Introduction to Siegfried Kracauer's "The Mass Ornament" Author(s): Karsten Witte, Barbara Correll and Jack Zipes Source:

New German Critique, No. 5 (Spring, 1975), pp. 59-66 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487919 . Accessed: 17/06/2013 08:02
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Introduction toSiegfried Kracauer's "TheMass Ornament"

Witte byKarsten
From Caligarito Hitler(Princeton, 1947) and Theory of Film (New York, in his Americanexile thathis Kracauerso well-known 1960) made Siegfried workbeforehis emigration to New York in 1941 has escaped our important attention.Althoughthe theoreticalpremisesof the early Kracauer are publishedmeditationon historiography, presenteven in his posthumously in Germany aroused no interest (New York, 1969), his earlywritings History in New Yorkduringhis lifetime. Whetherit is due to Kracauer'sreluctance frommaterialist social to documentforhis Americanaudiencehis transition made enough culturalphilosopher criticto melancholy (the witch-hunters lack of interest, it is due to his publishers' troubleforCaligarz)or whether theWeimarRepublic have yetto be discovered. If they were hisessaysfrom in a new and productive to be re-examined manner,theycould well lead to assessmentof Critical Theory's formative a differentiated period. Most about Kracauer'searlyworkis thathis criticalgaze looked to the important marginalareas of high cultureand to the media of popular culture: film, and the circus.The link thestreets, operetta,revues,advertisements sports, lies in his intentionto decipher social between his early and late work, tendenciesrevealed in ephemeral cultural phenomena. Kracauer saw his of mine to bringout the significance of Theory ofFilm as "anotherattempt in theirown righthas not yetbeen areas whose claim to be acknowledged because thiswas what I had triedto do recognized.I say 'anotherattempt' life-in Die throughoutmy Angestellten(The White-CollarWorkers), in in the Offenbach. and So at long last all my Ginster, certainly perhaps so incoherent on the surface,fall into line--theyall served, main efforts, and of objectives and continueto serve,a singlepurpose: the rehabilitation modes of being which still lack a name and hence are overlookedor misjudged."' Kracauer's essay "The Mass Ornament"("Das Ornamentder Masse"), which also provided the title for a self-editedcollection of his work am Main, 1963), containsin nuce all the key categoriesof his (Frankfurt methodsand his critique.This becomes apparentnot onlyin its continued
1. SiegfriedKracauer, History(New York, 1969), p. 4.

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60 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

productive effectwithinhis own work, but also in the way the essay has been interpretedand used by contemporary "disciples" of Critical Theory: Hans Heinz Holz (a Bloch student), Peter Gorsen (student of Adorno and Habermas) and even Helmut Lethen, who had already parted ways with the FrankfurtSchool in the wake of the Berlin student movement. In 1965 Holz wrote: "In one of the most intelligent books of our time...Siegfried Kracauer speaks of the 'mass ornament.' ... The idea of understanding the appearance of masses, even mass society itself, as an ornamental phenomenon is not only a sociological metaphor, but reflects in a thought-provokingway something of the nature of the ornament itself."2 Gorsen quotes the firstparagraph of Kracauer's essay as an epigraph and therefore at the same time as a legitimation for his method in his essay "Subjektlose Kunst. Neue Einstellungen des Kunstgenusses" ("Art without Subject. New Approaches to the Pleasure of Art"),3 thus acknowledging the essay's critical origins. Finally, in his important study, Neue Sachlichkeit, Helmut Lethen devotes a sub-chapter to "Tiller Girls and Intellectuals." He elaborates the differencesbetween the diametrically opposed views of revue culture represented by Kracauer and a certain Fritz Giese, cultural philosopher and expert on industrial psychotechnology.For Giese (and small wonder, considering his twin aptitudes) the Tiller Girls are "evidence of society's susceptibility to total domination and of the stabilization of relations of production."4 After studying architecture and philosophy and working ten years as an architect (information he was reluctant to disclose), Kracauer joined the editorial staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung (FZ) in 1921. There, besides writingreviewson the social philosophy of Ernst Bloch, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim and others, Kracauer made a name for himself as a film critic. His critiques of the Soviet revolutionary films introduced them to a European audience. The series "Die kleinen Ladenmaidchen gehen ins Kino" ("The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies"), in which traces of an ideologically critical concept of realism are to be found, created a sensation in 1927. "The Mass Ornament" firstappeared in the literarysection of the FZ on June 9-10, 1927. In 1930 Kracauer took over the cultural-political section of the FZ in Berlin. In view of the severe economic crisis, and through the
2. Hans Heinz Holz, Basler National-Zeitung, August 15, 1965. Published later as "Die des Ornaments,"in Hans Heinz Holz, Vom Kunstwerk Repristination zur Ware (Neuwied, 1972), pp. 140, 142. 3. Peter Gorsen,Das Bild Pygmalions.Kunstsoziologische Essays(Reinbek, 1969), p. 23. 4. Helmut Lethen, Neue Sachlichkeit1924-1932 (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 43-45.

