Witte_Introduction to Siegfried Kracauer's the Mass Ornament

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Introduction to Siegfried Kracauer's "The Mass Ornament"Author(s): Karsten Witte, Barbara Correll and Jack ZipesSource: New German Critique, No. 5 (Spring, 1975), pp. 59-66Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487919 .Accessed: 17/06/2013 08:02

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Introduction oSiegfried racauer's"TheMassOrnament"

byKarstenWitte

From Caligarito Hitler Princeton, 947) and Theory f Film New York,1960)made Siegfried racauer o well-known n his American xile that hisimportant ork efore his emigration o New York n 1941has escaped our

attention. Although the theoretical premises of the early Kracauer arepresent ven in his posthumously ublished meditation n historiography,History NewYork, 1969),his early writings n Germany roused no interestin New York during his ifetime. Whether t is due to Kracauer's reluctanceto document or his American udience his transition rommaterialist ocialcritic o melancholy ultural philosopher the witch-hunters ade enoughtrouble for Caligarz) r whether t is due to his publishers' ack of interest,his essays rom he Weimar Republic have yet o be discovered. f they wereto be re-examined n a new and productivemanner, hey ould well ead toa differentiated ssessment f Critical

Theory'sformative

eriod.Most

important bout Kracauer's arly work s that his critical aze looked to themarginal reas of high culture nd to the media of popular culture: film,the streets, ports, peretta, evues, dvertisements nd the circus. The linkbetween his early and late work, ies in his intention o decipher socialtendencies revealed n ephemeral cultural phenomena. Kracauer saw hisTheory f Film as "another ttempt f mine to bring ut the significance fareas whose claim to be acknowledged n their own right has not yet beenrecognized. say another ttempt' ecause this waswhat had tried to dothroughout my life-in Die Angestellten The White-Collar Workers),perhaps n Ginster, nd certainly n the Offenbach. o at long last all mymain efforts, o incoherent n the surface, fall into line--they ll served,and continue o serve, singlepurpose: the rehabilitation f objectives ndmodes of being which still lack a name and hence are overlooked ormisjudged."'

Kracauer's essay "The Mass Ornament" "Das Ornament der Masse"),which also provided the title for a self-edited ollection of his work(Frankfurt m Main, 1963), contains n nuce all the key categories f hismethods nd his critique. This becomesapparent not only n its continued

1. Siegfried Kracauer, History New York, 1969), p. 4.

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60 NEW GERMANCRITIQUE

productive effect within his own work, but also in the way the essay has been

interpreted and used by contemporary "disciples" of Critical Theory: HansHeinz Holz (a Bloch student), Peter Gorsen (student of Adorno andHabermas) and even Helmut Lethen, who had already parted ways with theFrankfurt chool in the wake of the Berlin student movement. In 1965 Holzwrote: "In one of the most intelligent books of our time...SiegfriedKracauer speaks of the mass ornament.' ... The idea of understanding theappearance of masses, even mass society itself, as an ornamentalphenomenon is not only a sociological metaphor, but reflects in athought-provoking way something of the nature of the ornament itself."2

Gorsen quotes the first paragraph of Kracauer's essay as an epigraph andtherefore at the same time as a legitimation for his method in his essay"Subjektlose Kunst. Neue Einstellungen des Kunstgenusses" ("Art withoutSubject. New Approaches to the Pleasure of Art"),3 thus acknowledging theessay's critical origins. Finally, in his important study, Neue Sachlichkeit,Helmut Lethen devotes a sub-chapter to "Tiller Girls and Intellectuals." Heelaborates the differences etween the diametrically opposed views of revueculture represented by Kracauer and a certain Fritz Giese, culturalphilosopher and expert on industrial psychotechnology. For Giese (and small

wonder, consideringhis twin

aptitudes)the Tiller Girls are "evidence of

society's susceptibility to total domination and of the stabilization ofrelations of production."4

