main.
“I’m very moved by all your unremitting efforts and
the courage with which you make phone calls and visits
to everyone. You are the best of women; I adore you, my
Toutou, I love you. Thinking of you I’m so relieved,
so confident, so happy.” Siegfried Kracauer to Lili Kracauer,
letter of September 30, 1939. KE DLA. Five “declarations
of honor” were necessary for a release from internment;
see Belke/Renz, Marbacher Magazin 47/1988, loc. cit., p. 95.
Central Location Index from 1945 to 1948;
United Service for New Americans from 1948 to 1950.
See “Declaration to a German Public Authority,” typescript,
November 8, 1963. KE DLA.
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler. A Psycho-
logical History of the German Film, Princeton 2004,
preface p. lii.
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film. The Redemption
of Physical Reality, Princeton University Press 1997
(first edition Oxford 1960), acknowledgements, p. liv.
These and the following handwritten resolutions and
reminders are found on several loose pieces of paper
distributed among Lili Kracauer’s documents. KE DLA.
Friedrich Gubler to Siegfried Kracauer, translated
from a letter of March 9, 1935, quoted from a transcript
by Lili Kracauer. KE DLA.
The letters refer to the obituary for Siegfried Kracauer
written by Adorno for a volume of lectures by the Research
Group on Poetics and Hermeneutics, including a lecture
by Kracauer. Theodor W. Adorno, “Nach Kracauers Tod”
in Hans Robert Jauß (ed.), Poetik und Hermeneutik. Die nicht
mehr schönen Künste, Munich 1968, p. 6–7.
DIGRESSION: LILI KRACAUER. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Lili Kracauer to Theodor W. Adorno, letters of
March 19 and 27, 1967. KE DLA.
T.T. or T.t. is the abbreviation for Toutou (in the
meaning of “one and all”), a term of endearment used
by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer for one another and fre-
quently found in their papers. In this and the following
letters the underlining is by Lili Kracauer. KE DLA.
“My life here continues to be work for my husband,
and this is … the sole meaning of my life.” Lili Kracauer
to Annemarie and Fritz Wahl, translated from a letter of
December 25, 1969. KE DLA. She expresses herself similarly
in other letters preserved in the estate.
Lili Kracauer to Siegfried Unseld, translated from a let-
ter of February 17, 1971. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Annemarie and Fritz Wahl, translated
from a letter of October 4, 1970. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Annemarie and Fritz Wahl, translated
from a letter of October 4, 1970. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Siegfried Unseld, translated from
a letter of June 19, 1970. KE DLA. In September 1970 the
hijacking of five passenger aircraft—in connection with
the Jordanian civil war—was a cause of much anxiety.
Lili Kracauer to Annemarie and Fritz Wahl, translated
from a letter of December 25, 1969. KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Dietrich Andernacht (then director of
the Frankfurt City Archive), letter of February 5, 1970.
KE DLA. The requested photographs are in the estate.
This is indicated by entries in Lili Kracauer’s diary:
appointments at her preferred New York photo lab
Modernage. KE DLA.
On November 4, 1970 Siegfried Unseld wrote to Lili
Kracauer: “Suhrkamp will … publish a so-called ‘dossier.’
This contains the announcement of the edition, a photo-
graph (perhaps various photographs from different years,
if you could send them to us).” KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Siegfried Unseld, translated from
a letter of November 30, 1970. KE DLA.
86
 After the Kracauers reached America in 1941, Lili
Kracauer did not take up photography again until 1945. In this year the pictures showing Kracauer stand-
ing on the threshold of a vacation home were taken during the summer holidays in Arkville, NY. All the Ill. 70

photographs in the decades following the Second World War were taken in the summer months. In order
to escape the New York heat, the couple spent the weeks from late July until Labor Day in the nearby
mountains up the Hudson or in southern Vermont. From 1947 to 1950 Lili and Siegfried Kracauer vaca-
tioned in Stamford, NY; in 1951 they were in Keene, NY; in 1952, 1953 and 1955 on Lake Minnewaska,
NY; in 1954, 1957 and 1959 in Wilmington, VT. Lili Kracauer took photographs in all of these places—of
the surroundings, but repeatedly also portraits of her husband. For some of these portraits there are cor-
responding pictures taken of her by Kracauer, a photographic interaction mentioned in chapter II. In fact
most of the photographs on a film from their first stay in Stamford are of this type, and images from Ill. 71–79

later years can also be seen as photographic twins. Prints showing Kracauer were sorted into an envelope
labeled “Personal small Vacation-Portraits.”

Although the words personal and small imply that not very much was required of them, and that they
may originally have been more or less typical souvenir photos, they belong to Lili Kracauer’s attempts to
portray her husband the author. The boundaries between public and private, work and leisure, should
not be drawn too rigidly here, as the photographic practice of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer occupies an
inexactly defined intermediate area. Moreover, the images acquire an altered status purely through being
archived, and today’s viewers see something different in them than their photographer did more than
half a century ago. From a comparison of two photographs in his essay Photography (1927), Kracauer
concluded early on that the medium’s “factual meaning will change depending on whether it belongs
to the realm of the present or to some period of the past.” In his Theory of Film (1960) he takes up this
idea again:
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

With the passing of time, these souvenirs undergo a significant change of meaning. As the recollec-
tions they embody fade away, they increasingly assume documentary functions; their impact as photo-
graphic records definitely overshadows their original appeal as memory aids.

Today the Vacation-Portraits can be seen as the result of an experimentation over decades, not only to
create the image of the author but also to gain practical experience with the photographic medium. We can
assume that Lili and Siegfried Kracauer’s shared photographic practice correlates to Kracauer’s theory of
photography. This assumption is admittedly difficult to verify beyond doubt, as the couple’s interchange
took place in direct contact and has not left any immediate written traces. Apart from the photographic
material, so long as Kracauer’s manuscripts have not been examined in this regard it is only possible to
refer to his printed works. A year after the appearance of his book From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological
History of the German Film (1947), Kracauer resumed work on a book on cinematic aesthetics that had
already been conceived in 1940/41. Theory of Film, finally published in 1960, is in fact based on prelimi-
nary work over two decades that brought about an abundance of notes, sketches and outlines. Kracauer
wrote the first three extensive notebooks in the months he and his wife “spent in fear and wretchedness”
in Marseille. What he wanted to show in this book was “the aesthetic of film [as] ascribed to an epoch in
which the old ‘long-shot’ perspective, which somehow aims to capture the absolute, was replaced by the
‘close-up’ perspective, which illuminates this with the isolated, the fragment, perhaps the intended.” “The
exclusive concern” of Theory of Film “is the normal black-and-white film, as it grows out of photography.”
Kracauer’s thoughts about this book—which is dedicated to his wife —proceed from the properties of the
photographic snapshot, which aims to record “fragments of the visible world around us … Which implies
that the respectively presented visible phenomena are (1) non-staged, (2) part of an infinite universe (3)
and, therefore, coincidental. (4) The aim, naturally, is to capture things in motion.” Before this horizon
even the “failed” snapshots taken by Kracauer of his wife appear as successful attempts at a photographic
approach in Kracauer’s sense, although the degree to which they mix control and chance cannot be
decided. With an eye to the Kracauer photographic archive they are important documents that could be Ill. 73, 76, 77, 79, 88

scrutinized for information about the direct link between theory and practice. As images they can have an
aesthetic charm for today’s viewers particularly because of their technical imperfections. These two ways
of seeing them should be distinguished, but not strictly separated: “In our response to photographs, then,
the desire for knowledge and the sense of beauty interpenetrate one another. Often photographs radiate
beauty because they satisfy that desire.”

A series of photographs that Lili and Siegfried Kracauer took of one another during a walk can be dated to Ill. 85–90

the summer of 1950; this at any rate is implied by the labeling on the sheath of cardboard around the roll
of film: “Stamford 1950 / some nice ones.” The original contacts show photographic twins and landscapes. Ill. 82

It cannot be said which of the pictures Lili Kracauer considered nice. What is clear, however, is that she
particularly valued one of them. With the first shot of the freshly inserted film she achieved (by chance?) a
perfect image of the author at work. The negative was cut from the roll of film and kept in a special enve- Ill. 91
90

lope marked “TT on Porch / Stamford Continental.” The image shows Kracauer sitting at a small table on
a wooden veranda. He was photographed from the side at a slightly raised angle, so that his whole body is
captured but his face is lost in profile. Kracauer is absorbed in his work; a pen in his hand, a manuscript
in front of him, he seems to be proof-reading. The composition and visual elements are clearly indicative
of a deliberate variation on the stereotypical portrayal of the writer and scholar. The correspondences
cannot be overlooked: the veranda as ideal-typical threshold between the inner and outer worlds; the writ-
ing utensils and papers on the desk, the perspective onto the scholar in actu, apparently taking no notice
of his surroundings. The motif was certainly familiar to the art historian Lili Kracauer. It cannot be said
whether the photograph was posed or came about spontaneously, without Kracauer playing along. None
of the other portraits showing Kracauer reading or writing correspond so closely to the artistic tradition of
the scholar portrait, which was continued in the medium of photography from its early days. The studiolo
motif, which flourished in the Renaissance, persists even today, and many such photographic portraits
of authors fill the archives. In this context the noticeable lack of a photograph showing Kracauer in his
study is certainly no coincidence. The surviving photographs do not generally allow a view of the private
sphere. The maintenance of a certain distance seems to be a principle that at the same time shows that
photography has always included the potential distribution of its images. On the other hand the (overly)
established motif is avoided, because Kracauer took the standpoint that “the reduction to the minimum
of any unavoidable stylizations with painting-like effect” was “integral to the photographer’s tact.” With
the historical and typological dimension of the authorial portrait in mind, some of the more incidental
photographs seem to be vestiges of the studiolo motif. Objects like pen and paper, pipe and newspaper Ill. 92–94

do not appear by chance when Lili Kracauer portrays her husband; if he photographed her in the same
place, as in 1951 on the veranda of their vacation home in Keene, NY, such props are obscured. One roll Ill. 79

of film from Lake Minnewaska, NY in 1953 is almost entirely devoted to reciprocal photography. The label Ill. 95

“Minnewaska 1953 / portrait / hut” on the cardboard sheath around the film names two things: portraits
and photographs taken at a special place outdoors. The archived negatives show one shot of this empty Ill. 98, 102

hut, whose rough posts are integrated into the other reciprocal photographs as a frame. The robustness
of the countryside wooden pavilion stands in marked contrast to the couple’s formal clothing—both wear
white shirts, suits, and light shoes. This could be interpreted as an indication that the photographs had
been planned and taken with consideration. A closer look at the entire picture sequence shows that the
portrait sitting at the pavilion was repeated: for the second session Lili Kracauer changed her dark suit for Ill. 98–104

a light one. Other photographs were taken indoors, probably in the hotel room in the meantime. Ill. 96, 97

In the same year, and also at Lake Minnewaska, Lili Kracauer took the photograph she later labeled
“Times-print 1966,” —the best-known portrait of the author Siegfried Kracauer. It appeared in 1966 in
the New York Times of November 28 with the obituary probably written by Rudolf Arnheim for the “Social
Scientist and Author Dr. Siegfried Kracauer.” The print used as a master is in the archive, with stamps and
inscriptions of various origins on the back: the rectangular red stamps of the New York Times, the round Ill. 107, 108

blue stamp of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach above right and the penciled inventory number
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

B81 W 100g (her upside down). Other penciled inscriptions are from Lili Kracauer: the name “Siegfried
Kracauer” and the date “1953” can bee seen above right, and “Photo von Elisabeth Kracauer-Ehrenreich”
on the lower left. The later is not an unambiguous proof of copyright, as “von” can mean both “owned
by” and “made available by.” At the time the photograph was printed without its author’s name (as it has
been ever since). The attribution “N° 42 film strip” noted in German on the upper left corresponds to the
archived contacts on which the selected photograph has been marked with several crosses and numbered
42. The archive contains around thirty prints of this photograph in varying formats and image sections. Ill. 105

Lili Kracauer ordered them from two different New York photo labs, and noted her assessment of their Ill. 106

quality on the back. With none of her other photographs did she go anywhere near such lengths.
Further portraits of this kind were made of Kracauer in the first half of the 1950s, and occasionally he took
a picture of his wife in the same position, as in the above-mentioned photographs labeled “Minnewaska
1953 / portrait / hut,” and also at the end of the portrait sitting that produced the famous “Times-print”
photograph, which seems to have been taken with particular care. The film strip shows a row of pictures Ill. 111

of the shoot itself, which give the impression that Lili Kracauer wanted to document the sitting in the
form of a photographic diary. We can see the blanket spread over the back of a chair to provide a neutral Ill. 109, 110

background, and the differing camera angle shows Kracauer adopting a typical pose that can be seen in
other portraits.

