Georg

Best remembered today for his brilliant study of early German cinema, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological Study of the German Film, and for his involvement with the Frankfurt School (he mentored Theodor Adorno), Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) was the editor for cultural affairs at Germany’s leading liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung, during the Weimar Republic until its disastrous end. His novel Georg is a panorama of those years, as seen through the eyes of a rookie reporter working for the fictional Morgenbote (Morning Herald). In a defeated nation seething with extremism right and left, young Georg is looking for something to believe in. For him, the past has become unusable; for nearly everyone he meets, paradise seems just around the corner. But which paradise? Kracauer’s grimly funny novel takes on a confused and dangerous time which may remind us of our own.