After studying architecture and philosophy and working ten years as anarchitect (information he was reluctant to disclose), Kracauer joined theeditorial staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung (FZ) in 1921. There, besideswriting reviews on the social philosophy of Ernst Bloch, Max Scheler, KarlMannheim and others, Kracauer made a name for himself as a film critic.His critiques of the Soviet revolutionary films introduced them to a

Europeanaudience. The series "Die kleinen Ladenmaidchen

gehenins Kino"

("The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies"), in which traces of an ideologicallycritical concept of realism are to be found, created a sensation in 1927."The Mass Ornament" first appeared in the literary section of the FZ onJune 9-10, 1927.

In 1930 Kracauer took over the cultural-political section of the FZ inBerlin. In view of the severe economic crisis, and through the

2. Hans Heinz Holz, Basler National-Zeitung, ugust 15, 1965. Published ater as "DieRepristination es Ornaments," n Hans Heinz Holz, Vom Kunstwerk ur Ware (Neuwied,1972), pp. 140, 142.3. Peter Gorsen, Das Bild Pygmalions.Kunstsoziologischessays Reinbek, 1969), p. 23.4. Helmut Lethen, Neue Sachlichkeit 924-1932(Stuttgart, 970), pp. 43-45.



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INTRODUCTION TOKRACAUER 61

encouragement of Ernst Bloch, he turned to a more intense study of Marx

and materialist thinking. Kracauer's polemics against the Ufa productionsand his social reportages from Berlin, which were at the same timepenetrating analyses of the economic crisis, were expressions of his aggressivecritique.

After the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, Kracauer went into exile inParis, where he produced the social biography of the Second Empire,Jacques Offenbach nd das Paris seiner Zeit (Jacques Offenbach nd theParis of His Time; Amsterdam, 1937), as well as preliminary tudies for hispsychological history of German film. The latter work, completed through

grants from the Guggenheim Foundation after his arrival in New York in1941, was written in English and appeared in 1947 as From Caligari toHitler. This book is based on the thesis that the German film of the Weimarepoch mirrors n authoritarian disposition of the nation that led to fascism.Despite all the vehement opponents of this thesis (and the number is notdecreasing), it must be said to his credit that Kracauer not only grounded itin Freudian categories (which he took from Erich Fromm), but that he alsovery firmly nchored it in the structural analyses of the aesthetic materialitself. Thus he showed how the fascist film uses the mass ornament of themonumental film of

Expressionism.From Fritz

Lang's Nibelungenof 1924

to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) of 1934 a line can be tracedwhich is inherent to the organization of the material of the film: "Thesepatterns collaborate in deepening the impression of Fate's irresistible power.Certain specific human ornaments in the film denote as well the omni-potence of dictatorship. These ornaments are composed of vassals orslaves. ... Triumph of the Will, the official Nazi film of the NurembergParty Convention in 1934, proves that in shaping their mass-ornaments theNazi decorators drew inspiration from the Nibelungen."5

A technicalanalysis

of theRiefenstahl epic

shows to what extent heraesthetic technique - namely an overwhelming subjugation/ ubmission ofthe masses under the director/dictator-is used in Triumph of the Will:"The innumerable rows of the various Party formations composed tableauxvivants across the huge festival grounds. These living ornaments not onlyperpetuated the metamorphosis of the moment, but symbolically presentedmasses as instrumental uperunits... The film also includes pictures of themass ornaments into which this transported life was pressed at theConvention. They appeared as mass ornaments to Hitler and his staff, who

5. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler Princeton, 1947), pp. 94-95.



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must have appreciated them as configurations symbolizing the readiness of

the masses to be shapedand

usedat will

bytheir leaders.