Siegfried Kracauer posed on the balcony of the hotel room on Lake Minnewaska for another photograph. Ill. 113

In this case several similar pictures were taken, also including the alignment of the balconies and the pic- Ill. 112

turesque view of the surroundings. The view of the steep wooded banks of Lake Minnewaska shows one Ill. 115, 116

of the wooden pavilions erected at observation points in the area. Described by Lili Kracauer as “huts,”
they were not only the frame for the twin photographs described above but also a motif in the variation Ill. 118, 119

of another typical photographic subject: reflections in motionless water. These photographs should be
categorized as souvenirs, along with those showing Siegfried Kracauer in front of a sign and labeled “very Ill. 117

very bad” by his wife, and a whole series of pictures in which Lili Kracauer documents the activities of Ill. 120–122

the holiday guests at Lake Minnewaska. These include the photograph of the girl with a raccoon, which Ill. 123

stands out because, contrary to all the others, the interaction between those involved in bringing about the
photograph is its actual subject matter. There is no such direct dialogue elsewhere; in general a distance
is maintained from those depicted—although written observation of the hotel guests is animated. From
the summer of 1955 a list is preserved, written on hotel stationary, in which Kracauer typically character-
izes fellow guests in an idiosyncratic mixture of German and English: “The old fool (must dust rooms at
home) … The watchmaker & his wife (our back neighbors in Dining room – snubbed the headwaiter Huckins)
… The repugnant woman (= prison warden) with the man from Giessen (couple) & the well-trimmed bureau
superintendent (couple).” Other lists reveal that during their vacations the Kracauers met many friends
and acquaintances for lunch or supper at varying places. There are no photographs of these meetings,
however, which again shows that for Lili Kracauer photography had its own purposes and did not, as is
generally the case, serve as biographical documentation.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959
clear indication that Lili Kracauer did not immediately
sort and label her photographic material but did so
(at least partially) after Kracauer’s death.
This photograph has become very well known through
the all-round use to which it is still put by Suhrkamp.
Arnheim’s authorship is suggested by the draft of a letter
from Lili Kracauer to him after Kracauer’s death. See Volker
Breidecker, “Ferne Nähe. Kracauer, Panofsky und ‘the
Warburg tradition’,” in id. (ed.), Siegfried Kracauer – Erwin
Panofsky. Briefwechsel, loc. cit., p. 152, footnote 112.
The cutting of the obituary from the New York Times is in
the KE DLA.
As a fourteen-year-old Kracauer kept a comparable
record of his co-pupils; see Belke/ Renz, Siegfried Kracauer
1889–1966, loc. cit., p. 2ff.
Siegfried Kracauer, “Minnewaska 1955 / People,”
handwritten list. KE DLA.
John W. Bennett (1915–2005) was a professor of sociol-
ogy and anthropology from 1959 onwards. The Kracauer
estate contains a correspondence between Kracauer
and Bennett from the years 1957–59.
Siegfried Kracauer to Stanley Crafts, letter of 6 June,
1959. KE DLA.
Siegfried Kracauer to Stanley Crafts, letters of 6 and
15 June, 1959. KE DLA.
94

Ill. 70: Various motifs, Arkville, NY, 1945, negative scans.

III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 71: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photos by Lili und Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
96

Ill. 72: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan.
Ill. 73: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 74: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, contact strip.
Ill. 75: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip.
 98

Ill. 76: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photos by Siegfried Kracauer, contact strip.
Ill. 77: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip.
 98

Ill. 76: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photos by Siegfried Kracauer, contact strip.
Ill. 77: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 78: Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Ill. 79: Lili Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, contact.
100

Ill. 80: Neighbors on the balcony, Keene, NY, 1951, contact.

Ill. 81: Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, contact.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 82: Various motifs, Stamford, NY, 1950, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, six contact strips.
102

Ill. 83–84: Landscape, Stamford, NY, 1950, from contact strip.

III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 85: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, from contact strip.
104

Ill. 86–87: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, from contact strip
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 88: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip.
106

Ill. 89: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip.
Ill. 90: Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 91: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, paper print.

108

Ill. 92: Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, paper print.

III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 93: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, between 1947 and 1950, paper print.
110

Ill. 94: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, between 1947 and 1950, paper print.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 95: Haze, Hut, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
112

Ill. 96: Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan.
Ill. 97: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 98–101: Hut, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan.
114

Ill. 102–104: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Hut, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 105: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, three contact prints with original markings.
116

Ill. 106: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, five of thirty paper prints.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 107: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, paper print.
118

Ill. 108: Verso paper print.

III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 109: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, two contact strips.
Ill. 110: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, from contact strip.
120

Ill. 111: Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 112: Siegfried Kracauer and landscapes, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, two contact strips with original markings.
Ill. 113: Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, from contact strip.
122

Ill. 114: Hotel, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 115: Panorama, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
Ill. 116: Balconies, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
124

Ill. 117: Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, two contacts.

III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 118: Bank of rocks, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
126

Ill. 119: Hut, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 120: Various motifs, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, from contact strips.
128

Ill. 121: Outdoor restaurant, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
Ill. 122: Riders, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 123: Girl with raccoon, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, paper print.
130

Ill. 124: Various motifs, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, negative scans.
III. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. USA 1945–1959

Ill. 125: Bush in blossom, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, from a negative scan.
Ill. 126: Siegfried Kracauer, John W. Bennett and Mrs. Bennett, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, from a negative scan.
132

Ill. 127–128: Barns, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, paper prints.

 After their escape from the Germans in 1940/41,
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer returned to Europe for the first time in the summer of 1956. None of the photo-
graphs in the estate can be ascribed with certainty to this approximately three-month visit, which took
the couple to Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland. After their visits in 1956 and 1958, the Kracauers
spent around three months in Europe every summer from 1960 onwards, but photographs were not taken
in all the places they traveled to. Photographs from Frankfurt am Main, where Kracauer was born, began
his work and spent the first years with his wife, are noticeably lacking. Among the photographs taken by
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer there is not a single picture from Germany. This surely lies in the fact that, as
related in a number of letters, they no longer felt at ease there and only wanted to travel “for professional
reasons” to a country that was “no country but a place, somewhere in a vacuum.” Photography was linked
to travel, but travel did not necessarily mean taking photographs. There was nothing automatic about it,
no urge to collect photographic trophies on every journey.
In the summer of 1958 Siegfried Kracauer accepted an invitation to the Venice Film Festival. The street
photographs taken there by Lili Kracauer have a similarity to her images of Paris in the 1930s: buildings, Ill. 129, 130

alleyways, squares and passers-by form a unity of equal elements. Her photograph of the Scuola Grande di
San Marco is noticeably like that of Notre-Dame. Here too the building is photographed on an equal foot- Ill. 27, 28

ing with the passers-by, whose movements in front of the portals demand as much attention as the details
of the facade. Lili Kracauer’s photography required an attentive seeing, and also a knowledge how people
and things appear in photographic images. Her art historian’s eye had been schooled by her own per-
ceptions and reading (of images). Her photographs also reveal an interest in buildings and architectural
details that Kracauer may have shared and encouraged. This is suggested by the photographs taken in Ath-
ens in 1960, to which Kracauer makes an indirect comment in a letter: “The Acropolis … was a tremendous Ill. 131–135

experience. Now we know what columns are. The elemental power of the propylaia and the Parthenon is
in fact indescribable.” Another consistent characteristic becomes clear once again in these photographs,
and also in those taken of the Roman Forum in 1964: Lili Kracauer makes a clear separation between Ill. 149–152

visual genres. Kracauer is nowhere to be seen in the “kirmis reportage” of 1936, nor in the post-war Euro- Ill. 136

pean street photos, nor the Swiss landscapes. The latter feature a clear division of the pictorial surface into
seemingly geometric formations. This is particularly successful in a photograph in which the triangular Ill. 137

form of the dark roof of a cottage is repeated in the lighter slope behind it, and finally in the snowcapped
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

peak in the distance. In Switzerland Lili Kracauer also took a seemingly casual photograph that possibly
documents the view from a hotel window. The picture (obviously printed in reverse, as there is right-hand Ill. 138

traffic in Switzerland) shows a through road on which a minor accident seems to have occurred.

Apart from small Vacation-Portraits of Kracauer, the last reciprocal photographs—veritable photographic Ill. 139

twins because of the similar clothing and pose—were made in Klosters, Switzerland, in 1960. Klosters Ill. 143, 144

was also the place of a completely failed portrait sitting. Contacts of the last eleven shots of a film that
was also developed there were left in the lab folder along with an enlargement of one of the pictures. Ill. 145, 146

The folder is labeled “very bad ones / no valid.” The striking deviation from the envisaged image section Ill. 220

could derive from a technical defect. This is improbable, as the camera must have been the Leica only
recently purchased in the same summer in Zurich. A more likely explanation is an operating error, as
the deviations are not consistent: in almost all the images Kracauer has been cut vertically, but in some
horizontally. The brochure of the newly bought camera, which is in the estate, reveals that it had an
autotimer. This suggests the plausibility of quite a different explanation: Kracauer might have tried to
take his own photograph in the hotel room. None of these suppositions can be proved. This also means
that the speculation that these photographs are the only self-portraits of Siegfried Kracauer cannot be
disproved.
A portrait setting that failed in a different way took place in a hotel room in Rome in September 1964. Ill. 147, 148

The film strip shows photographs in which Kracauer initially poses stiffly on a chair that has been pushed
in front of the bed. In the course of the session his posture relaxes increasingly; at the end his serious
expression has given way to laughter. The pose has dissolved into merriment. The media-specific balance
between chance and control has not been disrupted by a camera defect or operation failure; rather, the
two collaborators have foiled their own attempt. The photographs taken must not have corresponded to
their intentions; at any rate there are no original prints of them in the archive. Kracauer defines the char-
acteristics of successful portraits in Theory of Film: “Even the most typical portraits must retain an acci-
dental character … as if they were plucked en route and still quivered with crude existence.” The impor-
tant thing here is the easily missed as if they were, which implicitly speaks of control over the photograph.
The ones from the hotel room in Rome do not preserve an accidental character in Kracauer’s sense, but
are in fact pervaded by chance. This certainly meets a contemporary interest: the film strips document a
portrait sitting and convey something that is actually invisible, Lili and Siegfried Kracauer’s mood while
taking photographs that day.
Something else is also conveyed at the same time: the depicted Kracauer differs from the “original.”
These photographs do not show all his facets, even in their sum, but simply those that are intended to
constitute his public image. Although it should be considered a failure in this sense, the portrait sitting in
Rome does show up Kracauer’s humor—a humor that runs through his newspaper articles of the Weimar
period and his two novels. But the portrait photographs were not meant to capture laughter, and it should
not be overlooked that at the other end of the scale the stereotypically melancholic pose of the scholar-
and-poet portraits is quite missing from them. The photographs in the Kracauer archive, as casual as they
136

may appear, were certainly realized with consideration and care. The image of the author they convey is
one that Kracauer controlled in cooperation with his wife.

The penultimate portrait of Siegfried Kracauer was taken by Lili Kracauer in 1964 in the Forum in Rome. Ill. 153, 154

The camera is so close to him that the surrounding ruins are only recognizable as such when one knows
where the photograph was shot. The place and year are noted on an envelope: “Rome 1964 / also portrait
in the forum”; at this time Kracauer was working on his last book, History. The Last Things before the Last Ill. 228

(posthumous 1969). He was unable to complete it, but the introduction had already been written at the
time of the photograph. It opens as follows:

The ancient historians used to preface their histories by a short autobiographical statement – as if they
wanted immediately to inform the reader of their location in time and society, that Archimedian point
from which they would subsequently set out to roam the past. Following their example, I might as well
mention that recently I suddenly discovered that my interest in history … actually grew out of the ideas
I tried to implement in my Theory of Film. In turning to history, I just continued to think along the lines
manifest in that book.

Kracauer tellingly avoids autobiographical fixation, and instead obeys the example of the ancient histori-
ans in his own way by explaining his interest in history. His deliberations culminate in a sudden illumina-
tion of the essence: “I realized in a flash the many existing parallels between history and the photographic
media, historical reality and camera-reality.” The Archimedian point from which Kracauer observes
history and historiography is thus shown to be distributed between the many parallels running between
historical and photographic reality.
The Portrait in the Forum could be interpreted against this background; Kracauer’s posture and gaze point
to an indeterminate zone. What has he fixed his eyes on? The past or the future? Something outside of
time appears here in the photographically fixed moment, namely the “continuing and always pending”
decisive moment, “which [holds] the event in suspense: ‘The decisive moment of human development
is perpetual … nothing has happened yet.’” The proximity to indecision suggested by this interpretation
refers to an “active side of indecision,” that encompasses an “idiosyncrasy against the stability of world
situations, against the irrevocability of judgments, against the finality of solutions.”

The last portraits that Lili Kracauer made of her husband could have ended the previous chapter, as Ill. 157, 158

they were photographed in the United States—although on a film started in Rome. They are the last six
pictures on the only half-exposed film, and were taken after returning from Europe in 1964. They are a Ill. 155

remarkable exception, being the only ones that Lili Kracauer took in New York, and the only ones of the
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

couple’s own apartment. These “Interior Photos,” as the handwritten note on a piece of paper in the estate
describes them, show Siegfried Kracauer sitting on a sofa, or in front of some shelves with a book in his
hand, in Apartment 2B, 498 West End Avenue, NYC 24. Only the original filmstrip and contact prints of Ill. p. 220

these underexposed photographs is preserved in the estate.

The fact that the Kracauer photographic archive also includes failures is thanks to Lili Kracauer’s sense
of responsibility. When she arranged the photographic material after Kracauer’s death she preserved it so
completely that the photographic practice she shared with Siegfried Kracauer and the image of the author
Kracauer it created appear as a mosaic of very many elements—the surface becoming porous in those
places where chance took charge.

Siegfried Kracauer to Leo Löwenthal, letter of
29 October, 1960, translated from Leo Löwenthal –
Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel, ed. Peter Erwin Jansen
und Christian Schmidt, Springe 2003, p. 230.
Ibid.
See Maria Zinfert, “On the Photographic Practice of
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer: Portrait Photographs from
the Estate in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach am
Neckar),” in The Germanic Review. Literature, Culture,
Theory, vol. 88, issue 4, 2013, p. 435–443.
KE DLA.
Kracauer, Theory of Film, loc. cit., p. 46.
The word should be understood here in the way
Kracauer uses it in “Photography”: the “original” is the
person depicted in the photograph.
“The Introduction was written from January 1961
to February 1962.” Editor’s note, in Siegfried Kracauer,
History, loc. cit., p. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Translated from Joseph Vogl, Über das Zaudern, Zurich-
Berlin 2007, p. 107f. and note 1. p. 127. For the quotation
see Franz Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II.
critical edition, p. 63.
The archive contains no photographs that can be dated
to the European travels of 1965 and 1966.
138

Ill. 129: Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice, 1958, paper print.
Ill. 130: Facades, Venice, 1958, paper print.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 131: Various motifs, Athens, 1960, eight contact strips, one verso contact strip, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “not interesting.”
140
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 132: View of Mount Lycabettus, Athens, 1960, paper print.

Ill. 133: Erechtheion, Athens, 1960, paper print.
142

Ill. 134: Parthenon, Athens, 1960, paper print.

Ill. 135: Erechtheion, Athens, 1960, paper print.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 136: Various motifs, Swiss Alps, between 1960 and 1964, four contact strips.
144

Ill. 137: Landscape, Swiss Alps, between 1960 and 1964, paper print.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 138: Street scene, Klosters, between 1960 and 1964, paper print.
146

Ill. 139: Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, paper print.

IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 140: Various motifs, Klosters, 1960, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
148

Ill. 141: View from the window, Klosters, 1960, from a negative scan.
Ill. 142: Houses, Klosters, 1960, from a negative scan.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 143: Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print.
150

Ill. 144: Lili Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, paper print.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 145: Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photos by Lili (or Siegfried) Kracauer, negative scans.
Ill. 146: Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili (or Siegfried) Kracauer, from a negative scan.
152
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 147: Four columns in the Forum of Augustus, Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, negative scans.
Ill. 148: Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, from a negative scan.
154
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 149: Four columns in the Forum of Augustus, Rome, 1964, paper print.
Ill. 150: Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome, 1964, paper print.
156

Ill. 151: Forum Romanum (panorama), Rome, 1964, paper print.

IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 152: Chapel of the Forty Martyrs in Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, 1964, paper print.
158

Ill. 153–154: Portrait in the Forum, Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, paper print and contact strip.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 155: Various motifs, Rome and New York (Siegfried Kracauer, Interior Photos), 1964, negative scans.
160

Ill. 156: Bell tower of Santa Maria in Cosmedin seen from the Temple of Hercules Victor, Rome, 1964, from a negative scan.
IV. TRAVEL AND PORTRAITS. EUROPE 1958–1964

Ill. 157–158: Siegfried Kracauer (Interior Photos), New York, 1964, from a negative scan.
162
 From the perspective of this publication the photo-
graphs brought together in its final chapter form a separate part of the Kracauer archive. They are largely
anonymous photographs that were kept by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer: childhood and juvenile pictures,
photos of relatives and friends. Only a few of these photographs by third parties were taken during the
years of the Kracauers’ own photographic practice. The selection here gives an impression of the variety
and material quality of the photographs from this part of the Kracauer archive, some of which go back to
the late nineteenth century. The prints are usually not labeled, and there are no notes comparable to those
about the pictures taken by the Kracauers themselves. The photographs were of importance to Lili and
Siegfried Kracauer as they themselves remembered those depicted, or were so familiar with these people
through an “oral tradition” that they could be reconstructed from the picture. For a contemporary viewer
who is not part of this tradition they show random figures. In as far as the respective connection to the
Kracauers cannot be determined, they remain portraits of unidentified persons, and as such meaningless.
For this book, photographs have therefore been selected that can be read in the biographical context.

The estate contains around ten photographs from Kracauer’s childhood and youth, paper prints mounted
on cardboard of photographs taken in studios in Frankfurt. There are no private photographs from this Ill. 163

early time; hardly anything individual can be read into the studio pictures. The background is a backdrop,
and any objects the accessories of standardized forms of portrayal. Looked at today they convey the effect
that Kracauer described in his essay Photography (1927): the people portrayed dissolve into “old-fashioned
details of fashion.” Over a hundred years ago Kracauer posed in a sailor’s suit, as was the custom, for
images whose potential for embarrassment is succinctly described by Walter Benjamin, himself the sub-
ject of such portrayals: “And finally, to make our shame complete, we ourselves—as a parlor Tyrolean,
yodeling, waving our hat before a painted snowscape, or as a smartly turned-out sailor, standing rakishly
with our weight on one leg, as is proper, leaning against a polished door jamb.” The artificial photo-
graphs of this era mark stages of life: Kracauer’s first day at school in 1895 and his transfer, at the age of Ill. 159–162

“9 1/4” to the Philanthropin, the secondary school run by the Israelite Congregation.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

The family photographs in the Kracauer archive also include studio photographs of Siegfried’s mother and Ill. 167, 168

aunt. There are several private photographs of these two from later years, along with one in which they can
be seen with their two other sisters: Hedwig sitting in the middle, behind her Rosette Kracauer; there is Ill. 169, 171

also a picture of the two women in front of Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam. The two sisters, who were born in
Frankfurt, were married to the brothers Adolf and Isidor Kracauer, from Sagan in Silesia. As widows they
shared an apartment in Frankfurt am Main until their deportation. Despite considerable effort Kracauer
was not able to enable his mother and aunt to leave Germany. In September 1945 he wrote in a letter that
the two had been “deported by the Germans to Theresienstadt in 1941. I add without comment that in
recent months we had to learn after extensive inquiries that the two old women were very soon sent from
Theresienstadt to Poland. We didn’t hear from them again. And we won’t hear anything more.”
A picture of Kracauer’s father, the traveling salesman Adolf Kracauer, cannot be found in the estate. It
could be one of the many photographs of unidentified persons. Three almost identical images show
Kracauer’s uncle, Isidor, who taught history at the Philanthropin, where he also instructed his nephew. It Ill. 170

is he who can be recognized behind the nameless uncle in the novel Ginster whose historical work about
the Jews of Frankfurt was “written with the aid of a glue pot” and was based on documents from archives
“that they had kept for this uncle for centuries.”
Kracauer also kept a photograph from his short time with the gunners of the substitute foot-artillery bat- Ill. 172

talion in Mainz in the fall of 1917. He can be seen in the middle of the back row, a “slender browbeaten boy
who finds military life difficult,” degraded as an extra in a crude mixture of reality and fiction. The staged
photograph places the staff sergeant in the centre; the soldiers grouped around him all handle various
objects. Kracauer holds a cigarette, another man has a book, the one standing on the left a broom; almost
all the others look as if they were slicing loaves of bread or polishing their boots. Who would think here
of the “trench war in its final, terrible phase … the monotony of hell, the continual proximity of death?”
The picture has a share in the reality of war in as much as it is an example of the instruments of distortion
that Kracauer observed in detail in his autobiographical novel about the years of the First World War. In
Ginster he has the figure of Otto write a long farewell letter: “I would like to go on living,” it declares sim-
ply at one point. The estate contains a military postcard sent to Kracauer from the western front in May Ill. 173, 174

1915 by his friend Otto Hainebach. It shows the soldiers behind a strange installation of cartouches and
protruding white flowers. Otto Hainebach fell during the Battle of Verdun on September 14, 1916.
Among the few souvenir pictures of Kracauer’s friends there is a large-format print of a studio photo-
graph portraying the young Theodor W. Adorno reading. It can be dated to the time of his first meeting Ill. 175

with Kracauer, around 1919. A later amateur photograph shows Kracauer with Adorno during a trip to
the Dolomites. Three people can be seen: Kracauer on the left, Adorno on the right, a woman between Ill. 176

them. On the print vertical pencil marks divide off the middle section and separate Kracauer from the
two figures next to him. These markings were made for an enlargement showing Kracauer alone, much
to the side. There are no photographs of other well-known friends in the estate. Photographs of Siegfried
and Lili Kracauer’s mutual friends include some of Lissy Valk and Clem Cramer, which are given here as Ill. 207, 208

examples of the collection’s material heterogeneity. The paper prints in the Kracauer photographic archive
have various formats, depending on when they were taken, the technique used and the use to which they
were put. One individually designed souvenir, a round cutout mounted on square cardboard, has a dedica-
tion on the back: “A ma chère Elisabeth / affectueux souvenir / de ton amie française / Renée.” Ill. 182, 183
166

From Lili Kracauer’s childhood only the two studio photographs showing her with her elder sister
Franziska remain. Apart from these there is a childhood photograph of Franziska. The print has been Ill. 184–186

cut; only the arm and hand can be seen of the woman sitting to Franziska’s left, and the arm of another
person can just be seen on the right. It may be that the figures cut away were the parents. Perhaps the
fine portrait of an older sister who died young was intended to have been shown to its advantage alone on
this narrow strip. The family photograph, one of the few in the estate taken in a private space, shows Lili Ill. 187

in the middle: with an opened picture book or illustrated magazine in her lap, she sits next to her father,
August Ehrenreich, who is obscured by light falling into the camera; Franziska takes up the left edge of
the portrait. The woman lying behind them propped on her lower arm could be the sisters’ mother, Marie
Caroline, but could equally be their half-sister Maria Mathilde, born in 1883. There is no further trace of
the latter in Lili Kracauer’s estate, which includes not only letters but a whole series of photographs of
her sister Franziska and her husband, the painter Hanns Katz. These two lived from 1928 onwards in a Ill. 188–190

house built for them by the architects Eduard and Otto Fucker in the Frankfurt district of Eschersheim.
This home was also the venue for public concerts given by the pianist Franziska Katz. On its flat roof the
couple kept a guenon (a type of monkey) in a specially constructed pen. In one photograph the creature Ill. 191, 192

can be seen between its sleeping master and mistress.

Among the few anonymous portraits of Lili Kracauer there are four different ones from photo booths. Two
were taken in 1928, and the two framed ones in 1944 and 1952. The undated professional photograph, Ill. 193, 196–199

of which only a small-format print is preserved, may also have been taken in a booth or by an express Ill. 194, 195

photographer. (A further anonymous portrait of her is assigned here to the photographs showing Lili and Ill. 204

Siegfried Kracauer together, in order to place it in the context of its making.)

There is a larger number of anonymous pictures of Siegfried Kracauer, some of them by professional pho-
tographers. The studio portrait was taken during Kracauer’s student days, and the estate contains twelve Ill. 166

large-format reproductions of it made in New York. The stamped indentations visible in two corners indi-
cate that the positive used for the enlargement once served as an identification card. Kracauer’s papers
include a pass from the year 1912, with this photograph glued to the back, allowing free entry to Italian Ill. 164, 165

museums. The number of enlargements of this photograph in the Kracauer archive, and their format,
indicates the value attached to this picture. The instructions to the photo lab are noted on a small piece
of paper: “Please, don’t crop at the right hand side; if cropping is necessary at all, do it at the chair side.”
The label “juvenile portrait” has been added to the slip of paper with a different pen. With the help of this Ill. 234

title it is possible to link the photograph to one of the few passages of correspondence dealing with pho-
tography. In early 1969 Lili Kracauer wrote to her friend Ella Gubler: “How well you interpreted Friedel’s
juvenile portrait. Thank you very much. Of all his pictures, he particularly likes this one.” So Kracauer
liked some of his pictures more than others, and this one was something like his favorite photograph. Ella
Gubler interprets it in a single sentence: “The eyes look out at the world with presentiment, and equally
wisely into the depths of inner regions.” The photograph reminded her of someone long familiar. For
today’s viewers, who only know Kracauer’s appearance from photographs, a “direct relation to the original Ill. 179
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

is no longer possible.” From this perspective the captured gaze of the young Kracauer recalls another
image of him, the Portrait in the Forum.
The portraits of Kracauer taken in the 1920s are mostly from photographic studios, but some of them
were made by amateurs. The obliquely cut little picture of Kracauer in a private room, for example, with- Ill. 180

out being able to say whether he is its inhabitant or visitor. An outdoor portrait brings Kracauer out of
the blurred street scene in the background. Apartment buildings can be seen, a tramway, passers-by on Ill. 177

some sunny day, probably in Frankfurt am Main. The photograph that Siegfried Kracauer made available
for publication until about 1930 may also have been taken there. This is the bust produced from the later Ill. 178

shattered glass negative extensively discussed above. The original photograph was probably published
several times before 1930, as two reproductions cut out of journals and preserved in the Kracauer photo-
graphic archive suggest. There are only a very few anonymous portraits from the post-war years, such as Ill. 212–214

the snapshots most probably taken in the United States on vacation in the 1950s. They show Kracauer
writing in a garden or talking with a boy.
Not many photographs show Lili and Siegfried Kracauer together. There is no wedding photograph or
the like, and such a thing probably never existed—it is highly unlikely, given the skepticism about photo-
graphic studios Kracauer expounds in A Note on Portrait Photography (1932), that the newlyweds would
dutifully have had one taken. The photographs that show both of them are group shots taken en passant,
such as those of a walk in Combloux in 1934 or a picnic with friends, also in France. From the time after Ill. 200–203

the Second World War there are comparable photographs taken in the United States, and pictures with Ill. 209, 210

members of the Dreyer family in Alsace (probably relatives of Lili Kracauer). Ill. 205, 206

The Polaroid showing Siegfried and Lili Kracauer with the avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren is a singular Ill. 215

image, and seems true to life like no other in the estate. It could have been taken at a screening of the film
society Cinema 16, which Kracauer regularly attended. A snapshot! A perfect picture! Was it composed
by chance or did an accomplished eye capture the decisive moment? The background is clearly divided
into two vertical segments, the left two-thirds white, the right third black. Siegfried and Lili Kracauer in
profile against the white surface, Maya Deren in profile against the black. The brightly shining buttons of
Lili’s dark jacket in the centre of the image playfully double the vertical divide between white and black.
The geometry of the composition is countered by the laughing faces, and also by the lively gestures of
Lili Kracauer and Maya Deren. The foreground is dominated by Maya Deren’s apparently outsized hand,
caused by the blur of its movement towards Kracauer. The movement blurring in this decades-old photo-
graph is interwoven with typical Polaroid streaks. With advancing disintegration, increasingly distinct
traces of the materiality of the image carrier have become superimposed on the actual image, bringing
about a new one, an accidental image. In this the Polaroid is comparable to the fractured glass negative.
With both the eye moves back and forth between image and image interference. And so too does the
image carrier enable an approximate dating of the photograph. Polaroid cameras with the film format
64 x 83 mm were on sale from 1954 onwards; if Maya Deren’s dates of birth and death are also taken into
account, the snapshot can be dated to the second half of the 1950s. The captured moment is character-
ized by movement to such an extent that it almost seems to be the fraction of a second of a film rather than
an actual photograph. As if the projector had been stopped and shown one of the frames that dissolve into
the respective shot when the film is running.
168

Quite a different sort of photograph can also be assigned to the anonymous pictures showing Siegfried
and Lili Kracauer as a couple, passport photographs taken at the same time and place, on May 2, 1956, Ill. 245–250

May 10, 1960 and April 30, 1965. They are busts that satisfy the norms of the time: “Front view, natural
pose – on thin, unglazed photo paper, against plain, light background.” On May 9, 1956 Lili and Siegfried
Kracauer applied for passports for their first journey to Europe. The black-and-white photographs are
supplemented by details of height and color of hair and eyes: Lili Kracauer was five feet, three inches
tall, with brown eyes and brown hair; Siegfried Kracauer was five feet, six inches tall, with brown eyes and
black-grey hair.

