THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GREAT WAR IN SIEGFRIED KRACAUER’S EARLY WRITINGS

Abstract

This article provides an approach to Siegfried Kracauer’s discourse on the First World War, from his initial activities as chronicler and essayist around 1913 to the beginning of his exile in 1933. Besides the perception of war the paper mainly analyzes Kracauer’s formula of dealing with war experiences and confrontation of barbarism, as well as his diagnosis of war as a symptom of a changing world. At the same time the study emphasizes that Kracauer’s critical postwar discourse reveals a strong necessity to bring that outdated discourse of Modernity to an end, which blocks new ways of understanding. To illustrate this turn, the paper refers particularly to Kracauer’s essay Max Beckmann, published in 1921, which proves Kracauer’s resolute consideration of the Lebenswelt and points out the importance of the visual that Kracauer focuses further in his analysis of the phenomena of the physical reality.