[italics mine]"6

In an expose of fascist propaganda--written in behalf of the FrankfurtInstitute for Social Research, but not published in its magazine Zeitschriftfiir Sozialforschung--Kracauer established that, for the staging of its illusorysolution, fascism made use of both terror and propaganda as methods forcreating "the appearance of the reintegration of the masses" into thecapitalist economic system. Kracauer notes the application of the followingtechniques to achieve the hypostatization of the masses through the mani-pulations of propaganda:

a)The masses are forced to see themselves

everywhere mass gatherings,mass pageants, etc.); thus, they are always aware of themselves, often in theaesthetically seductive form of an ornament or an effective mage.

b) With the aid of the radio, the living room is transformed nto a publicplace.

c) All the mythical powers which the masses are capable of developing are

exploited for the purpose of underscoring the significance of the masses as amass. To many it then appears as though they were elevated in the massesabove themselves.7

Itis not

surprisingthat Walter

Benjamin,whose theoretical discussion

with Kracauer continued during his exile in Paris, came to the conclusionthat fascism saw its salvation (Heil) in "allowing the masses to attain self-expression (certainly not to attain their rights). The masses have a right tochange the relations of ownership; fascism seeks to give them a means ofself-expression within the preservation of these relations. What fascismlogically amounts to is an aestheticization of political life."8

A sentence introduces the essay "The Mass Ornament" which, if hehimself had not constantly voided such permanent characterizations, couldbe considered a key to Kracauer's thought and method: "The analysis of thesimple surface manifestations of an epoch can contribute more to deter-mining its place in the historical process than the pronouncements of the

epoch about itself." Kracauer's research is directed principally toward an

6. Ibid., pp. 301-302.7. SiegfriedKracauer, "Masse und Propaganda. Eine Untersuchung iber die fascistische

Propaganda" (Paris, 1936). TS. in Kracauer estate.8. Walter Benjamin, Afterword o "Das Kunstwerk m Zeitalter seiner technischen

Reproduzierbarkeit," lluminationen Frankfurt, 1961), p. 175. Cf. also Susan Sontag,

"Fascinating ascism," The New York Reviewof Books,February , 1975. The originalityf

Sontag'sperceptive nalysis snot essened n any wayby the fact hat he bears out the findingsof Kracauer and Benjamin.



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INTRODUCTION TOKRACAUER 63

attempt to outline the topography of popular culture within the historical

process through its surface manifestations. In 1930 he defined the intentionof this method still more precisely: "Spatial images (Raumbilder) are thedreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of these images can bedeciphered, one finds the basis of social reality."9 The premises of thistheorem are found in phenomenology ("surface") and in vitalistic philosophy(Lebensphilosophie, "flux of life"), whose most important representatives--Husserl, Simmel and Dilthey-had a lasting influence on Kracauer. Hissynthesizing magination and social sensibility utilized parts of both philo-sophical tendencies. The inclination toward the surface of life as "the placewhere

petrificationsleast

occur,"which Kracauer ascribed to

JacquesOffenbach,10 he himself perceived most essentially in the visual media:"The cinema seems to tome into its own when it clings to the surface ofthings."" The surface as the place where petrifications east occur is notlimited to the aesthetic realm. Corresponding to it in the historical process isthat epoch which heralds new social movements. Thus Kracauer was laterconcerned specifically with the conditions of pre-revolutionary epochs:"Roughly speaking, my interest lies with the nascent state of great ideo-logical movements, that period when they were not yet institutionalized butstill

competedwith other ideas for

supremacy."12The Tiller Girls were an American dance troupe which began performingin the Berlin Admiralspalast during the period of inflation, appearing inrevues produced by Hermann Haller and Eric Charell. The Tiller Girls evendanced in the Grosses Schauspielhaus under the direction of MaxReinhardt.!3 In "Girls und Krise" ("Girls and Crisis"), a note published in1931, Kracauer constructs (in retrospect) the following metaphoricalcomparison: "In that postwar era, in which prosperity appeared limitlessand which could scarcely conceive of unemployment, the Girls wereartificially manufactured in the USA and exported to Europe by the dozens.Not only were they American products; at the same time they demonstratedthe greatness of American production. I distinctly recall the appearance ofsuch troupes in the season of their glory. When they formed an undulating

9. Siegfried Kracauer, "Ueber Arbeitsnachweise," Z, June 17, 1930. Also in Kracauer,Strassen n Berlin und anderswo Frankfurt, 964), p. 70.