See Kracauer, “Photography,” in The Past’s Threshold,
loc. cit. p. 28.
Ibid., p. 29.
Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,”
loc. cit., p. 515.
According to Jörg Später (see chapter II, footnote 1) they
are Amalie and Martha, née Oppenheim.
Rosette (née Oppenheim, April 2, 1867–1942) was
the wife of Adolf Kracauer (March 16, 1849–June 9, 1918);
Hedwig (née Oppenheim, July 29, 1862–1942) was married
to Isidor Kracauer (October 16, 1852–April 26, 1923).
See Belke/ Renz, Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966, loc. cit., p. 1.
Siegfried Kracauer to Friedrich Gubler, translated from
a letter of September 10, 1945. KE DLA.
Translated from Kracauer, Ginster, in Werke,
vol. 7, loc. cit., p. 46f. Isidor Kracauer, Geschichte der Juden
in Frankfurt a. M. (1150–1824) appeared in two volumes
in 1925–1927.
Siegfried Kracauer on a minor figure who gripped him
more than the “terribly robust main character” in Edward
Sedgwick’s film West Point (1927), in a review of several
films headed “Good Comedy Program,” Werke, vol. 6.2,
loc. cit., p. 209.
“Vizefeldwebel” in Ginster. In the military exercises
described in the novel the staff sergeant is regularly named
as commandant, e.g.: “The staff sergeant yelled the order.
To sing?” Translated from Siegfried Kracauer, Ginster, in
Werke, vol. 7, loc. cit., p. 175.
Siegfried Kracauer on the film Westfront 1918 (1930),
by G. W. Pabst, in a review headed “Westfront 1918,”
translated from Werke, vol. 6.2, loc. cit., p. 360.
Translated from Siegfried Kracauer, Ginster, in Werke
vol. 7, loc. cit., p. 80.
Until now the photograph of a young Theodor W.
Adorno has been filed in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv as
“hitherto unidentified—boy, reading.” Kracauer possessed
three further photographs of the young Adorno, and Lili
Kracauer sent them to Adorno in 1968. He had written to
ask for the photographs that Peter Szondi said he had been
shown by Kracauer during his last visit to New York, and
later confirmed their receipt. Theodor W. Adorno to Lili
Kracauer, letters of January 30, and May 10, 1968. KE DLA.
As photographs in the estate confirm, the friendship
with Lissy Valk goes back to before the Second World War.
She seems to have later lived in Switzerland. Clem Cramer
had emigrated to the United States with her husband, the
Frankfurt hops merchant David Cramer. They must have
become friends with the Kracauers in the United States.
“To my dear Elisabeth / affectionate remembrance /
of your French friend / Renée.”
In Lili’s papers there is a program for a recital of pieces
by Ferruccio Busoni, Arnold Schönberg, and Béla Bartok
on June 28, 1932. KE DLA. Some of these concerts were
broadcast on the radio by Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk.
See Jewish Museum of Frankfurt (ed.) Hanns Ludwig Katz,
(exhib. cat.), loc. cit., p. 34f.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE
KE DLA.
Lili Kracauer to Ella Gubler, translated from a letter of
January 4, 1969. KE DLA.
Ella Gubler to Lili Kracauer, translated from a letter of
October 9, 1968. KE DLA.
Kracauer, “Photography,” in The Past’s Threshold, loc.
cit., p. 35.
See von Moltke, Rawson (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer’s
American Writings, loc. cit, p. 256.
See introduction.
Maya Deren, i.e. Eleanora Derenkowsky, born 1917
in Kiev, died in October 1961 in New York. Kracauer
discussed four of her films in Filming the Subconscious
(1948), in von Moltke, Rawson (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer’s
American Writings, loc. cit., p. 57–62. Maya Deren’s films are
mentioned several times in Theory of Film (1960).
“Film is not photography: the ‘shot’—the smallest
unit of a film—completely absorbs the snapshots (‘picture
frames’) of which it consists.” Siegfried Kracauer, “Tentative
Outline of a Book on Film Aesthetics” [1949], in Siegfried
Kracauer – Erwin Panofsky. Briefwechsel 1941 – 1966,
ed. Volker Breidecker, loc. cit., p. 84.
This is typed onto a filing card originally attached
to one of the photographs from 1965. The pairs of
photographs were each sorted into a dated envelope.
KE DLA.
170

Ill. 159: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1894, Atelier Schmidt, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 160: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1895, Atelier Erna, paper print on cardboard.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 161: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1898, Atelier H. Collischonn, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 162: Verso paper print on cardboard, inscription probably by Rosette Kracauer, “9 ¼ years.”
172

Ill. 163: Siegfried Kracauer and Jann von Sprecher on the Sulzfluh, Swiss Alps (Graubünden), 1906, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 164: Siegfried Kracauer, passport photo on verso pass, probably 1912, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 165: Pass allowing free entry to Italian museums, 1912, cardboard.
174

Ill. 166: “Juvenile portrait” of Siegfried Kracauer, n.p., 1912, enlargement from a paper print, New York c. 1965.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 167: Rosette Kracauer, Baden (Switzerland), c. 1900, photo by Maria Stein-Haberkorn, paper print on cardboard.
176

Ill. 168: Hedwig Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1900, Atelier Voigt, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 169: Hedwig (seated) with Rosette Kracauer (middle) and their two sisters Amalie and Martha (née Oppenheim), paper print.
Ill. 170: Isidor Kracauer, probably Frankfurt am Main, c. 1910, paper print.
Ill. 171: Hedwig (left) and Rosette Kracauer in front of Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, undated, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 172: Siegfried Kracauer (middle of back row) in the foot artillery, Mainz, 1917, paper print on cardboard.
178

Ill. 173: Otto Hainebach and comrades, France, May 18, 1915, military postcard, cardboard.
Ill. 174: Verso military postcard, addressed to “Dr. S. Kracauer, Frankfurt a/M, Bäckerweg 52 III,”
written in Fonches (Somme department), May 25, 1915.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 175: Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno), c. 1919, paper print.

180

Ill. 176: Siegfried Kracauer (left), unidentified person, Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno), Dolomites, 1924, paper print with original pencil markings.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 177: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, paper print.

Ill. 178: Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, paper print.
Ill. 179: Siegfried Kracauer, 1920s, paper print.
182

Ill. 180: Siegfried Kracauer, 1920s, crookedly cut paper print.

V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 181: Winter Park, undated, paper print, mounted on cardboard.

184

Ill. 182: Renée (friend of Lili Kracauer’s), France, c. 1900, paper print mounted on cardboard.
Ill. 183: Verso cardboard, inscription, “À ma chère Elisabeth / affectueux souvenir / de ton amie française / Renée.”
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 184: Franziska (Fränze) and Elisabeth (Lili) Ehrenreich (left), Strasbourg, c. 1898, Atelier H. Hack, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 185: Elisabeth (Lili) and Franziska (Fränze) Ehrenreich (left), Mühlhausen (?), c. 1903, Atelier C. Tschira, paper print on cardboard.
Ill. 186: Franziska (Fränze) Ehrenreich, c. 1900, anon., section from a paper print on cardboard.
186

Ill. 187: (Left to right) Franziska (Fränze), Marie Caroline (?), Elisabeth (Lili), August Ehrenreich, Strasbourg, c. 1910, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 188: Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich, c. 1928, two photo-booth photos, paper prints.
Ill. 189: Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich in her home salon, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930, paper print.
Ill. 190: Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich and Hanns Katz, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930, paper print.
188

Ill. 191–192: Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich and Hanns Katz on the roof of their house, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 193: Lili Ehrenreich, 1928, two photo-booth photos, paper prints.
190

Ill. 194–195: Lili Kracauer, undated, paper prints.

V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 196: Lili Kracauer, New York, 1944, photo-booth photo, framed paper print.
Ill. 197: Verso photo-booth photo, maker’s imprint, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Grand Central / around summer 1944.”
192

Ill. 198: Lili Kracauer, New York, 1952, photo-booth photo, framed paper print.
Ill. 199: Verso photo-booth photo, maker’s imprint, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Sept. 12 / 1952.”
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 200: Unidentified person, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, paper print.
Ill. 201: Lili Kracauer, unidentified person, Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, paper print.
194

Ill. 202: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer (middle), two unidentified persons, France, c. 1935, paper print.
Ill. 203: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer (middle), three unidentified persons, France, c. 1935, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 204: Lili Kracauer, France, c. 1935, paper print.

196

Ill. 205–206: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, members of the Dreyer family, France, between 1956 and 1964, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 207: Lissy Valk, n.p., 1920s, paper print.

Ill. 208: Clem Cramer, USA, 1950s, paper print.
Ill. 209: The sociologist Julius Wyler with his wife Eva and daughter Anni and an unidentified person, USA, 1950s, paper print.
198

Ill. 210: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, unidentified person in front of a vacation home, Keene, NY, 1951, paper print.
Ill. 211: Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, unidentified person, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1955, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 212–213: Siegfried Kracauer, vacation in NY, undated, paper print.

200

Ill. 214: Siegfried Kracauer, unidentified boy, vacation in NY, undated, paper print.
V. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ESTATE

Ill. 215: Siegfried, Lili Kracauer (middle), Maya Deren, New York, between 1954 and 1961, Polaroid.
202

Ill. 216: Verso Polaroid, inscription “S. Kr. / Lili / Deren.”

 At the end of the photographs presented here from
the Kracauer archive stands one that is a link to the beginning and a summing up at the same time. The Ill. 216

contact strip of a street photograph from the couple’s time in Paris shows the shadows of Siegfried and
Lili Kracauer’s heads and upper bodies protruding into the image from below. The photograph appears
to be of a small street with a hotel at the end of it. The shadows are more or less unobtrusive, and yet
their visibility turns the photograph into a self-portrait of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer. As such it has more
than one layer of significance. Datable to the second half of the 1930s, it can be seen as a document of
the Kracauers’ years of emigration in Paris. Going beyond the documentary, the image of the empty street
corner, on which their shadows are almost shyly delineated, and the hotel in the background can be read
as a precise commentary on this precarious phase of their lives. Disregarding the immediate biographical-
historical context, the silhouettes should be seen as a sign of the extratemporal presence of those whose
shadow projections the photograph captures in their adherence to a moment.
In regard to the shared photographic practice of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer it has the function of a sig-
nature: recognizable by the outline of the headgear, the shadow on the lower left of the photograph is
that of a man who in all probability is none other than Siegfried Kracauer. To his right, a little shorter,
Lili Kracauer, whose right arm is raised, as the outline shows. It is she, the smaller figure, who holds the
camera and takes the discreet double portrait.
Ill. 217: View into a side street, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, contact.
 Kracauer. Photographic Archive provides a first exten-
sive view of the photographs in the estate of the German-American cultural philosopher and film and photo-
graphic theorist Siegfried Kracauer, and is based on research in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach.
The material was bequeathed to Brandeis University by Lili Kracauer after the death of her husband, and was
bought by the Marbach institute in 1972 in pursuance of an acquisitions focus on exiled authors.
The individual parts of the estate are distributed between different stacks in Marbach: the manuscript
collection, which contains official documents, letters, manuscripts, notes and card indexes; the media
documentation, with newspapers, magazines and cuttings; the library, with the so-called “author’s work-
ing library,” the books and printed matter left by Siegfried and Lili Kracauer. The photographs and related
material are part of the collection of images and objects; in the 1980s they were transferred from their
original sorting by Lili Kracauer into the author-centered system of the archive (see foreword). Photo-
graphs are not collected according to originator (photographer) but adopted along with literary estates
and ordered according to the authors they depict. This means that photographs showing an author alone
form the primary category and are sorted chronologically; further categories are photographs showing the
author with other people, photographs of relatives, friends and unidentified people, and finally places of
abode. The photographs are thus removed from existing contexts, so that pictures following one another
on a film or those that were originally seen as a unity are now archived separately. Apart from enlarge-
ments and contact sheets, which are found to varying extent in all literary estates, the Kracauer photo-
graphic archive also contains around fifty rolls of film. In the 1980s contact strips were made from these
original negatives in order to make enlargements of portraits of Siegfried Kracauer that were not found in
the estate as prints.
The prints produced in the archive, in particular the contact strips made from all the films, were very help-
ful for my research. They have not been included in this book, however, as its aim was to convey a balanced
impression of the material as it was during Lili Kracauer’s lifetime. In order to retrace her photographic
practice, selected film strips that exemplify particular phases or recurring motifs were specially scanned
in Marbach. The photographs taken on the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) in Upper Bolzano in 1936
form an exception. Lili Kracauer only made one such “reportage,” which is why these photographs take up
more space than they are actually due in terms of the material as a whole.
Various handwritten materials are archived along with the photographs in the collection of images and
objects at Marbach: labeled envelopes of various kinds, index cards, slips of paper, instructions to New
York photo labs, and labeled film canisters and wrappers. A selection of these items is reproduced in the
following appendix in order to illustrate this part of the Kracauer photographic archive in its material
form. The book’s text often refers explicitly and implicitly to these and other handwritten materials, which
are an important source for the dating and localization of the photographs, and from which both chapter
headings and picture titles are derived.
For the sake of completeness it should be said that there are no albums in the Kracauer estate; all the
enlargements and contacts were kept unmounted in envelopes. The “glued album” mentioned in the
Marbach archive’s description of this part of the estate is an album of trade cards (drawn advertising
images of various companies) from the early twentieth century. The “visual material on Jacques Offen-
bach” also mentioned does not contain any photographs taken by Lili or Siegfried Kracauer themselves.
The estate does not contain any collections of photographs relating to Kracauer’s film books From Caligari
to Hitler and Theory of Film.
Research for this book proceeded from the above-described material in the stacks of the collection of
images and objects. Viewing the photographs in the Kracauer estate originally took place in the context of
my wider research project on archive photographs of twentieth-century German-speaking authors, begun
at the suggestion of Gert Mattenklott (†). This assessment of a single very special collection should be seen
against the background of my knowledge of the photographic content of around fifty estates. Crucial to
this endeavor is that the research proceeds from the photographs themselves. It does not use the photo-
graphic material to examine assumptions gained from texts, but instead gradually verifies assumptions
derived from the material through complete, exact and repeated viewing. The individual research steps
can only be roughly sketched here. The lack of an otherwise typical photographer’s stamp on the back of
the prints and the presence of the negatives gave rise to the supposition that the well-known portraits of
Kracauer, hitherto published as “anonymous,” had been taken by Lili Kracauer. This was corroborated by
the many instructions to photo labs in her handwriting—for example, “Glossy, full good contrast / Don’t
crop, print full negative”—which always begin with “E[lizabeth] Kracauer” and the New York address, and
furthermore by her labeling of envelopes with contact sheets from the couple’s years of emigration in
Paris, and so on. This meant that along with the portraits almost all the other post-1930 photographs in
the estate were “homemade.” Having arrived at this point, the research led to other departments of the
archive. Information about the camera used by Lili Kracauer was gained from printed matter in the above-
mentioned Kracauer library, which contains handbooks on photographing with the Leica, with inserted
manufacturer’s brochures and instructions. An examination of Lili Kracauer’s papers (which form their
own part of the Kracauer estate) in the Marbach manuscript collection brought to light excerpts from pho-
tographic handbooks and the tables with which, as a self-taught photographer, she exactly documented
all her early pictures. Lili Kracauer’s correspondence provided no direct information about photography.
The fact that the photographer was not Siegfried but Lili Kracauer was only confirmed shortly before the
work on this book came to an end by the letter quoted in chapter I. In it Siegfried Kracauer writes that the
Leica did indeed belong to his wife Lili.
Kracauer. Photographic Archive also documents the public image of the author as a result of the collabora-
tion between Lili and Siegfried Kracauer. Photographs from other estates have not been included in this
210

book. Surprising finds that might qualify the image conveyed by the photographic archive can hardly be
expected. As inquiries in the Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno archive in the Academy of Arts in
Berlin showed, there is not a single photograph of Kracauer in the estate of Walter Benjamin; in that of
Theodor W. Adorno there is one from the journey through the Dolomites in 1924 similar to the one in the
Kracauer estate, and a single anonymous portrait not found in Marbach. Kracauer gave this photograph
to his friend in 1923, with an inscription on the back.

My first thanks are due to the staff of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach for their most cooperative
support of my research. Here I can only name the most put-upon Michael Davidis and Rosemarie Kutschis,
from the collection of images and objects, to whom I am deeply grateful; also Elke Schwander, the archi-
vist of the photographic material in the Kracauer estate, and the house photographers Chris Korner and
Jens Tremmel; Nicolai Riedel, who never forgot me in the cold basement with the authors’ libraries;
Heidrun Fink and her colleagues from the manuscript collection; Ulrich von Bülow, general manager of
the archive; and finally the director of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Ulrich Raulff, who accompanied my
research with interest from the beginning.
I also thank Ulrich Raulff for the opportunity to present my research for the first time in public at a
Marbacher-Passage exhibition and a Zeitkapsel talk in February 2014; for preliminary work on the exhibi-
tion I thank Enke Huhsmann and Susanne Boehme, for assistance with the Zeitkapsel Bernd Stiegler and
Frank Druffner.
I thank Philippe Despoix for his tireless interest in my archival finds from the first phase of the endeavor to
the work on this publication; Jörg Später for the generosity with which he allowed me to share the results
of his research for a biography of Kracauer. For criticism and encouraging discussion I thank Helmut
Lethen, Claudia Schmölders and Joseph Vogl. I am grateful to the research group Image Evidence at the
Freie Universität Berlin for the opportunity to present some of the photographic material at a Kracauer
workshop in April 2014.
Kerstin Cmelka and Tristan Thönnissen provided valuable help in technical matters; Max Fabrizi identi-
fied the locations in the Rome photographs; Eva Maria Wilde placed her photograph of the apartment
building at 498 West End Avenue, New York at my disposal. I was given much good advice by my friends
Philipp Eckardt, Jan Kedves and Thilo Heinzmann.
This publication would not have been possible without Michael Heitz and Sabine Schulz, who have shown
extraordinary publishing commitment to enable a research project to become a book. My great thanks to
them both.
Ill. 218–220: Various envelopes, inscriptions by Lili Kracauer.
212

Ill. 220–229: Various envelopes, canister lids, cardboard wrappers around film, inscriptions by Lili Kracauer.
Ill. 230–232: Tables for film, list of photographs from Verona.
214

Ill. 233–235: Order / invoice, instructions for enlarging the “juvenile portrait,” photo folder.
Ill. 236–239: Marcel Natkin, Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle, Paris 1934 and Manuel du Portrait, Paris 1938.
216

Ill. 240: Leitz corporation brochure, Appareil Leica avec nouveau chassis Modèle D, Mode d’emploi, Wetzlar 1933.
Ill. 241: Typescript with handwritten notes, excerpts by Lili Kracauer from Paul Wolff, Meine Erfahrungen mit der Leica, Frankfurt am Main 1934.
Ill. 242: Curt Emmermann, Leica Technik, 8th–11th revised and expanded edition, Halle/Saale undated (first edition 1934, regularly reprinted until 1951).
Ill. 243: Notes by Lili Kracauer.
218
 Siegfried Kracauer is born in
Frankfurt am Main.
Parents: Rosette, née Oppenheim(er), born 1867
in Frankfurt am Main, and Adolf Kracauer,
born 1849 in Sagan, Silesia.
Starts school in Frankfurt am Main.
Anna Elisabeth (called Lili) Ehrenreich
is born in Strasbourg.
Parents: Marie Caroline, née Amann, born 1855
in Vendenheim (Alsace) and August Ehrenreich,
born 1848 in Mainz.
Sister: Franziska Josephine Elisabeth (called
Fränze), born 1892 in Strasbourg.

Changes to the Philanthropin, a high school
run by the Israelite Congregation in Frankfurt
am Main; history lessons with his uncle,
Isidor Kracauer, born 1852 in Sagan, Silesia.
Begins musical tuition (violin and piano).
Elementary school and municipal college for girls
in Strasbourg.

Transfers to the upper school of the Klinger

Oberrealschule (vocational school) in Frankfurt
am Main.

first publication in the features section of

the Frankfurter Zeitung: “Ein Abend im
Hochgebirge” [An Evening in the Mountains].
CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

Studies architecture in Darmstadt, Munich and

Berlin. During his semesters in Berlin (1907/08)
Kracauer attends lectures by Georg Simmel, then
lecturer in philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-
Universität; also lectures by Heinrich Wölfflin
on art history in Berlin and Munich.

intermediate examination at the Königliche Substitute teaching positions at colleges for girls
Technische Hochschule (Royal Technical Uni- in various towns in the German imperial land of
versity) in Charlottenburg (Berlin); continues his Alsace-Lorraine.
studies in Munich.

main diploma examination at the

Technische Hochschule in Munich.

works as an architect in Munich,

starts writing on his dissertation.
journey to Italy, visiting Milan, Genoa,
Florence, Siena, Perugia, Assisi, Venice, Padua,
Vicenza, Verona and elsewhere.
makes friends with
Otto Hainebach, born 1892 in Frankfurt am Main.

end of his employment as an architect

in Munich.

doctoral examination at the Königliche

Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg.
Resumes work as an architect in Munich.
returns to Frankfurt am Main after
the outbreak of war.
222

Publication of his dissertation on the development fills a teaching position at

of decorative architectural metalworking in Berlin, the College for Girls in Saarburg (Sarrebourg).
Potsdam and other cities in the region from
the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.
works as an architect in the office
of the Frankfurt architect Max Seckbach.

With Kracauer’s design, the Seckbach architec-

tural office wins the competition for a
cemetery for soldiers killed in the First World War.
(The cemetery, laid out according to Kracauer’s
design, exists to this day.)
Otto Hainebach is killed in
the Battle of Verdun.

conscription into the field artillery appointed to a teaching position at the

in Mainz. College for Girls in Saarburg (Sarrebourg).
discharge from military service.
December: re-encounter in Frankfurt am Main
with Georg Simmel.

employed as an architect by the Osnabrück

municipal building office.
death of his father, Adolf Kracauer.

Return to Frankfurt am Main; occasional death of her father.

employment at the Seckbach architectural office. dismissed from her teaching position by
Rosette, Hedwig and Isidor Kracauer move into the French school board.
a shared apartment, where Siegfried Kracauer
has a subtenancy until 1930.
makes friends with Theodor (Teddie)
Wiesengrund (subsequently Theodor W. Adorno),
who is fourteen years his junior; much joint
reading—beginning with Immanuel Kant, Critique
CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

of Pure Reason—which continues for many years.

Adorno will later say that because of Kracauer’s
pedagogical talent he owed more to this reading
than to all his academic teachers.

unemployment; Kracauer undertakes
an extensive reading of philosophical and socio-
logical texts and tries to progress with his writing.
first contact to Ernst Bloch, with whom
a lifelong friendship develops.
short-term employment in the Seckbach
architectural office.
Studies art history (main subject) at the University
of Leipzig; studies music (violin, piano, theory,
history) at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music.
Loses her inheritance through inflation.
Works as a private teacher of art history,
music and languages.

Occasional commissions from the Frankfurter

Zeitung.
becomes a full-time employee of the
Frankfurter Zeitung.

Soziologie als Wissenschaft. Eine erkenntnis-

theoretische Untersuchung [Sociology as Science.
An Epistemological Examination] is published
by Sibyllen Verlag, Dresden.
First professional contact with Walter Benjamin,
who then spends some time in Frankfurt to qualify
as a professor. Their acquaintanceship deepens
into a friendship by the mid-1920s.

death of his uncle, Isidor Kracauer.

Changes to the features section of the
Frankfurter Zeitung, headed from 1924 to 1930
by Benno Reifenberg; Kracauer’s position on
the paper is now more senior, and he is freed
from local reporting. One of his responsibilities
Employment as a librarian in the newly founded
Institute for Social Research at the University
of Frankfurt am Main.
224

is the new area of film criticism.

Journey through the Dolomites with
Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno).

beginning of the relationship between Lili and Siegfried Kracauer.

(First meeting not known; Siegfried Kracauer gives his future wife a first edition of Franz Kafka’s,
Ein Landarzt [A Country Doctor] with a handwritten dedication for Christmas.)

The couple vacation together, visiting Marseille, Paris, and elsewhere; in September they see Ernst Bloch
in Paris, Lili Ehrenreich meeting him for the first time.

Siegfried Kracauer’s autobiographical novel Ginster. Von ihm selbst geschrieben [Ginster. Written by
Himself] is published anonymously by S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin; it is dedicated, safeguarding the identity
of his girlfriend Lili Ehrenreich, “For L. in memory of Marseille 1926 and 1927.”

Siegfried Kracauer works on his second autobiographical novel, Georg; excerpts from the manuscript
appear in the Frankfurter Zeitung and the anthology 24 Neue Deutsche Erzähler, edited by Hermann
Kesten, in which the author is given as Ginster.
Siegfried Kracauer begins a ten-week stint in the features section of the Berlin edition of the
Frankfurter Zeitung; during this time he carries out research for his sociological study of the new class of
salaried employees.

Siegfried Kracauer’s Die Angestellten. Aus dem Neuesten Deutschland [later published in English
as The Salaried Masses. Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany] is published by the Frankfurter
Societäts-Druckerei after prepublication in the Frankfurter Zeitung.
marriage of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer in Frankfurt am Main.
Lili Kracauer is her husband’s assistant from now on.
Siegfried Kracauer becomes head of the features section of the Frankfurter Zeitung in Berlin.
Move to Berlin, Pariser Straße 24, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
vacation in Brittany and Paris.
move to Lietzenburger Straße 7, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

the reduction of Kracauer’s salary by the Frankfurter Zeitung is a sign of increasing difficulties
at a time when some journalists had either left the paper or been dismissed.
move to Sybelstraße 35, Berlin-Charlottenburg. The apartment is altered to accommodate
Kracauer’s need for a large study; his wife has a study of her own, connected to his by a wide passageway.

the Frankfurter Zeitung reduces its linage fee.

vacation in Munich and Tyrol.
vacation in Brittany and Paris.
the Frankfurter Zeitung again reduces its linage fee.

Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno) publishes his postdoctoral thesis Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des
Ästhetischen [Kierkegaard. Construction of the Aesthetic], dedicated to his friend Siegfried Kracauer;
Kracauer’s review, “Der enthüllte Kierkegaard” [Kierkegaard Revealed], is in the end not published
by the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer flee from Berlin to Paris; officially, the Frankfurter Zeitung sends
its journalist on a “working vacation” to Paris. Kracauer is assured of a position as correspondent.
room in the Hotel Madison, 143 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6th arrondissement.
Clara Malraux’s translation of Ginster, entitled Genêt, is published by Gallimard, Paris.
the Frankfurter Zeitung informs Siegfried Kracauer of his dismissal.
furniture from Berlin is stored in Paris. Lili and Siegfried Kracauer regularly see
Walter Benjamin.

Lili Kracauer starts taking photographs.

partial payout (5,000 reichsmarks) to Siegfried Kracauer of an insurance policy for journalists.
Lili’s sister Fränze dies after a long illness, without the two being able to see each other again.
visit to Combloux, Haute-Savoie.
completion of the novel Georg; Kracauer declines Thomas Mann’s efforts to place the book
with publishers-in-exile Querido in Amsterdam.
Kracauer begins work on Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit [Jacques Offenbach
and the Paris of his Time], a biography of the Second Empire.

the Vienna publishers Paul Zsolnay turn down Georg.

contract with the Parisian publisher Bernard Grasset for Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit;
payment of an advance.
226

visit to Upper Bolzano (South Tyrol).

move into a furnished room at 3 avenue Mac-Mahon, Paris, 17th arrondissement.

