Siegfried Kracauer was one of the most important German thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings on Weimar culture, mass society, photography and film were groundbreaking and they anticipated many of the themes later developed members of the Frankfurt School and other cultural theorists.
No less remarkable were the circumstances under which he made these contributions. After his early years as a journalist in Germany, the rise of the Nazis forced Kracauer into exile – first in Paris and then, after a protracted flight via Marseilles and Lisbon, to the United States. The existential challenges, personal losses and unrelenting hardship Kracauer faced during these years of exile formed the backdrop against which he offered his acute observations of modern life.
Jörg Später provides the first comprehensive biography of this extraordinary man. Based on extensive archival research, Später’s biography expertly traces the key influences on Kracauer’s intellectual development and presents his most important works and ideas with great clarity. At the same time, Später ably documents the intensity of Kracauer’s personal relationships, the trauma of his flight and exile, and his embrace of his new homeland, where, finally, the ‘groundlessness’ of refugee existence gave way to a more stable life and, with it, some of the intellectually most fruitful years of Kracauer’s career.
The result is a vivid portrait of a man driven both by an urge to capture reality – to attend to the things that are ‘overlooked or misjudged’, that still ‘lack a name’, as he put it – and by a need to find his place in a hostile, threatening world.
Tabela de Conteúdo
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
1. Siegfried Kracauer – A Life
2. Early Things: Before 1918 3. Revolution, the Frankfurter Zeitung and Cultural Criticism around 1920 4. Friendship (Part 1): The Jewish Renaissance in Frankfurt 5. Friendship (Part 2): The One Who Waits 6. The Crisis of the Sciences, Sociology and the Sphere Theory 7. Friendship (Part Three): Passion and the Path towards the Profane 8. The Rebirth of Marxism in Philosophy 9. Kracauer Goes to the Movies: A Medium for the Masses and A Medium for Modernity 10. At the Feuilleton of the Frankfurter Zeitung 11. Inflation and Journeys into Porosity 12. Transitional Years: Economic Upturn, Revolt, Enlightenment 13. The Primacy of the Optical: Architecture, Images of Space, Films 14. Ginster, Georg and the Salaried Masses 15. The Idea as Bearer of the Group: The Philosophical Quartet 16. Berlin circa 1930: In the Midst of the Political Melee 17. The Trial 18. Europe on the Move: Refugees in France 19. The Liquidation of German Matters 20. Two Views on the Second Empire: Offenbach and the Arcades 21. The Disintegration of the Group 22. Songs of Woe from Frankfurt 23. La Vie Parisienne 24. The ‘Institute for Social Falsification’ 25. Vanishing Point: America 26. Fleeing from France, a Last Minute Exit to Lisbon 27. Arrival in New York 28. Define Your Enemy: What is National Socialism? 29. Know Your Enemy: Psychological Warfare 30. Fear Your Enemy: Deportation and Killing of the Jews 31. Fuck Your Enemy: From Hitler to Caligari 32. Cultural Critic, Social Scientist, Supplicant 33. The Aesthetics of Film as Cultural Studies 34. Two Boxes from Paris 35. Working as a Consultant in the Social Sciences and Humanities 36. Mail from Germany, Letters from the Past, Travels in Europe 37. The Practice of Film Theory and the Theory of Film 38. Talks with Teddie and Old Friends 39. Time for the Things before the Last 40. After Kracauer’s Death Bibliography Photo Credits
Sobre o autor
Jörg Später is a freelance writer and researcher at the University of Freiburg.
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