10. Siegfried racauer, Jacques Offenbach nd das Paris seiner eit Amsterdam, 937),p.219. In the American edition Orpheus n Paris (New York, 1938), p. 162, the importantreference o surfaces s the "place where petrifications east occur" is missing.

11. SiegfriedKracauer, Theory of Film (New York, 1960), p. 285.12. Kracauer, History, . 6.13. PEM (Paul Erich Marcus), Heimweh nach dem Kurffirstendamm Berlin, 1962), pp.

81-82, 110-111.



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64 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

snake, they radiantly illustrated the virtues of the conveyor belt; when they

tappedtheir feet n fast

tempo,it sounded like

business,business; when

theykicked their legs high with mathematical precision, they oyously affirmedthe progress of rationalization; and when they kept repeating the samemovements without ever interrupting heir routine, one envisioned an unin-terrupted chain of autos gliding from the factories into the world, andbelieved that the blessings of prosperity had no end." 14

When Kracauer asserted that "the mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex ofthe rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic system," he was thefirst from the field of Critical Theory to formulate an understanding ofsimultaneity Gleichzeitigkeit), which subjugates the working world as wellas so-called leisure time to the laws of the Taylor system. t is important tocall attention to the subtlety of his original concept of the "distractionfactory" Zerstreuungsfabrik) s a metaphor for the places where the middleclass spends its leisure time. The monopolization of leisure time-whereculture becomes a commodity for the purpose of distraction, where thefactory becomes an industry--is what Horkheimer and Adorno laterdiagnosed as the trend of the "culture industry." In his pioneering study,Die Angestellten The White-CollarWorkers, 929), Kracauer employedrevealing metaphor to illustrate how quasi-militaristic regimentationbecame coupled with the Taylorization of leisure-time industry: hedescribed the amusement spots of the "white-collared ranks" as "pleasurebarracks." 15

Toward the end of the second section in "The Mass Ornament," Kracaueragain takes a position against the misgivings of cultural pessimism andcomes out in favor of the taste of the masses, whose aesthetic pleasure inornamental mass movements s legitimized by the fact that these movementscontain a greater measure of reality than does fine art. This proposition, asa consequence of which realism in art is measured by reality outside theaesthetic sphere, ascribes a conditional legitimation to the mass ornament,which has not been deteriorated by fine art. This legitimation s valid only ifthe aesthetic expression of the masses is not separated from theacknowledgement of their political authority. n Kracauer's Theory of Film:The Redemption of Physical Reality this concept of realism appears to beexpanded in almost universal terms, when "property of the medium" isdefined: "Film is uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality...But the only reality we are concerned with is actually existing physical

14. SiegfriedKracauer, "Girls und Krise," FZ, May 27, 1931.15. SiegfriedKracauer, "Die Angestellten," chriften, (Frankfurt, 971), p. 286.



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INTRODUCTIONTO KRACAUER 65

reality."'6 It is true that Kracauer's concept of realism in his later works

becomes reduced to a vague common denominator through the paradoxicalequation "physical reality = camera-reality = nature." The decisive antinomyof "camera-reality" as recreated reality, that is, as a second nature, is nolonger resolved.

The third section of the essay bears the mark of Hegel's philosophy ofhistory, which conceives of the historical process as a struggle of reason/truthversus nature/mythos, whose power continues to survive in mythologicalthought. Along with Kracauer's early critique of organic sociology whichcontrives to equate history with nature, he now adds a vehement attack on

Spengler.It was

onlylater that Kracauer turned from

Hegel.17His idea of

conceiving the historical process as demythologizing is based on MaxWeber's idea of declaring enlightenment to be the "disenchantment processof the world" (Wissenschaft als Beruf, Munich, 1919). This concept iscentral to Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektikder Aufkldrung).

