The Salaried Masses
Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany
Literal translation of German title: The Employees. Most Recently in Germany
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English edition available from Verso
The Salaried Masses / Die Angestellten
Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany
Literal translation of German title: The Employees. Most Recently in Germany
The classic study of white-collar lifestyle and culture in prewar Germany
»Reality is so battered to such an extent that it is forced to show its colours.« Walter Benjamin
»Reality is so battered to such an extent that it is forced to show its colours.« Walter Benjamin
Kracauer‘s The Salaried Masses is a classic of analytical-documentary literature that hasn’t lost any of its topicality since its first publication in 1930.
»First published in 1930, Siegfried Kracauer’s work was greeted with great acclaim and soon attained the status of a classic. The object of his inquiry was the new class of salaried employees who populated the cities of Weimar Germany.
Spiritually homeless, divorced from all custom and tradition, these...
»First published in 1930, Siegfried Kracauer’s work was greeted with great acclaim and soon attained the status of a classic. The object of his inquiry was the new class of salaried employees who populated the cities of Weimar Germany.
Spiritually homeless, divorced from all custom and tradition, these...
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Kracauer‘s The Salaried Masses is a classic of analytical-documentary literature that hasn’t lost any of its topicality since its first publication in 1930.
»First published in 1930, Siegfried Kracauer’s work was greeted with great acclaim and soon attained the status of a classic. The object of his inquiry was the new class of salaried employees who populated the cities of Weimar Germany.
Spiritually homeless, divorced from all custom and tradition, these white-collar workers sought refuge in entertainment—or the ›distraction industries,‹ as Kracauer put it—but, only three years later, were to flee into the arms of Adolf Hitler. Eschewing the instruments of traditional sociological scholarship, but without collapsing into mere journalistic reportage, Kracauer explores the contradictions of this caste. Drawing on conversations, newspapers, adverts and personal correspondence, he charts the bland horror of the everyday. In the process he succeeds in writing not just a prescient account of the declining days of the Weimar Republic, but also a path-breaking exercise in the sociology of culture which has sharp relevance for today.« (Book description from the English edition by Verso)
»First published in 1930, Siegfried Kracauer’s work was greeted with great acclaim and soon attained the status of a classic. The object of his inquiry was the new class of salaried employees who populated the cities of Weimar Germany.
Spiritually homeless, divorced from all custom and tradition, these white-collar workers sought refuge in entertainment—or the ›distraction industries,‹ as Kracauer put it—but, only three years later, were to flee into the arms of Adolf Hitler. Eschewing the instruments of traditional sociological scholarship, but without collapsing into mere journalistic reportage, Kracauer explores the contradictions of this caste. Drawing on conversations, newspapers, adverts and personal correspondence, he charts the bland horror of the everyday. In the process he succeeds in writing not just a prescient account of the declining days of the Weimar Republic, but also a path-breaking exercise in the sociology of culture which has sharp relevance for today.« (Book description from the English edition by Verso)
»Well before the current vogue of cultural studies, Siegfried Kracauer pioneered a method of ethnographic critique that allowed him to reveal his society’s deepest secrets by decoding its surface manifestations. Perhaps its most stunning fruit was his classic study of the spiritual and material crisis of Weimar Republic’s salaried employees, now happily available in English for the first time. It was this work that earned Kracauer the celebrated sobriquet ›a ragpicker at daybreak‹ from his friend Walter Benjamin, who may have been wrong about the revolutionary day he thought was dawning, but who correctly saw the value in sifting through the remains of the long night that came before and was, alas, to darken still further in the years to come.« Martin Jay
»Well before the current vogue of cultural studies, Siegfried Kracauer pioneered a method of ethnographic critique that allowed him to reveal his society’s deepest secrets by decoding its surface manifestations. Perhaps its most stunning fruit was his classic study of the spiritual and material crisis of Weimar Republic’s salaried employees, now happily available in English for the first time. It was this work that earned Kracauer the celebrated sobriquet ›a ragpicker at daybreak‹ from his...
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1930, 128 pages
Persons
Siegfried Kracauer
Author
Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered one of the most important feature writers of the Weimar Republic and was the leading feuilleton editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1930 to 1933. With Die Angestellten (1930), Kracauer published the first empirical-sociologcal study in Germany. He is also considered one of the founders of the sociology of film. In 1933, Kracauer and his wife fled to Paris and then, after the start of the war, to New York in 1941, where he died from pneumonia on November 26, 1966. Apart from Die Angestellten, Kracauer's most important works include Theorie des Films (1960), the collection of essays Von...
Siegfried Kracauer
Author
Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered...
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OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2021
The Mass Ornament
Kracauer described his 1929 study on the salaried masses as an exploration of the »exoticism of the everyday, more adventurous than a film journey to Africa«, and this description could...
Rights sold to:
Russia (Ad Marginem), Italy (Cue Press), Norway (Bokvennen), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei University Press), Slovenia (*cf.), Turkey (Metis)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Gedisa), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), France (Éditions La Découverte), Czech Republic (Academia Nakladatelství), Romania (Editura TACT)
Year of Publication: 2019
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2019
Ginster
A novel with a »shirker« as the hero: Ginster, a gifted architect from Frankfurt, is 25 when the First World War breaks out. He views the patriotic enthusiasm of his contemporaries with...
Rights sold to:
France (Klincksieck/Les Belles Lettres)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Las cuarenta), Slovenia (Mladinska knjiga)
Year of Publication: 2019
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2019
Theory of Film
This book was originally published in America in 1960, and immediately assumed a position among the classic works of film theory by authors such as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin. The book articulates a material aesthetics that tackles the content of film. Kracauer’s theory is founded on the assumption that film is in essence an expansion of photography,...
Year of Publication: 2010
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2010
The Detective Novel
Written in 1925, in this work, Siegfried Kracauer shows again why he was such a unique writer and cultural theorist. He takes the much-maligned genre of the detective novel and subjects it to a...
Rights sold to:
Chinese simplex (Peking University Press), France (Les Belles Lettres), Korea (Ghil), Bulgaria (Agata-A), Turkey (Metis)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Paidós), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), Greece (Scripta)
Year of Publication: 2008
Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2008
Correspondence 1923-1966
Among the great letter exchanges, the one between Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer is certainly the most intimate.
The resonance of a passionate friendship which connected both parties...
The resonance of a passionate friendship which connected both parties...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Cuarenta), France (Bord De L'Eau)
Year of Publication: 1947
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 1947
From Caligari to Hitler
»First published in 1947, From Caligari to Hitler remains an undisputed landmark study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic. Prominent film critic Siegfried Kracauer...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Princeton UP), Spanish world rights (Paidós), Russia (Ad Marginem), France (Klincksieck), Korea (Saemulgyul), Czech Republic (Academia), Bulgaria (Funtasy)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Century), Poland (Slowo), Turkey (Basim Yayim)
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