Siegfried Kracauer
Siegfried Kracauer was a prominent German critic, sociologist, and philosopher, born on February 8, 1889, in Frankfurt am Main. Initially trained as an architect, he shifted his focus to journalism, becoming the arts editor for the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1921. His writings explored the intersections of urban culture and popular media, particularly cinema, during a period of significant upheaval in post-World War I Germany. Kracauer's influential work, *From Caligari to Hitler* (1947), examines the premonitions of totalitarianism present in early German film. His career was deeply affected by the rise of the Nazi Party, prompting him and his wife to flee Germany in 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire. They settled in Paris before ultimately moving to the United States, where Kracauer became a citizen in 1946 and took a position at Columbia University. Throughout his life, he maintained a critical perspective shaped by his experiences as an exile, and he passed away in New York City on November 26, 1966. Kracauer's legacy continues to influence film theory and cultural criticism today.
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Siegfried Kracauer
Writer
- Born: February 8, 1899
- Birthplace: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Died: November 26, 1966
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
One of the most versatile critics and thinkers of his generation, Siegfried Kracauer was born to Adolf and Rosette Kracauer in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on February 8, 1889. Adolf is thought to have chosen a business career so his brother, Isidor, could study to become a rabbi; instead, Isidor taught secular subjects for more than forty years at a Jewish high school in Frankfurt, where his nephew, Siegfried. was a student from 1898 to 1904.
In 1907, at age 18, Siegfried Kracauer published his first article in the noted Frankfurter Zeitung. His association with the newspaper would last until 1933, but in the years immediately preceding World War I he studied architecture in Darmstadt, Munich, and Berlin, completing a Ph.D. in 1914. In 1916, while working in an architect’s office in Frankfurt, Kracauer won a competition for the design of a military cemetery, an experience later described in an autobiographical novel. Abandoning completely the practice of architecture, he became the arts editor for the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1921. Much of his writing for the paper at this time drew on his understanding of urban space as a formative aspect of modern culture, but his interests grew increasingly diverse. His study of the detective novel, one of the first of its kind, was composed between 1922 and 1925, although it remained unpublished until after his death.
Kracauer’s reputation as sociologist, theorist, philosopher, and author derives much of its force and complexity from the years following the end of World War I, which were especially tumultuous in Germany. One of his distinctive contributions was to turn to the study of popular culture, particularly motion pictures, in an effort to understand the volatile events of his time. In 1933, Kracauer himself became a victim of events when he and his wife abruptly left Berlin, and Germany, the day after the burning of the Reichstag by the rising Nazi Party.
Settling in Paris, Kracauer completed a second novel as well as a study of the life and cultural milieu of the French composer Jacques Offenbach. He was also commissioned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art to write a psychological and social history of German cinema. This landmark work, From Caligari to Hitler (1947), can be read as a catalog of the premonitions within early German film of the totalitarianism that would engulf the country in the Nazi era.
At the outbreak of World War II, Kracauer and his wife fled France for the United States, and he became a citizen of the United States in 1946. In 1951, he accepted a research appointment at Columbia University in New York City and completed a book on the theory of film that stressed the realistic and documentary capacity of motion pictures. Although Kracauer traveled to Europe on several occasions in his last years, he maintained the critical and personal perspective of an exile, and died of pneumonia in New York City on November 26, 1966.