When Kracauer speaks of the decomposition of myth as the "happiness ofreason" and of the rationale of the capitalist economic system as "obscuredreason," then this metaphorical procedure brings him closer to Benjaminthan, let us

say,to Horkheimer, who tended to

speakof the

dutyrather than

of the happiness of reason, of instrumental rather than obscured reason. Onthe one hand, Kracauer's metaphoric procedure redeems the hedonisticqualities of thought; on the other, he falls into the trap of holding to agenetic theory which sees the capitalist rationale and the reason of enlight-enment as originally emanating from the same sources, and emphaticallyseeks to save the capitalist rationale by showing how it is merely an obscuredform f reason, i.e., a counter-image to the ight of the enlightenment." At anyrate, under the given conditions, the capitalist rationale and the reason ofenlightenment cannot be reconciled.

The White-Collar Workers s a much sharper formulation of Kracauer'scriticism of the social-romantic critique of capitalism, which perceives onlyits external phenomena instead of its immanent movements.18 The sign ofcapitalist thought: its abstractness signifies that the process of demytho-logizing is by no means thought (Kracauer says "brought") to its end. Thealternatives remaining to philosophy under capitalism, according toKracauer, are either the growth of abstract thought or the decline into false

16. Kracauer, Theory of Film, p. 28.17. Kracauer, History, p. 25-27, 39-40.18. Kracauer, Schriften, , p. 298.



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concreteness. The prevailing contemporary praxis has not disproved this

prognosis. Kracauer, in order to interpret the present epoch, explains thecounter-movement ccording to a law inherent n enlightenment which saysthat "obscured reason," "the dark nature," triumphs over reason. But thisfigure of thought is carrying on dialectical enlightenment in nuce in theexact spot where darkness threatens.

After outlining the topography of reason in history, Kracauer returns nthe fifth ection to an expanded definition of the mass ornament. By anexodus of individuals into anonymity, through which their nature isdeprived of its substance, the mass ornament presents itself as a cult of

physical culture--mythologicalbut devoid of

meaning.If the

massiveconsumption of the ornamental figures distracts people from changing thecurrent social system, t becomes understandable why, a short time later in1933, the fascists were able to mobilize those energies which lay devoid ofmeaning, substance and interpretation, so that the masses could actuallyclaim to see their own triumph of the will in that megalomaniacally contrivedand hypertrophically taged spectacle in Nuremberg.

Kracauer's concluding sentence is typical: it does not move toward praxisas guidance for action, but instead, right in the midst of a penetrating

analysisof the material, he

projectsa vision of its future

(ifnot

utopian)order. For him, projection is perhaps the only adequate way of intellectuallypenetrating a falsified subject in order to grasp it correctly. As he said in a1928 diagnosis of the state of the film: "Is there a prescription for this?There is no prescription. Sincerity, the gift of observation, humanity-suchthings cannot be taught. It is enough that the situation is exposed."19Consequently the epigraph - H6lderlin's poem "An Zimmern" is to be readas the utopian interpretation f the mass ornament. Progress, according toKracauer, is attained at the price of nature's being bereft of its power bymature thought. Only then will the mass ornament disintegrate and becomepart of human life. H6lderlin's poem anticipates this utopian projection, inwhich the individual will step out of anonymity, nature will take onsubstance once again, and the historical process will become filled withmeaning.

Translated by Barbara Correll nd Jack Zipes

19. Siegfried Kracauer, "Der heutige Film und sein Publikum," FZ, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1,1928. Pub. as "Film 1928" in Das Ornament der Masse, p. 310. When cited in Caligari, p. 199,the last sentence is missing.

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Witte_Introduction to Siegfried Kracauer's the Mass Ornament