Everything about Siegfried Kracauer totally explained
Siegfried Kracauer (
February 8,
1889,
Frankfurt am Main–
November 26,
1966,
New York) was a
German writer,
journalist,
sociologist,
cultural critic, and
film theorist.
Biography
Born to a
Jewish family in
Frankfurt, Kracauer studied architecture from 1907 to 1913, eventually obtaining a doctorate in engineering in 1914 and working as an architect in
Osnabrück,
Munich, and
Berlin until 1920.
From 1922 to 1933 he worked as the leading film and literature editor of the
Frankfurter Zeitung (a leading Frankfurt newspaper) as its correspondent in Berlin, where he worked alongside
Walter Benjamin and
Ernst Bloch, among others. Between 1923 and 1925, he wrote an essay entitled
Der Detektiv-Roman (
The Detective Novel), in which he concerned himself with phenomena from everyday life in modern society.
Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years, building up theoretical methods of analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout, and dance, which he published in 1927 with the work
Ornament der Masse (published in English as
The Mass Ornament).
In 1930, Kracauer published
Die Angestellten (
The Salaried Masses), a critical look at the lifestyle and culture of the new class of
white-collar employees. Spiritually homeless, and divorced from custom and tradition, these employees sought refuge in the new "distraction industries" of entertainment. Observers note that many of these lower-middle class employees were quick to adopt
Nazism, three years later.
Kracauer became increasingly critical of
capitalism (having read the works of
Karl Marx) and eventually broke away from the
Frankfurter Zeitung. About this same time (1930), he married Lili Ehrenreich. He was also very critical of
Stalinism and the "terrorist totalitarianism" of the
Soviet government.
With the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Kracauer migrated to
Paris, and then in 1941 emigrated to the
United States.
From 1941 to 1943 he worked in the
Museum of Modern Art in
New York City, supported by
Guggenheim and
Rockefeller scholarships for his work in
German film. Eventually, he published (1947), which traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the
Weimar Republic as well as helping lay the foundation of modern
film criticism.
In 1960, he released
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, which argued that
realism is the most important function of cinema.
In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for different institutes, amongst them in New York as a director of research for applied social sciences at
Columbia University. He died there, in 1966, from the consequences of pneumonia.
His last book is the posthumously published
History, the Last Things Before the Last (New York, Oxford University Press, 1969).
Ideas and influence
Kracauer analyzed and critiqued the phenomena of modern mass culture.
In gatherings in urban spaces and in the mechanical movement of
line dancers, for example, he saw an emerging social mentality, but one which was lacking in purpose (
The Mass Ornament). In such observations, Kracauer was moving toward an idea of social wholeness similar to the one espoused by
György Lukács in his idea of "totality". Like Lukacs, Kracauer ultimately translated this search for totality into a belief in political Marxism.
He built up a general theories based upon dozens of smaller examples. His attention to detail lends itself to an inductive method.
Kracauer was also one of the first to treat the cinema seriously; in it he saw a mirror of social conditions and desires.
Theodor Adorno viewed Kracauer as one of the major contributors to his work.
Kurt Tucholsky admired Kracauer's scientific approach to writing.
Further Information
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