History as Autobiography: The Last Things before the Last

Abstract

Muted response the keynote of Siegfried Kracauer's reception both in Germany and America gives way to embarrassed silence when attention turns to his last work, the posthumously published study History: The Last Things Before the Last.' The extreme cultural and scholarly isolation in which this book was written is reflected in the history of its impact, which is the history of an impact that was never made. This lack of public attention contrasts sharply with the author's own evaluation. There can be little doubt that Kracauer considered History to be his most significant accomplishment, the final realization of his most profound philosophical intentions. Having reached what he regarded as the culmination of his intellectual development, he turns back on his earlier writing in an attempt to grasp the essence and fundamental coherence of his theoretical endeavors. Thus he writes in the Introduction to History:

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