Reluctant Skeptic - Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture

The journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer is best remembered today for his investigations of film and other popular media, and for his seminal influence on Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno. Less well known is his earlier work, which offered a seismographic reading of cultural fault lines in Weimar-era Germany, with an eye to the confrontation between religious revival and secular modernity. In this discerning study, historian Harry T. Craver reconstructs and richly contextualizes Kracauer's early output, showing how he embodied the contradictions of modernity and identified the quasi-theological impulses underlying the cultural ferment of the 1920s.

List of contents

Preface

Introduction: Kracauer on and in Weimar Modernity

Chapter 1. "Location Suggests Content": Kracauer on the Fringe of Religious Revival

Chapter 2. Reading the War, Writing Crisis

Chapter 3. From Copenhagen to Baker Street: Kracauer, Kierkegaard and the Detective Novel

Chapter 4. Religion on the Street: Kracauer and Religious Flânerie

Conclusion: Criticism in the Negative Church

Afterword: From Don Quixote to Sancho Panza

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Harry T. Craver holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto and currently teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His work has appeared in publications such as New German Critique.

Product details

• Authors: Harry T. Craver, Craver Harry T.
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.02.2017
• EAN: 9781785334580
• ISBN: 978-1-78533-458-0
• No. of pages: 294
• Series: Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Germany, 20th Century, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, HISTORY / Essays, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, german, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Social and cultural history, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary essays, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000