Siegfried Kracauer is commissioned to carry out a study on crowds and propaganda by the
Institute for Social Research, now based in New York, with an advance for its envisaged publication in
the institute’s journal.
Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit is published by Allert de Lange in Amsterdam; it is
followed by the French edition, Jacques Offenbach ou le secret de second empire, published by Bernard
Grasset, and the English edition, Offenbach and his Time in Paris, by Constable, London.
Max Horkheimer first indicates the possibility of a job for Siegfried Kracauer at the film library
of the Museum of Modern Art (New York); Lili and Siegfried Kracauer then begin their attempts to
immigrate to the United States, supported by Meyer Schapiro, Richard and Gertrud Krautheimer,
Leo Löwenthal, Theodor W. Adorno, Hans Speier and other members of the Institute for Social Research
and the New School of Social Research.

arguments with the Institute for Social Research begin about Kracauer’s study on crowds
and propaganda, submitted two months previously under the title of Totalitäre Propaganda
[Totalitarian Propaganda].
Kracauer refuses to allow the publication of his text, which had been cut by a fifth and funda-
mentally altered by Adorno. This brought conflicts between Kracauer and Horkheimer, which had been
simmering beneath the surface since Kracauer’s failure to review Max Horkheimer’s Die Dämmerung
[Twilight] (1931) in the Frankfurter Zeitung, into the open. Kracauer’s twenty-years-long friendship with
Teddie (Adorno) underwent a severe test.

Siegfried Kracauer is interned as an “enemy alien” in a camp near Paris, then in

Normandy. Lili Kracauer moves to a family in Gif-sur-Yvette, eighteen miles southwest of Paris. Lili’s
ultimately successful efforts to secure her husband’s release are reflected in their daily correspondence.

Lili and Siegfried Kracauer arrive in Marseille; they are with Walter Benjamin almost every day.
Spain prohibits stateless persons from passing through its territory; Lili and Siegfried
make many unsuccessful attempts to cross the Spanish border illegally.
suicide of Walter Benjamin in the Spanish border village of Portbou.

Lili and Siegfried Kracauer reach Portugal.

CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

arrival in Lisbon.
Lili and Siegfried Kracauer finally gain a berth on the overcrowded SS Nyassa, and leave Europe
on its regular route of Lisbon–New York. During the ten-day crossing the couple make friends with the
cameraman Eugen Schüfftan and his wife Marlise.
arrival in the port of New York, where the Kracauers are met by Leo and Gertrude Löwenthal.
Initial accommodation in the American Jewish Congress House, 48 West 68th Street.
two-month grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for work on a “history of German film
(1918–1933)” (From Caligari to Hitler).
Siegfried Kracauer is appointed to the Rockefeller Foundation-financed position of special
assistant to the curator Iris Barry at the MoMa film library.
move into a one-room apartment at 56 West 75th Street.
Siegfried Kracauer’s first article in English, a review of the Disney film Dumbo, is published
in the magazine The Nation.
In the following years Kracauer, who now writes almost exclusively in English, will publish articles
in leading American newspapers and journals, including the Partisan Review and Commentary,
the publication organs of New York intellectual life of the 1940s and 50s.

Siegfried Kracauer completes the Rockefeller Foundation-financed study Propaganda and the
Nazi War Film, commissioned by the MoMa film library. As a xeroxed typescript marked “confidential”
it is made available to the State Department and a few selected specialists.
extension of the position in the film library for one year.
news via Switzerland of the deportation of Rosette and Hedwig Kracauer.

Lili Kracauer gives private lessons in French and resumes her studies of art history with a view to
potential means of earning money.
Kracauer’s study The Conquest of Europe on the Screen—The Nazi Newsreel 1939–1941,
commissioned by the Experimental Division for the Study of Wartime Communications, Washington,
DC, is made available as a xeroxed typescript marked “confidential” to certain specialists and political
institutions.
one-year grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for further work
on a “history of German film (1918–1933)” (From Caligari to Hitler).
vacation in Tannersville (NY).

extension of the grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for one year.
vacation in Tannersville (NY).

extension of the grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for three months.
228

vacation in Arkville (NY).

Lili Kracauer takes a job as a research worker at the Central Location Index in New York.

Lili and Siegfried Kracauer become American citizens.

From Caligari to Hitler appears in Princeton University Press and shortly afterwards with Dennis Dobson,
London.
vacation in Stamford (NY).

vacation in Stamford (NY).

Lili Kracauer loses her job at the Central Location Index.
she begins a similar one at the United Service for New Americans.

Siegfried Kracauer receives a grant from the Bollingen Foundation for a “study on film
aesthetics” (Theory of Film).
vacation in Stamford (NY).

First of Siegfried Kracauer’s occasional commissions from the radio channel Voice of America.
the Bollingen Foundation grant for a “study on film aesthetics” (Theory of Film) is extended for
one year.
Lili Kracauer loses her job at the United Service for New Americans, which is being disbanded.
During this time she considers studying psychology.
vacation in Stamford (NY).

“The Photographic Approach” (early version of the first chapter of Theory of Film) appears in the
Magazine of Art with eight photographs by well-known photographers selected by Kracauer.
vacation in Keene (NY).

Siegfried Kracauer is appointed senior staff member of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at
Columbia University, and advisor and consultant to the Bollingen Foundation and the Old Dominion
Foundation.
vacation at Lake Minnewaska (NY).
CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

vacation at Lake Minnewaska (NY).

Siegfried Kracauer receives a grant from the Chapelbrook Foundation in order to continue
working on Theory of Film.
vacation in Wilmington (VT).
application for “reparation” to the German authorities.

move to the apartment building at 498 West End Avenue (apartment 2B), NYC 24—according to
Kracauer, the first proper apartment since fleeing from Berlin.
approval of the application for “reparation” by the Federal Republic of Germany;
payment of an advance of 9,000 deutschmarks.
vacation at Lake Minnewaska.

the Chapelbrook Foundation grant is extended for one year.

first journey to Europe, visiting Hamburg, Klosters, Ascona, Florence, Rome, Milan, Basel,
Strasbourg, Paris; as with the journeys to Europe in the following years, this one is part-financed as a
business trip by the Bollingen Foundation, for whom Kracauer acts as a consultant.

vacation in Wilmington (VT).

Siegfried Kracauer participates in the Robert Flaherty Seminar in Brattleboro (VT).

a travel grant from the American Philosophical Society enables research to be conducted in the
most important European film archives and meetings with specialists prior to the completion of
Theory of Film.
journey to Europe, visiting London, Hamburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Venice, Paris.
having accepted an invitation, Siegfried Kracauer participates in the Venice Film Festival.

vacation in Wilmington (VT), where Siegfried Kracauer works on the last chapter of Theory of
Film.
first new edition in Germany of Die Angestellten [The Salaried Masses], now subtitled Eine
Schrift vom Ende der Weimarer Republik [A Work from the End of the Weimar Republic], published by
the Verlag für Demoskopie.
230

journey to Europe, visiting London, Munich, Klosters, Athens, Paris.

Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality published by Oxford University Press with
the dedication “To my wife.”

Start of work on a planned collection of essays on the philosophy of history (History. The Last Things
Before the Last).
journey to Europe, visiting Zurich, Milan (participation in the First International Conference
on Visual Information), the Swiss Alps, Rome.

List Verlag, with the cooperation of Wolfgang Weyrauch, brings out a first new edition in Germany
of Kracauer’s social biography of the Second Empire, now entitled Pariser Leben. Jacques Offenbach und
das Paris seiner Zeit [Parisian Life. Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of his Time].
journey to Europe, visiting London, Frankfurt, Munich, the Swiss Alps, Zurich.

meetings with Helmuth Plessner in New York.

journey to Europe, visiting Holland, Belgium, Bellagio, Interlaken, Zurich, Frankfurt am
Main (meeting with the publisher Siegfried Unseld, Suhrkamp), Paris.
the novel Ginster appears in Germany in Suhrkamp’s Bibliothek series without the final chapter XI,
contrary to Kracauer’s objection.
An anthology compiled by Siegfried Kracauer of his texts from the 1920s and 30s is published by
Suhrkamp under the title Das Ornament der Masse [The Mass Ornament].

radio broadcast of Adorno’s homage Der wunderliche Realist [The Curious Realist] on
Hessischer Rundfunk to mark the seventy-fifth birthday of Siegfried Kracauer on February 8;
publication in Neue Deutsche Hefte, September/October 1964.
An anthology compiled by Siegfried Kracauer of his texts from the 1920s and 30s is published by
Suhrkamp under the title Straßen in Berlin und anderswo [Streets of Berlin and Elsewhere].
journey to Europe, visiting London, Frankfurt am Main, Zurich, Interlaken, Cologne (annual
conference of the Research Group on Poetics and Hermeneutics), Rome.
Theorie des Films. Die Errettung der äußeren Wirklichkeit [Theory of Film. The Redemption of
Physical Reality] is published by Suhrkamp.

meetings with Peter Szondi in New York.

The section on Erasmus in the introduction (completed in 1962) to History. The Last Things Before the
Last appears in its original version, and with a preceding congratulatory letter in German, under the title
CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

Zwei Deutungen in zwei Sprachen [Two Interpretations in Two Languages] in the festschrift published by
Siegfried Unseld to mark the eightieth birthday of Ernst Bloch.
journey to Zurich and Vevey.

journey to Europe, visiting Frankfurt am Main, Zurich, Vevey, Lindau, and Rome; participation
in Lindau in the annual conference of the Research Group on Poetics and Hermeneutics with the lecture
“General History and the Aesthetic Approach”.
Siegfried Kracauer dies of pneumonia in a hospital in New York.

Siegfried Kracauer’s last book, History. The Last Things Before the Last, is published by Oxford University
Press, having been completed and edited by Paul Oskar Kristeller assisted by Lili Kracauer.

Lili Kracauer travels to Germany, among other things for a meeting with Siegfried Unseld,
and to Switzerland for a vacation. Premature return to New York in September.

Lili Kracauer dies in New York.

232

Ill. 244: “Curriculum Vitae,” signature, “Elizabeth Kracauer.”

CHRONOLOGY LILI AND SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

Ill. 245–250: Siegfried Kracauer and Lili Kracauer, New York, May 2, 1956;
New York, May 10, 1960; New York, April 30, 1965, passport photos.
234
Werke in neun Bänden [Complete Works in Nine Volumes], ed. Inka Mülder-Bach et al.,
Frankfurt am Main and Berlin: Suhrkamp 2004–2012.
Vol. 1, Soziologie als Wissenschaft. Der Detektiv-Roman. Die Angestellten. ed. Inka Mülder-Bach,
with the assistance of Mirjam Wenzel, Frankfurt am Main 2006.
Vol. 2.1, Von Caligari zu Hitler, ed. Sabine Biebl, Berlin 2012.
Vol. 2.2, Studien zu Massenmedien und Propaganda, ed. Christian Fleck and Bernd Stiegler,
with the assistance of Joachim Heck and Maren Neumann, Berlin 2012.
Vol. 3, Theorie des Films. Die Errettung der äußeren Wirklichkeit, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach,
with the assistance of Sabine Biebl, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
Vol. 4, Geschichte. Vor den letzten Dingen, ed. Ingrid Belke, with the assistance of Sabine Biebl,
Frankfurt am Main 2009.
Vol. 5.1–5.4, Essays, Feuilletons und Rezensionen, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach, with the assistance of
Sabine Biebl, Frankfurt am Main 2011.
Vol. 6.1–6.3, Kleine Schriften zum Film, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach, with the assistance of Mirjam Wenzel
und Sabine Biebl u.a., Frankfurt am Main 2004.
Vol. 7, Romane und Erzählungen, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach, with the assistance of Sabine Biebl,
Frankfurt am Main 2004.
Vol. 8, Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit, ed. Ingrid Belke, with the assistance of
Mirjam Wenzel, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
Vol. 9.1, Frühe Schriften aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Ingrid Belke, with the assistance of Sabine Biebl,
Frankfurt am Main 2004.
The Past’s Threshold. Essays on Photography, ed. Philippe Despoix and Maria Zinfert, trans. Conor Joyce,
Zurich and Berlin: diaphanes 2014.
Totalitäre Propaganda, ed. Bernd Stiegler, with the assistance of Maren Neumann and Joachim Heck,
Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013.
Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings. Essays on Film and Popular Culture, ed. Johannes von Moltke
and Kristy Rawson, Berkeley: University of California Press 2012.
The Mass Ornament, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Thomas Y. Levin, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press 1995.
Die Entwicklung der Schmiedekunst in Berlin, Potsdam und einigen Städten der Mark vom 17. Jahrhundert
bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Lorenz Jäger, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag 1997 (Kracauer’s
doctorate, first pub. Worms: Wormser Verl.- u. Druckereigesellschaft 1915).
Soziologie als Wissenschaft. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung, Dresden: Sibyllen-Verlag 1922.
Ginster. Von ihm selbst geschrieben, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013 (first pub. anon., Berlin 1928).
The Salaried Masses, trans. Quintin Hoare, London: Verso 1998; contains Walter Benjamin, “An Outsider
Attracts Attention – On The Salaried Masses of S. Kracauer.”
Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of his time, trans. Gwenda Davies and Eric Mosbacher, New York:
Zone Books 2002 (first pub. London 1937).
Original German, Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit, ed. Karsten Witte, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp 1976 (first pub. Amsterdam 1937).
French, Jacques Offenbach ou le secret du second empire, trans. Lucienne Astruc, Paris: Gallimard 1994
(first pub. Paris: Grasset 1937).
Propaganda and the Nazi War Film, New York 1942.
The Conquest of Europe on the Screen. The Nazi Newsreel 1939–1940, Washington 1943.
From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the German Film, ed. Leonardo Quaresima, Princeton:
Princeton University Press 2004 (first pub. Princeton University Press 1947)
Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality, ed. Miriam Hansen, Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1997 (first pub. Oxford University Press 1960).
History. Last Things Before the Last, (completed and edited by Oskar Kristeller, Princeton: Princeton
University Press 1995 (first pub. Oxford University Press 1969).
Über die Freundschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1971.
Georg, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013 (first pub. Frankfurt am Main 1977).
Der Detektiv-Roman. Ein philosophischer Traktat (1922–1925), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979.

Levin, Thomas Y., Siegfried Kracauer. Eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften, Marbach am Neckar:
Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1989.

Theodor W. Adorno – Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel 1923-1966. »Der Riß der Welt geht auch durch mich«,
ed. Wolfgang Schopf, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2002.
Benjamin, Walter, Briefe an Siegfried Kracauer. Mit 4 Briefen von Siegfried Kracauer an Walter Benjamin,
ed. Theodor W. Ardorno Archiv, Marbach am Neckar: Deutsches Literaturarchiv 1987.
Bloch, Ernst, Briefe 1903–1975, ed. Karola Bloch et al., 2 vols., Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1985.
In steter Freundschaft. Leo Löwenthal – Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel, ed. Peter Erwin Jansen and
Christian Schmidt, trans. Bob Detobel and Susanne H. Löwenthal, Springe: zu Klampen 2003.
Siegfried Kracauer – Erwin Panofsky. Briefwechsel 1941–1966, ed. Volker Breidecker, Berlin: Akademie 1996.
238

Nachrichten aus Hollywood, New York und anderswo. Der Briefwechsel Eugen und Marlise Schüfftans
mit Siegfried und Lili Kracauer, ed. Helmut G. Asper, Trier 2003.

Adorno, Theodor, The Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer, in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.) Notes to Literature,
vol. 2, trans. Sherry Weber Nicholsen, New York: Columbia University Press 1992.
Arnold, Heinz Ludwig (ed.), Siegfried Kracauer, in Text + Kritik, no. 68, Munich 1980.
Barnouw, Dagmar, Critical Realism. History, Photography, and the Work of Siegfried Kracauer, Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press 1994.
Baumann, Stephanie, Im Vorraum der Geschichte. Siegfried Kracauers History. The Last Things Before the
Last, Konstanz: Konstanz University Press 2014.
Belke, Ingrid, and Irina Renz (compilers), Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966, Marbacher Magazin, 47/1988,
Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 1988.
Despoix, Philippe and Peter Schöttler (eds.), Siegfried Kracauer. Penseur de l’histoire, Paris: Éditions de
la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Les Presses de l’Université Laval 2006.
Gemünden, Gert and Johannes von Moltke (eds.), Culture in the Anteroom. The Legacies of Siegfried
Kracauer, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2012.
Hansen, Miriam, Cinema and Experience. Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno,
Berkeley: University of California Press 2012.
Jay, Martin, The Extraterritorial Life of Siegfried Kracauer, in id., Permanent Exiles. Essays on the Intellec-
tual Migration from Germany to America, New York: Columbia University Press 1985.
Koch, Gertrud, Siegfried Kracauer. An Introduction, trans. Jeremy Gaines, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, New Jersey 2000.
Mülder-Bach, Inka, Siegfried Kracauer – Grenzgänger zwischen Theorie und Praxis, Stuttgart: Metzler 1985.
Reeh, Henrik, Ornaments of the Metropolis. Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture, Cambridge:
MIT Press 2005.
Robnik, Drehli et al. (eds.) Film als Loch in der Wand, Vienna and Berlin: Tura und Kant 2013.
Schlüpmann, Heide, Ein Detektiv des Kinos: Studien zu Siegfried Kracauers Filmtheorie, Frankfurt am
Main: Stroemfeld 1998.

New German Critique, no. 54, 1991, special issue on Siegfried Kracauer.
New Formations, no. 61, summer 2007, special issue on Siegfried Kracauer.

Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill and Wang 1981.
Beaumont-Maillet, Laure (ed.), Atget Paris, Paris: Hazan 1992.
Benjamin, Walter, “A Little History of Photography,” in id. Selected Writings, vol. 2, trans. Rodney Living-
stone et al., Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, p. 507–530.
Diers, Michael, “Der Autor ist im Bilde,” in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft, Göttingen:
Wallstein 2007, p. 551–586.
Geimer, Peter, Bilder aus Versehen. Eine Geschichte fotografischer Erscheinungen, Hamburg 2010.
Geimer, Peter, Theorien der Fotografie (introduction), Hamburg 2009.
Ginzburg, Carlo, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” in Critical Inquiry, vol. 20,
no. 1. (fall 1993), p. 10–35.
Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt (ed.), Hanns Ludwig Katz, exhib. cat., Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt am
Main, Kunsthalle Emden, Cologne: Wienand Verlag 1992.
Mattenklott, Gert, Bilderdienst. Ästhetische Opposition bei Beardsley und George, Munich: Rogner & Bern-
hard 1970.
Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography. From 1839 to the Present, New York: Museum of Modern
Art 1982.
Thornton, Dora, The Scholar in his Study. Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press 1997.
Ulrich, Wolfgang, Die Geschichte der Unschärfe, Berlin: Wagenbach 2002.
Zinfert, Maria, “On the Photographic Practice of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer: Portrait Photographs from
the Estate in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach am Neckar),” in The Germanic Review. Litera-
ture, Culture, Theory, vol. 88, issue 4, 2013, p. 435–443.
240
With the exception of the print from the broken glass negative (ill. 1), only original enlargements, contacts,
and negatives have been used. “Paper print,” “contact sheet,” or “contact strip” thus refer to originals from
the photographic archive of Lili and Siegfried Kracauer. The dimensions of the enlargements are given; a
contact corresponds to the format of the negative—1 x 1 3⁄8" (24 x 36 mm)—from which the dimensions of
the contact strips can be deduced. Some of the documents are reproduced as objects in order to give an
impression of their material quality. The negative scans made for this book are sometimes shown as film
strips, sometimes as enlargements of individual photographs.

Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., print from a broken glass negative,
produced for the centennial exhibition in 1989, 6 3⁄4 x 4 3⁄4" (17 x 12 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., newspaper cutting, 3 12⁄ x 2 38⁄ " (9 x 6 cm).

Siegfried Kracauer, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2" (14 x 9 cm).
Verso paper print (ill. 3.), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Dr. Siegfried Kracauer 1930.”
Various motifs (Siegfried Kracauer, animal sculpture in the Jardins du Trocadéro,
boulevard by night, “lucky booth,” Eiffel Tower, Palais du Trocadéro), Paris, 1934,
photos by Lili Kracauer, contact strips and individual contacts.
Tulips, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Apples, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Lucky Booth, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili or Siegfried Kracauer, contact.
Lucky Booth, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Café Helvetia Luxembourg, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Café Helvetia Luxembourg and Café Mephisto, Paris, 1934, photos by Lili Kracauer, contact strip.
Seine embankment, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8"
(10 x 15 cm).
Barge on the Seine, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8"
(10 x 15 cm).
Barge at a Seine wharf, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
The Roofs of Paris, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Facades, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8" (10 x 15 cm).
Photographer in a park, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8"
(10 x 15 cm).
Newspaper salesman, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2"
(9 x 14 cm).
Saint-Sulpice (seen from the rue Férou), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer,
paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2" (14 x 9 cm).
Obelisk on the Place de la Concorde, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer,
paper print, 7 1⁄8 x 4 3 ⁄4" (18 x 12 cm).
Aux Trois Quartiers, Paris, January 3, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2"
(9 x 14 cm).
Cinema, Paris, January 16, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Les Halles, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 12⁄ x 5 12⁄ " (9 x 14 cm).
Verso paper print (ill. 25), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Les Halles,” address label,
“56 West 75th Street New York City.”
Notre-Dame (portals), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
4 x 5 7⁄8" (10 x 15 cm).
Notre-Dame (portals), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photos by Lili Kracauer, two contacts.
Buttes-Chaumont: Back Wall / Chimney, Paris, January 20, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer,
paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Buttes-Chaumont: Town Hall Square, Paris, January 20, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Buttes-Chaumont: Town Hall Square with Omnibus, Paris, January 20, 1935, photo by Lili
Kracauer, contact.
Buttes-Chaumont: Chalet and Fire Wall, Paris, January 20, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Buttes-Chaumont: Rue d’Hautpoul, Paris, January 20, 1935, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Passers-by, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 12⁄ x 3 12⁄ " (14 x 9 cm).
Anglers, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2" (14 x 9 cm).
Café terrace and passers-by, Paris, 1937, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 12⁄ x 5 12⁄ " (9 x 14 cm).
Military parade / tanks, Paris, 1937, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Military parade / aircraft, Paris, 1937, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Unknown man by the Seine / Eiffel Tower, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer,
contact.
Building site, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
244

Demolition Site, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Demolition Site, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Demolition Site (right, Siegfried Kracauer?), between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer,
contact.
Demolition Site (centre, Siegfried Kracauer?), Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by
Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).

Various motifs, Paris and Combloux, 1934, photos by Lili Kracauer, negative scans.
Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Lili Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 45,
photo 31).
View from the window onto Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer,
from a negative scan (ill. 45, photo 21).
House, Combloux, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 45, photo 27).
Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Various motifs, Paris, between 1934 and 1936, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer,
negative scans.
Lili Kracauer, Paris (Hotel Madison, 143 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6th arrondissement),
between 1934 and 1936, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (Parc Monceau), 1937, photos by Lili Kracauer, two contact strips.
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (Parc Monceau), 1937, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
c. 4 3⁄4 x 4" (c. 12 x 10 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (?), between 1934 and 1936, photos by Lili Kracauer, four contacts.
Siegfried Kracauer, Paris (?), between 1934 and 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Verona arena, Verona, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8" (10 x 15 cm).
Verona arena, Verona, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8" (10 x 15 cm).
Building on Weggensteinstraße, Bolzano, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
5 7⁄8 x 4 " (15 x 10 cm).
Dr. Streiter Gasse, Bolzano, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 7⁄8 x 4 " (15 x 10 cm).
Various motifs, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photos by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan.
Various motifs, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photos by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan.
Women and boys in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by
Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (photo 43).
Women and boy at a beer table, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer,
from a negative scan (photo 1).
Boys and party guests in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by
Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 x 5 7⁄8" (10 x 15 cm).
Musician and woman in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by
Lili Kracauer, paper print, 7 1⁄8 x 4 3⁄4" (18 x 12 cm).
Girl in traditional costume, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
4 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄8 (12 x 18 cm).
Boy climbing the kermis pole, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a
negative scan (photo 41).
Boy on the kermis pole and party guests, Upper Bolzano, August 15, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer,
from a negative scan (photo 15).

Various motifs, Arkville, NY, 1945, photos by Lili Kracauer, negative scans.
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photos by Lili und Siegfried Kracauer,
negative scans.
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (photo 15).
Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1947, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan (photo 23).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer,
contact strip.
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip, (ill. 74,
photo 27).
Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photos by Siegfried Kracauer, contact strip.
Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1949, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip (ill. 76,
photo 30).
Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Lili Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, contact.
Neighbors on the balcony, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.
Landscapes, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photos by Lili and Siegfried
Kracauer, six contact strips.
Landscape, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip (ill. 82, photo 5).
Landscape, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip (ill. 82, photo 13).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 21).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 22).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 23).
Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 24).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 25).
246

Lili Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 82, photo 26).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄8"
(12 x 18 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Keene, NY, 1951, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 4 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄8" (12 x 18 cm)
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, between 1947 and 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
4 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄8" (12 x 18 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, between 1947 and 1950, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
4 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄8" (12 x 18 cm).
Haze, Hut, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili and
Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 24).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 19).
Hut, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 95, photo 8).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 10).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 13).
Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 16).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 29).
Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 95, photo 34).
Hut, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 95, photo 26).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, three contact prints
with original markings.
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili Kracauer, five of thirty paper
prints, 7 1⁄8 x 5 1⁄8", 7 7⁄8 x 5 1⁄2 ", 8 7⁄8 x 6 11⁄16 ", 10 15⁄64 x 7 5⁄8", 10 1⁄4 x 8 5⁄8" (18 x 13 cm, 20 x 14 cm,
22.5 x 17 cm, 26 x 18 cm, and 26 x 21 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2"
(14 x 9 cm).
Verso paper print (ill. 107), various inscriptions and stamps.
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photos by Lili Kracauer, two contact strips.
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 109, photo 34).
Lili Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, from contact strip
(ill. 109, photo 36).
Siegfried Kracauer and landscapes, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photos
by Lili Kracauer, two contact strips with original markings.
Siegfried Kracauer, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer,
from contact strip (ill. 112).
Hotel, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
7 1⁄8 x 5 1⁄8" (18 x 13 cm).
Panorama, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
7 1⁄8 x 5 1⁄8" (18 x 13 cm).
Balconies, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Stamford, NY, 1950, photos by Lili Kracauer, two contacts.
Bank of rocks, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper
print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Hut, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Various motifs, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photos by Lili Kracauer, from
contact strips.
Outdoor restaurant, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer,
paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Riders, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Girl with raccoon, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1954, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper
print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Various motifs, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, photos by Lili Kracauer, negative scans.
Bush in blossom, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 124, photo 3).
Siegfried Kracauer, John W. Bennett and Mrs. Bennett, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, photo by
Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 124, photo 24).
Barns, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 18⁄ x 7 18⁄ " (13 x 18 cm).
Barns, Wilmington, VT, 1954 or 1957, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 18⁄ x 7 18⁄ " (13 x 18 cm).

Scuola Grande di San Marco, Venice, 1958, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 12 x 17 cm.
Facades, Venice, 1958, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 12 x 17 cm.
Various motifs, Athens, 1960, photos by Lili Kracauer, eight contact strips, one verso contact
strip, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “not interesting.”
View of Mount Lycabettus, Athens, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Erechtheion, Athens, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Parthenon, Athens, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Erechtheion, Athens, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
248

Various motifs, Swiss Alps, between 1960 and 1964, photos by Lili Kracauer, four contact strips.
Landscape, Swiss Alps, between 1960 and 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8"
(13 x 18 cm).
Street scene, Klosters, between 1960 and 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8"
(13 x 18 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (13 x 18 cm).
Various motifs, Klosters, 1960, photos by Lili and Siegfried Kracauer, negative scans.
View from the window, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 140, photo 15).
Houses, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 140, photo 24).
Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 2 3⁄4" (9 x 7 cm).
Lili Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Siegfried Kracauer, paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 2 3⁄4" (9 x 7 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photos by Lili (or Siegfried) Kracauer, negative scans.
Siegfried Kracauer, Klosters, 1960, photo by Lili (or Siegfried) Kracauer, from a negative scan
(ill. 145, photo 29).
Four columns in the Forum of Augustus, Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, photos by
Lili Kracauer, negative scans.
Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 147, photo 32).
Four columns in the Forum of Augustus, Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
7 1⁄8 x 4 3⁄4" (18 x 12 cm).
Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 7 1⁄8 x 4 3⁄4"
(18 x 12 cm).
Forum Romanum (panorama), Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print, 5 1⁄8 x 7 1⁄8"
(13 x 18 cm).
Chapel of the Forty Martyrs in Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer,
paper print, 7 1⁄8 x 4 3⁄4" (18 x 12 cm).
Portrait in the Forum, Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, paper print,
6 7⁄8 x 4 3⁄8" (17.5 x 11 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Rome, 1964, photos by Lili Kracauer, contact strip.
Various motifs, Rome (Piazza San Pietro in Vincoli, Bocca della Verità, Piazza Bocca della Verità
with the Temple of Hercules Victor, bell tower of Santa Maria in Cosmedin seen from the
Temple of Hercules Victor, Santa Maria in Trastevere) and New York (Siegfried Kracauer, Interior
Photos), 1964, photos by Lili Kracauer, negative scans.
Bell tower of Santa Maria in Cosmedin seen from the Temple of Hercules Victor, Rome, 1964,
photo by Lili Kracauer, from a negative scan (ill. 155, photo 11).
Siegfried Kracauer (one of the Interior Photos), New York, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a
negative scan (ill. 155, photo 17).
Siegfried Kracauer (one of the Interior Photos), New York, 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer, from a
negative scan (ill. 155, photo 19).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1894, Atelier Schmidt, paper print on cardboard,
4 x 2 3⁄8" (10 x 6 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1895, Atelier Erna, paper print on cardboard, 4 x 2 3⁄8"
(10 x 6 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1898, Atelier H. Collischonn, paper print on cardboard,
4 1⁄8 x 2 1⁄2" (10.5 x 6.5 cm).
Verso paper print on cardboard, (ill. 161), inscription probably by Rosette Kracauer, “9 ¼ years.”
Siegfried Kracauer and Jann von Sprecher on the Sulzfluh, Swiss Alps (Graubünden), 1906,
anon., paper print, approx. 10 x 7 cm.
Siegfried Kracauer, passport photo on verso pass allowing free entry to Italian museums
(ill. 165), probably 1912, paper print on cardboard, approx. 4 x 2 3⁄4" (10 x 7 cm).
Pass allowing free entry to Italian museums, 1912, cardboard, 4 3⁄8 x 5 1⁄2" (11 x 14 cm).
“Juvenile portrait” of Siegfried Kracauer, n.p., 1912, enlargement from a paper print, New York
c. 1965 (ill. 164), 10 1⁄4 x 7 7⁄8" (26 x 20 cm).
Rosette Kracauer, Baden (Switzerland), c. 1900, photo by Maria Stein-Haberkorn, paper print on
cardboard, 4 3⁄8 x 2 3⁄4" (11 x 7 cm).
Hedwig Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1900, Atelier Voigt, paper print on cardboard, 3 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8"
(9.5 x 6 cm).
Hedwig (seated) with Rosette Kracauer (middle) and their two sisters Amalie and Martha
(née Oppenheim), n.p., undated, anon., paper print, 2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄2" (6 x 9 cm).
Isidor Kracauer, probably Frankfurt am Main, c. 1910, anon., paper print, 3 12⁄ x 2 12⁄ " (9 x 6.5 cm).
Hedwig (left) and Rosette Kracauer in front of Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, undated, anon.,
paper print, 1 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄4" (4.5 x 7 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer (middle of back row) in the foot artillery, Mainz, 1917, anon., paper print
on cardboard, 3 3⁄8 x 5 3⁄8" (8.7 x 13.6 cm).
Otto Hainebach and comrades, France, May 18, 1915, anon., military postcard from Otto
Hainebach to Siegfried Kracauer, cardboard, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Verso military postcard (ill. 173), various stamps and inscriptions, addressed to “Dr. S. Kracauer,
Frankfurt a/M, Bäckerweg 52 III,” written in Fonches (Somme department), May 25, 1915.
Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno), n.p., c. 1919, anon., paper print.
Siegfried Kracauer (left), unidentified person, Theodor Wiesengrund (Adorno), Dolomites, 1924,
anon., paper print with original pencil markings, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄4" (9 x 13.5 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., paper print, 3 3⁄8 x 4 7⁄8" (8.5 x 12.5 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1920s, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 2 3⁄8" (9 x 6 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, n.p., 1920s, anon., paper print, c. 5 1⁄8 x 3 1⁄2" (c. 13 x 9 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, n.p., 1920s, anon., crookedly cut paper print, approx. 3 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄8" (9 x 8 cm).
Winter Park, n.p., undated, anon., paper print, 11 x 8 cm, mounted on cardboard, 10 1⁄4 x 4 3⁄8"
(22 x 21 cm).
Renée (friend of Lili Kracauer’s), France, c. 1900, anon., paper print, 7 cm (diam.), mounted
on cardboard, 4 3⁄8 x 4 3⁄8" (11 x 11 cm).
250

Verso cardboard (ill. 182), inscription, “À ma chère Elisabeth / affectueux souvenir / de ton amie
française / Renée.”
Franziska (Fränze) and Elisabeth (Lili) Ehrenreich (left), Strasbourg, c. 1898, Atelier H. Hack,
paper print on cardboard, 4 3⁄8 x 2 3⁄4" (11 x 7 cm).
Elisabeth (Lili) and Franziska (Fränze) Ehrenreich (left), Mühlhausen (?), c. 1903, Atelier
C. Tschira, paper print on cardboard, 4 3⁄8 x 2 3⁄4" (11 x 7 cm).
Franziska (Fränze) Ehrenreich, n.p., c. 1900, anon., section from a paper print on cardboard,
3 1⁄2 x 1" (9 x 2.5 cm).
(Left to right) Franziska (Fränze), Marie Caroline (?), Elisabeth (Lili), August Ehrenreich,
Strasbourg, c. 1910, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich, n.p., c. 1928, two photo-booth photos, paper prints, 2 x 2 34⁄ " (5 x 7 cm).
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich in her home salon, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930, anon., paper print,
2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄8" (6 x 8 cm).
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich and Hanns Katz, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930, anon.,
paper print (crumpled, torn), 2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄8" (6 x 8 cm).
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich and Hanns Katz on the roof of their house, Frankfurt am Main,
c. 1930, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 2 3⁄8" (9 x 6 cm).
Franziska Katz-Ehrenreich and Hanns Katz with their monkey, Frankfurt am Main, c. 1930,
anon., paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 2 3⁄8" (9 x 6 cm).
Lili Ehrenreich, n.p., 1928, two photo-booth photos, paper prints, 2 x 1 3⁄8" (5 x 3.5 cm).
Lili Kracauer, n.p., undated, anon., paper print, 1 5⁄8 x 1 3⁄4" (4 x 4.5 cm).
Lili Kracauer, n.p., undated, anon., paper print, 1 5⁄8 x 1 3⁄4" (4 x 4.5 cm).
Lili Kracauer, New York, 1944, photo-booth photo, framed paper print, 2 3⁄8 x 3" (6 x 7.5 cm).
Verso photo-booth photo (ill. 196), maker’s imprint, inscription by Lili Kracauer,
“Grand Central / around summer 1944.”
Lili Kracauer, New York, 1952, photo-booth photo, framed paper print, 2 3⁄8 x 3" (6 x 7.5 cm).
Verso photo-booth photo (ill. 198), maker’s imprint, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Sept. 12 / 1952.”
Unidentified person, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄8 x 2"
(8 x 5 cm).
Lili Kracauer, unidentified person, Siegfried Kracauer, Combloux, 1934, anon., paper print,
3 1⁄8 x 2" (8 x 5 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer (middle), two unidentified persons, France, c. 1935, anon.,
paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer (middle), three unidentified persons, France, c. 1935, anon.,
paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2" (9 x 14 cm).
Lili Kracauer, France, c. 1935, anon., paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2" (14 x 9 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, members of the Dreyer family, France, between 1956 and 1964,
anon., paper print, 2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄8" (6 x 8 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, members of the Dreyer family, France, between 1956 and 1964,
anon., paper print, 2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄8" (6 x 8 cm).
Lissy Valk, n.p., 1920s, anon., paper print, 4 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄4 " (12 x 7 cm).
Clem Cramer, USA, 1950s, anon., paper print, 3 3⁄8 x 2 3⁄8 " (8.5 x 6 cm).
The sociologist Julius Wyler (1891–1959) with his wife Eva and daughter Anni
and an unidentified person, USA, 1950s, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄8 x 2" (8 x 5 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, unidentified person in front of a vacation home, Keene, NY, 1951,
anon., paper print, 2 x 3 1⁄8 " (5 x 8 cm).
Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, unidentified person, Lake Minnewaska, NY, between 1952 and 1955,
anon., paper print, 2 x 3 1⁄8" (5 x 8 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, vacation in NY, undated, anon., paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 " (14 x 9 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, vacation in NY, undated, anon., paper print, 5 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 " (14 x 9 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, unidentified boy, vacation in NY, undated, anon., paper print, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2"
(9 x 14 cm).
Siegfried, Lili Kracauer (middle), Maya Deren, New York, between 1954 and 1961, anon.,
Polaroid, 2 3⁄8 x 3 1⁄8" (6 x 8 cm).
Verso Polaroid (ill. 214), inscription “S. Kr. / Lili / Deren.”

View into a side street, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer, contact.

Envelope, gray paper, 7 1⁄2 x 10 5⁄8" (19 x 27 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Curriculum Vitae in
Pictures (Friedel).”
Envelope, green paper, 4 3⁄4 x 6 3⁄4" (12 x 17 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Stamford 1950 /
very very bad.”
Envelope, blue paper, 5 78⁄ x 4" (15 x 10 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “very bad ones / no valid.”
Envelope, white paper, 5 1⁄8 x 6 3⁄4" (13 x 17 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Epreuves
Concorde nighttime photographs / portraits (table) roof etc.”
Canister lid, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “former / Trocadero / 14 Juillet / Café in the Luxemb. /
1st. still life / portraits Fr.”
Envelope, beige paper, 5 1⁄2 x 6 3⁄4" (14 x 17 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “for comparison –
postcards.”
Cardboard wrapper around film, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “portraits / hut.”
Cardboard wrapper around film, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Stamford 1st year.”
Roll of film, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Buttes-Chaumont and Ile St. Louis.”
Film canister, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Stam- / ford /1950.”
Envelope, beige cardboard, 5 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2" (14 x 19 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Rome / 1964 /
also portrait / in the forum.”
Slip of paper, approx. 2 x 3 1⁄8" (5 x 8 cm), inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Bad roll / (Petit Champs) /
3rd roll. / ruined by developers.”
252

Table for film, recto and verso, white paper, 8 1⁄4 x 5 1⁄8 " (21 x 13 cm), handwritten notes by
Lili Kracauer (see chap. I).
Table for film, recto, white paper, 8 1⁄4 x 5 1⁄2 " (21 x 14 cm), handwritten notes by Lili Kracauer
(see chap. I).
List of photographs from Verona, white paper, 4 3⁄4 x 3 1⁄8" (12 x 8 cm), handwritten notes by
Lili Kracauer (see chap. II).
Order / invoice, Modernage Custom Darkrooms, New York, undated, paper, 11 x 8 1⁄4"
(28 x 21 cm).
Instructions for enlarging the “juvenile portrait,” white paper, 7 7⁄8 x 5 1⁄2" (20 x 14 cm), handwrit-
ten notes by Lili Kracauer (see chap. V).
Photo folder, printed paper, 10 x 7 cm, inscription by Lili Kracauer, “Demolition sites /
Seine bridges / nighttime photos / obelisk / Trois Quartiers” (see chap. I).
Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle, title page, book open, 8 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄4" (21 x 26 cm).
Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle, Paris 1934, photo by Brassaï on p. 62, 8 1⁄4 x 5 1⁄8"
(21 x 13 cm).
Marcel Natkin, Lumière Artificielle, book open, 8 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄4" (21 x 26 cm), notes by Lili Kracauer
on nighttime photography glued to the paper cover.
Marcel Natkin, Manuel du Portrait, Paris 1938, 10 5⁄8 x 7 1⁄2" (27 x 19 cm).
Leitz corporation brochure, Appareil Leica avec nouveau chassis Modèle D, Mode d’emploi, Wetzlar
1933, 7 1⁄8 x 5 1⁄8" (18 x 13 cm).
Typescript with handwritten notes, squared DIN A5 paper, first of eleven pages, excerpts by
Lili Kracauer from Paul Wolff, Meine Erfahrungen mit der Leica, Frankfurt am Main 1934.
Curt Emmermann, Leica Technik, 8th–11th revised and expanded edition, Halle/Saale undated
(first edition 1934, regularly reprinted until 1951), 7 1⁄8 x 5 1⁄8" (18 x 13 cm).
List, white paper, 7 1⁄4 x 3" (18.5 x 7.5 cm), notes by Lili Kracauer.

Typescript, “Curriculum Vitae,” white paper, 9 7⁄8 x 7 1⁄8" (25 x 18 cm), signature, “Elizabeth
Kracauer.”
Siegfried Kracauer, New York, May 2, 1956, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).
Lili Kracauer, New York, May 2, 1956, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, New York, May 10, 1960, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).
Lili Kracauer, New York, May 10, 1960, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).
Siegfried Kracauer, New York, April 30, 1965, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).
Lili Kracauer, New York, April 30, 1965, anon., passport photo, 2 3⁄4 x 2 3⁄8" (7 x 6 cm).

Detail from ill. 19, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Detail from ill. 145, Klosters (Switzerland), 1960, photo by Lili or Siegfried Kracauer.
 Detail from ill. 44, Paris, between 1934 and 1939, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Detail from ill. 57, Verona, 1936, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Detail from ill. 193, Lili Kracauer, Frankfurt am Main 1928, photo-booth photo.
Detail from ill. 95, Haze, Lake Minnewaska, NY, 1953, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Detail from ill. 136, Swiss Alps, between 1960 and 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Detail from ill. 215, Siegfried and Lili Kracauer, New York, between 1954 and 1961, anon.,
Polaroid.
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, 2012, photo by Maria Zinfert.
Apartment building at 498 West End Avenue, New York, 2014, photo by Eva Maria Wilde.
Detail from ill. 158, New York 1964, photo by Lili Kracauer.
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, 2012, photo by Maria Zinfert.

All photographs except p. 208, p. 220, p. 242 DLA Marbach.

254
1st edition
ISBN 978-3-03734-671-6
© diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2014

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