Siegfried Kracauer

Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) was a German sociologist, historian, philosopher, cultural critic, film theorist, architect, novelist and journalist. He wrote the first empirical study in German sociology and is known as the founding father of the sociology of film. Born in 1889 in Frankfurt am Main, Kracauer first studied architecture from 1907 to 1913 and obtained a doctorate in engineering in 1914, but he only worked as an architect until 1920. Between 1914 and 1918 sociology professor Georg Simmel became a major influence for Kracauer's intellectual development and in 1922 he published 'Sociology as a Science'. Kracauer changed his profession and from 1922 to 1933 became the film and literature editor of the highly respected 'Frankfurter Zeitung'. He worked in Berlin alongside and was friends with leading intellectuals of the era like Ernst Bloch, Leo Löwenthal, Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno. Kracauer's regular contributions to the newspaper made him a well-known cultural critique of the young Weimar Republic (1918-1933). In 1928 Kracauer published his first novel 'Ginster' which was highly regarded by authors Joseph Roth and Thomas Mann. In 1930 Kracauer published 'Die Angestellten' which was acclaimed as an innovative sociological study and received rave reviews by Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Benjamin. After the Nazi-Party's rise to power and especially the 'Reichstagsbrand' in February 1933, the Jewish-born Kracauer understood the dangerous transformation of Weimar society and quickly left Germany for France, where he continued to work in Paris mainly on historical topics like his biography Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit'(1937). In 1941 Kracauer finally emigrated to the United States, leaving France right before the invading Nazi forces arrived. From now on Kracauer only wrote in English and produced his most influential books while working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1947 'From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film' was published, an innovative study which traces the rise of Nazism from the perspective of the cinema of the Weimar Republic. This now classical cultural analysis became famous all over the world and influenced film theory, the sociology of film and film criticism. In 1960, Kracauer released his central work in film theory: 'Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality', which argues that realism is the most important function of cinema. In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for different institutions, amongst them as a director of research for applied social sciences at Columbia University, while working on his major book on the philosophy of history 'History - The Last Things Before the Last'. Kracauer died 1966 in New York and it was published 1969 in its unfinished form. A huge part of Kracauer's work has been published posthumously and only has become publicly available in recent years. Siegfried Kracauer's importance as one of the earliest, most influential and most brilliant writers on popular culture, film and society is widely recognized and the astounding range of his work is now discovered by new generations and new academic disciplines.