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INTRODUCTION TO KRACAUER

61

und das Paris seinerZeit (Jacques Offenbachand the Jacques Offenbach

Paris of His Time; Amsterdam, 1937), as well as preliminarystudies for his psychological historyof German film. The latter work, completed through grants from the Guggenheim Foundation after his arrival in New York in 1941, was written in English and appeared in 1947 as From Caligari to Hitler. This book is based on the thesis that the German film of the Weimar epoch mirrorsan authoritarian disposition of the nation that led to fascism. Despite all the vehement opponents of this thesis (and the number is not decreasing), it must be said to his credit that Kracauer not only grounded it in Freudian categories (which he took from Erich Fromm), but that he also very firmlyanchored it in the structural analyses of the aesthetic material itself. Thus he showed how the fascist film uses the mass ornament of the monumental film of Expressionism. From Fritz Lang's Nibelungen of 1924 to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) of 1934 a line can be traced which is inherent to the organization of the material of the film: "These patterns collaborate in deepening the impression of Fate's irresistiblepower. Certain specific human ornaments in the film denote as well the omnipotence of dictatorship. These ornaments are composed of vassals or slaves. ... Triumph of the Will, the official Nazi film of the Nuremberg Party Convention in 1934, proves that in shaping their mass-ornaments the Nazi decorators drew inspiration from the Nibelungen."5 A technical analysis of the Riefenstahl epic shows to what extent her aesthetic technique - namely an overwhelming subjugation/ submission of the masses under the director/dictator-is used in Triumph of the Will: "The innumerable rows of the various Party formations composed tableaux vivants across the huge festival grounds. These living ornaments not only perpetuated the metamorphosis of the moment, but symbolically presented masses as instrumentalsuperunits... The film also includes pictures of the mass ornaments into which this transported life was pressed at the Convention. They appeared as mass ornaments to Hitler and his staff,who
5. SiegfriedKracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton,1947), pp. 94-95.

encouragement of Ernst Bloch, he turned to a more intense study of Marx and materialist thinking. Kracauer's polemics against the Ufa productions and his social reportages from Berlin, which were at the same time penetrating analyses of the economic crisis,were expressionsof his aggressive critique. After the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, Kracauer went into exile in Paris, where he produced the social biography of the Second Empire,

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62 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

must have appreciated them as configurationssymbolizing the readiness of the masses to be shaped and used at will by their leaders. [italics mine]" 6 In an expose of fascist propaganda--written in behalf of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, but not published in its magazine Zeitschrift fiir Sozialforschung--Kracauer established that, for the staging of its illusory solution, fascism made use of both terror and propaganda as methods for creating "the appearance of the reintegration of the masses" into the capitalist economic system. Kracauer notes the application of the following techniques to achieve the hypostatization of the masses through the manipulations 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 the aesthetically seductive form of an ornament or an effectiveimage. b) With the aid of the radio, the living room is transformedinto a public place. 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 a mass. To many it then appears as though they were elevated in the masses above themselves.7 It is not surprising that Walter Benjamin, whose theoretical discussion with Kracauer continued during his exile in Paris, came to the conclusion that fascism saw its salvation (Heil) in "allowing the masses to attain selfexpression (certainly not to attain their rights). The masses have a right to change the relations of ownership; fascism seeks to give them a means of self-expression within the preservation of these relations. What fascism logically amounts to is an aestheticization of political life."8 A sentence introduces the essay "The Mass Ornament" which, if he himselfhad not constantlyavoided such permanent characterizations, could be considered a key to Kracauer's thought and method: "The analysis of the simple surface manifestations of an epoch can contribute more to determining 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. iiber die fascistische 7. Siegfried Kracauer, "Masse und Propaganda. Eine Untersuchung Propaganda" (Paris, 1936). TS. in Kracauer estate. 8. Walter Benjamin, Afterwordto "Das Kunstwerkim Zeitalter seiner technischen Illuminationen(Frankfurt,1961), p. 175. Cf. also Susan Sontag, Reproduzierbarkeit," of Fascism," The New YorkReview of Books, February6, 1975. The originality "Fascinating is notlessenedin anywayby thefactthatshe bearsout the findings analysis Sontag'sperceptive of Kracauer and Benjamin.

