Johannes von Moltke - Siegfried Kracauers American writings: essays on film and popular culture

WEIMAR AND NOW: GERMAN CULTURAL CRITICISM

Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay, and Anton Kaes, General Editors

1. Heritage of Our Times, by Ernst Bloch

2. The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 18901990, by Steven E. Aschheim

3. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg

4. Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and Their Perception in Modernity, by Christoph Asendorf

5. Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, by Margaret Cohen

6. Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany, by Thomas J. Saunders

7. Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, by Richard Wolin

8. The New Typography, by Jan Tschichold, translated by Ruari McLean

9. The Rule of Law under Siege: Selected Essays of Franz L. Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, edited by William E. Scheuerman

10. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 19231950, by Martin Jay

11. Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, edited by Katharina von Ankum

12. Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 19001949, edited by Hans Wysling, translated by Don Reneau

13. Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 19101935, by Karl Toepfer

14. In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment, by Anson Rabinbach

15. Walter Benjamins Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels, by Beatrice Hanssen

16. Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present, by Anthony Heilbut

17. Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany, by Helmut Lethen, translated by Don Reneau

18. In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 19451948, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, translated by Kelly Barry

19. A Dubious Past: Ernst Jnger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, by Elliot Y. Neaman

20. Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust, by Dan Diner

21. Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafkas Fin de Sicle, by Scott Spector

22. Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich, by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

23. The Ufa Story: A History of Germanys Greatest Film Company, 19181945, by Klaus Kreimeier, translated by Robert and Rita Kimber

24. From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 18701990, by Rudy Koshar

25. We Werent Modern Enough: Women Artists and the Limits of German Modernism, by Marsha Meskimmon

26. Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany, by Bernd Widdig

27. Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany, by Janet Ward

28. Graphic Design in Germany: 18901945, by Jeremy Aynsley

29. Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, by Timothy O. Benson, with contributions by Edward Dimendberg, David Frisby, Reinhold Heller, Anton Kaes, and Iain Boyd Whyte

30. The Red Count: The Life and Times of Harry Kessler, by Laird M. Easton

32. The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood, by Lutz Koepnick

33. Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, by Peter Eli Gordon

34. The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design, by Paul Betts

35. The Face of East European Jewry, by Arnold Zweig, with fifty-two drawings by Hermann Struck. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Noah Isenberg

36. No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema, by Johannes von Moltke

37. Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture, by Peter Jelavich

38. Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity, by Andreas Killen

39. A Concise History of the Third Reich, by Wolfgang Benz, translated by Thomas Dunlap

40. Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 19552005, edited by Deniz Gktrk, David Gramling, and Anton Kaes

41. Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, by Ehrhard Bahr

42. The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, by Kay Schiller and ChristopherYoung

43. Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond, by Veronika Fuechtner

44. Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, by Miriam Bratu Hansen

45. Siegfried Kracauers American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture, edited by Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson

Siegfried Kracauers American Writings

Siegfried Kracauer on vacation, early 1950s. Courtesy of Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach.

Like Siegfried Kracauers own multidisciplinary endeavors, Kracauer scholarship has proliferated in recent years in many directions. But no matter how widely they range, all attempts to situate Kracauer as a cultural critic, a film theorist, a journalist, a novelist, an architect, and a philosopher ultimately come under the gravitational pull of what is undoubtedly the center of any work on Kracauer: the German literary archives nestled in the hills above the Neckar in Marbach. For an editorial project like ours, this gravitational pull is particularly strong, and we submitted to it more than willingly. Our first debt of gratitude, therefore, is to the Deutsches Literaturarchiv and its knowledgeable, gracious, ever helpful staff. We are likewise indebted to the other institutions at which we conducted research for this volume: the Center for Jewish History, the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and the New York Public Library.

For their input, suggestions, and assistance, we would like to thank Kerstin Barndt, Nathaniel Brennan, Gerd Gemnden, Noah Isenberg, and Dana Polan. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to the late Miriam Hansen for her encouragement and endorsement of this project at a critical juncture. Kracauer scholarship will forever remain in debt to her work.

At Michigan, our projects germination benefited from the inspired interest of Andrew Covert and proceeded with help from Kristin Hengtgen and M.-Niclas Heckner. The University of Michigan generously provided funding supportour thanks go to the Rackham Graduate School for the Spring/Summer Research Grant that enabled the initiation of the project; to the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program for funding Kristen Hengtgens editorial assistance; to the Office of the Vice President for Research for assisting in funding this publication; to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts for much-needed release time; and to the chairs of the German and Screen Arts & Cultures Departments, Scott Spector and Ab Markus Nornes, for their support.

Work on this edition was supported by a fellowship from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, which provided research and writing time in affiliation with the Free University of Berlin, where we would particularly like to thank Gertrud Koch and Hermann Kappelhoff.

Reconstructing the English language rights for Kracauers work constituted a significant aspect of this project. Even though work remains to be done in this area for future editions, we are grateful for the patient help we received from various parties, including the now-defunct New York Association for New Americans (NYANA), Petra Hardt of the Suhrkamp Verlag, and Ingrid Belke at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv.