Natural history

rethinking the Bergfilm

Nicholas Baer

pp. 279-305

in: Jörn Ahrens, Paul Fleming, Susanne Martin, Ulrike Vedder (eds), "Doch ist das wirkliche auch vergessen, so ist es darum nicht getilgt", Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

Disputed since the publication of From Caligari to Hitler (1947), Siegfried Kracauer's argument that Weimar cinema reveals proto-fascist psychological dispositions is further problematized when films of "pre-Hitler Germany" are analyzed in relation to the interwar crisis of historicism (Kracauer 2004, S. li). The nexus between fascism and historicism is indeed vexed and ambiguous, not least on account of the incongruous, often-contradictory meanings that the latter term has acquired from twentieth-century scholars and critics.

Cited authors

Kracauer Siegfried