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INTRODUCTION

TO KRACAUER

63

attempt to outline the topography of popular culture within the historical process through its surface manifestations. In 1930 he defined the intention of this method still more precisely: "Spatial images (Raumbilder) are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of these images can be deciphered, one finds the basis of social reality."9 The premises of this theorem are found in phenomenology ("surface") and in vitalisticphilosophy (Lebensphilosophie, "flux of life"), whose most important representatives-Husserl, Simmel and Dilthey-had a lasting influence on Kracauer. His synthesizingimagination and social sensibilityutilized parts of both philosophical tendencies. The inclination toward the surface of life as "the place where petrifications least occur," which Kracauer ascribed to Jacques Offenbach,10 he himself perceived most essentially in the visual media: "The cinema seems to tome into its own when it clings to the surface of things."" The surface as the place where petrifications least occur is not limited to the aesthetic realm. Corresponding to it in the historical process is that epoch which heralds new social movements. Thus Kracauer was later concerned specifically with the conditions of pre-revolutionary epochs: "Roughly speaking, my interest lies with the nascent state of great ideological movements, that period when they were not yet institutionalized but still competed with other ideas for supremacy."12 The Tiller Girls were an American dance troupe which began performing in the Berlin Admiralspalast during the period of inflation, appearing in revues produced by Hermann Haller and Eric Charell. The Tiller Girls even danced in the Grosses Schauspielhaus under the direction of Max Reinhardt.!3 In "Girls und Krise" ("Girls and Crisis"), a note published in 1931, Kracauer constructs (in retrospect) the following metaphorical comparison: "In that postwar era, in which prosperity appeared limitless and which could scarcely conceive of unemployment, the Girls were artificiallymanufactured in the USA and exported to Europe by the dozens. Not only were theyAmerican products; at the same time they demonstrated the greatness of American production. I distinctlyrecall the appearance of such troupes in the season of their glory. When they formed an undulating
9. SiegfriedKracauer, "Ueber Arbeitsnachweise," FZ, June 17, 1930. Also in Kracauer, Strassenin Berlin und anderswo(Frankfurt, 1964), p. 70. 10. Siegfried und das ParisseinerZeit (Amsterdam, Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach 1937), p. 219. In the American edition Orpheus in Paris (New York, 1938), p. 162, the important reference to surfacesas the "place where petrifications least occur" is missing. 11. Siegfried Kracauer, Theoryof Film (New York, 1960), p. 285. 12. Kracauer, History,p. 6. 13. PEM (Paul Erich Marcus), Heimweh nach dem Kurffirstendamm (Berlin, 1962), pp. 81-82, 110-111.

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NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

snake, they radiantly illustrated the virtuesof the conveyorbelt; when they tapped their feet in fast tempo, it sounded like business, business; when they kicked their legs high with mathematical precision, they joyously affirmed the progress of rationalization; and when they kept repeating the same movementswithout ever interruptingtheir routine, one envisioned an uninterrupted chain of autos gliding from the factories into the world, and believed that the blessings of prosperityhad no end." 14 When Kracauer asserted that "the mass ornament is the aesthetic reflexof the rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic system," he was the firstfrom the field of Critical Theory to formulate an understanding of simultaneity(Gleichzeitigkeit), which subjugates the working world as well as so-called leisure time to the laws of the Taylor system. It is important to call attention to the subtlety of his original concept of the "distraction as a metaphor for the places where the middle factory"(Zerstreuungsfabrik) class spends its leisure time. The monopolization of leisure time-where culture becomes a commodity for the purpose of distraction, where the factory becomes an industry--is what Horkheimer and Adorno later diagnosed as the trend of the "culture industry." In his pioneering study, revealing metaphor to illustrate how quasi-militaristic regimentation became coupled with the Taylorization of leisure-time industry: he described the amusement spots of the "white-collared ranks" as "pleasure barracks." 15 Toward the end of the second section in "The Mass Ornament," Kracauer again takes a position against the misgivings of cultural pessimism and comes out in favor of the taste of the masses, whose aesthetic pleasure in ornamental mass movementsis legitimized by the fact that these movements contain a greater measure of reality than does fine art. This proposition, as a consequence of which realism in art is measured by reality outside the aesthetic sphere, ascribes a conditional legitimation to the mass ornament, which has not been deteriorated by fine art. This legitimation is valid only if the aesthetic expression of the masses is not separated from the acknowledgement of their political authority.In Kracauer's Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality this concept of realism appears to be expanded in almost universal terms, when "property of the medium" is defined: "Film is uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality... But the only reality we are concerned with is actually existing physical
14. Siegfried Kracauer, "Girls und Krise," FZ, May 27, 1931. 15. Siegfried 3 (Frankfurt, Kracauer, "Die Angestellten," 1971), p. 286. Schriften,

Die Angestellten Workers, (The White-Collar 1929), Kracauer employeda

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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 paradoxical equation "physical reality= camera-reality= nature." The decisive antinomy of "camera-reality" as recreated reality, that is, as a second nature, is no longer resolved. The third section of the essay bears the mark of Hegel's philosophy of history,which conceives of the historical process as a struggleof reason/truth versus nature/mythos,whose power continues to survive in mythological thought. Along with Kracauer's early critique of organic sociology which contrivesto equate historywith nature, he now adds a vehement attack on Spengler. It was only later that Kracauer turned from Hegel.17 His idea of conceiving the historical process as demythologizing is based on Max Weber's idea of declaring enlightenmentto be the "disenchantment process of the world" (Wissenschaft als Beruf, Munich, 1919). This concept is central to Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik When Kracauer speaks of the decomposition of myth as the "happiness of reason" and of the rationale of the capitalist economic system as "obscured reason," then this metaphorical procedure brings him closer to Benjamin than, let us say, to Horkheimer, who tended to speak of the duty rather than of the happiness of reason, of instrumentalrather than obscured reason. On the one hand, Kracauer's metaphoric procedure redeems the hedonistic qualities of thought; on the other, he falls into the trap of holding to a genetic theorywhich sees the capitalist rationale and the reason of enlightenment as originally emanating from the same sources, and emphatically seeks to save the capitalist rationale by showing how it is merely an obscured formof reason, i.e., a counter-imageto the lightof the enlightenment."At any rate, under the given conditions, the capitalist rationale and the reason of enlightenment cannot be reconciled. The White-Collar Workersis a much sharper formulation of Kracauer's criticismof the social-romantic critique of capitalism, which perceives only its external phenomena instead of its immanent movements.18 The sign of capitalist thought: its abstractness signifies that the process of demythologizing is by no means thought (Kracauer says "brought") to its end. The alternatives remaining to philosophy under capitalism, according to Kracauer, are either the growthof abstract thought or the decline into false
16. Kracauer, Theoryof Film, p. 28. 17. Kracauer, History,pp. 25-27, 39-40. 18. Kracauer, Schriften, 3, p. 298.

der Aufkldrung).

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66 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

concreteness. The prevailing contemporary praxis has not disproved this prognosis. Kracauer, in order to interpret the present epoch, explains the counter-movementaccording to a law inherent in enlightenmentwhich says that "obscured reason," "the dark nature," triumphs over reason. But this figure of thought is carrying on dialectical enlightenment in nuce in the exact spot where darkness threatens. After outlining the topography of reason in history,Kracauer returns in the fifthsection to an expanded definition of the mass ornament. By an exodus of individuals into anonymity, through which their nature is deprived of its substance, the mass ornament presents itself as a cult of physical culture--mythological but devoid of meaning. If the massive consumption of the ornamental figures distracts people from changing the current social system,it becomes understandable why, a short time later in 1933, the fascistswere able to mobilize those energies which lay devoid of meaning, substance and interpretation, so that the masses could actually claim to see theirown triumphof the will in that megalomaniacally contrived and hypertrophicallystaged spectacle in Nuremberg. Kracauer's concluding sentence is typical: it does not move toward praxis as guidance for action, but instead, right in the midst of a penetrating analysis of the material, he projects a vision of its future (if not utopian) order. For him, projection is perhaps the only adequate way of intellectually penetrating a falsifiedsubject in order to grasp it correctly.As he said in a 1928 diagnosis of the state of the film: "Is there a prescription for this? There is no prescription. Sincerity,the giftof observation, humanity-such things cannot be taught. It is enough that the situation is exposed."19 Consequently the epigraph - H6lderlin's poem "An Zimmern"- is to be read as the utopian interpretationof the mass ornament. Progress, according to Kracauer, is attained at the price of nature's being bereft of its power by mature thought. Only then will the mass ornament disintegrate and become part of human life. H6lderlin's poem anticipates this utopian projection, in which the individual will step out of anonymity, nature will take on substance once again, and the historical process will become filled with meaning.

Translated by Barbara Correlland 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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