10 Facts About Siegfried Kracauer

Siegfried Kracauer has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

Siegfried Kracauer is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.

Siegfried Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years, building up theoretical methods of analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout.

In 1930, Siegfried Kracauer published Die Angestellten, a critical look at the lifestyle and culture of the new class of white-collar employees.

Siegfried Kracauer became increasingly critical of capitalism and eventually broke away from the Frankfurter Zeitung.

Siegfried Kracauer was very critical of Stalinism and the "terrorist totalitarianism" of the Soviet government.

Siegfried Kracauer died there, in 1966, from the consequences of pneumonia.

The differences in the functions of memory and the functions of photography, according to Siegfried Kracauer, is that photography creates one fixed moment in time whereas memory itself is not beholden to a singular instance.

At the time of his death in 1966, Siegfried Kracauer was somewhat marginal in both American and German intellectual contexts.

Siegfried Kracauer had long ago abandoned writing in German, yet his research remained difficult to place within American scientific and academic categories.