Frame and Preparation
Georg

Conceptual Frames and Background
- Novel
- Modernism
- Weimar Republic
- Politics of the Weimar Republic
- Neue Frau
- Media culture (newspapers)
- Urban culture and the city
- Religion
- Homosexuality
- Sprachkrise
Introduction
Georg (1934) is the second novel by the German-Jewish author, critic, and philosopher Siegfried Kracauer, most famous for his associations with the Frankfurt School around Theodor Adorno and for his feuilletons in the Frankfurter Zeitung during the Weimar Republic; upon fleeing Nazi Germany to the United States, he became a noted film theorist and is considered one of the founders of film studies.
The novel is a 300+-page story of the life of its eponymous protagonist during the 1920s as a tutor and then journalist for a left-leaning newspaper, Der Morgenbote (based on Frankfurter Zeitung). Completed in Parisian exile in 1934, it traces the absurdities of modern culture under the Weimar Republic along its major events, such as the revolution of 1919, inflation, and the growing threat of the Nazis. It is a tour-de-force in its depiction of modern media, such as film and mass newspapers, as well as city life in Frankfurt and Berlin.
The plot is simple: Georg, having fallen in love and leading a quasi-sexual romance with his much younger pupil Fred (based on Theodor Adorno), is plagued by the heterosexual youth’s resistance to Georg’s love. Breaking off their relationship, Georg searches for a substitute for this loss of community and meaning in his life, trying on several of the major movements of the era: Catholicism, Marxism, bourgeois humanism, theosophy, etc. He ultimately is unsatisfied with all of these options and decides to quiet his job and move to Berlin, where he embraces a life of anonymity among the urban masses.
Preparation
- Since the novel has important autobiographical connections, an over of Kracauer’s biography and a broad introduction to his theoretical work as a Marxist critic and philosopher will enrich student’s interaction with the novel.
- The novel also explicitly tracks the major events of the Weimar Republic—the revolution of 1919, the inflation of 1921-24, the various political scandals and developments in the late 1920s, and the rise of the Nazis—so students should be aware of the general history of this period.
- Regarding the level of German: Kracauer’s prose is relatively lucid and direct and it eschews obscure vocabulary. However, the novel aims in part to estrange the reader from the depicted reality, so some scenes are purposely confusing or strange, which may prove difficult for students who expect a more realistic work. Priming students to expect to encounter such language will help them.
Text and Discussion
Depending on your interests, the novel can easily serve to teach a number of topics—Weimar Republic, politics, Neue Frau, urban culture, modern media like film and newspapers—but I focus here on the text’s queer content.
We recommend Chapter II, pages 21-30 as a starting excerpt. This is an excerpt from the beginning of the novel in which Georg and Fred sexually explore their feelings for each other. This scene is one of the few open depictions of homosexuality from the 1920s, and it is unique in its explicitness. Here are some questions to begin a discussion of this scene:
- How is Georg’s first interaction with Fred described? What does he feel in his body and his heart? Focus on the vocabulary and motifs used.
- How does the narrative describe Georg and Fred’s sexual encounter? Is it explicit, or does it use euphemism and metaphor?
- What role does Georg’s love for Fred play in his life? What does it offer him, and how does it make him feel?
- How is the relationship between Georg and Fred portrayed? For example, is it described as a union of two bodies or souls? Or the melting together of two into one? In other words, what happens to each individual in the relationship?
- Does the novel name the kind of love between Georg and Fred? Does it uses contemporary labels such as “gay” or “queer” to describe them?
- Based on the text, can we say that Georg and Fred have definable sexualities? How do we know this?