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Os Empregados
Publicada em 1930, tida por sediciosa e queimada em 1933 nos «autos-de-fé» do Terceiro Reich, esta obra de Kracauer sonda a vida quotidiana e a importância política de um novo tipo social do início do século XX: os empregados. Num estilo que oscila entre o ensaio literário e o estudo sociológico, dá viva voz a pequenos vendedores e dactilógrafas, lojistas e bancários, retratando a sua situação laboral, aspirações frustradas e uma falsa consciência de classe. Kracauer denuncia assim uma ilusória identidade burguesa, cobiçada por este novo grupo, e a fictícia ascensão social dos empregados face aos operários, cujas péssimas condições materiais partilham. Com uma obstinada ironia, o autor descreve um mundo que escamoteia a sua degradação e antecipa, nas entrelinhas, a silenciosa colaboração desta nova classe média, anestesiada e iludida, na ascensão do mal.
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
23 people are currently reading
523 people want to read
About the author
Siegfried Kracauer
98 books77 followersBorn to a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, Kracauer studied architecture from 1907 to 1913, eventually obtaining a doctorate in engineering in 1914 and working as an architect in Osnabrück, Munich, and Berlin until 1920.
Near the end of the First World War, he befriended the young Theodor W. Adorno, to whom he became an early philosophical mentor.
From 1922 to 1933 he worked as the leading film and literature editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung (a leading Frankfurt newspaper) as its correspondent in Berlin, where he worked alongside Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, among others. Between 1923 and 1925, he wrote an essay entitled Der Detektiv-Roman (The Detective Novel), in which he concerned himself with phenomena from everyday life in modern society.
Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years, building up theoretical methods of analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout, and dance, which he published in 1927 with the work Ornament der Masse (published in English as The Mass Ornament).
In 1930, Kracauer published Die Angestellten (The Salaried Masses), a critical look at the lifestyle and culture of the new class of white-collar employees. Spiritually homeless, and divorced from custom and tradition, these employees sought refuge in the new "distraction industries" of entertainment. Observers note that many of these lower-middle class employees were quick to adopt Nazism, three years later.
Kracauer became increasingly critical of capitalism (having read the works of Karl Marx) and eventually broke away from the Frankfurter Zeitung. About this same time (1930), he married Lili Ehrenreich. He was also very critical of Stalinism and the "terrorist totalitarianism" of the Soviet government.
With the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Kracauer migrated to Paris, and then in 1941 emigrated to the United States.
From 1941 to 1943 he worked in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, supported by Guggenheim and Rockefeller scholarships for his work in German film. Eventually, he published From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), which traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the Weimar Republic as well as helping lay the foundation of modern film criticism.
In 1960, he released Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, which argued that realism is the most important function of cinema.
In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for different institutes, amongst them in New York as a director of research for applied social sciences at Columbia University. He died there, in 1966, from the consequences of pneumonia.
His last book is the posthumously published History, the Last Things Before the Last.
Near the end of the First World War, he befriended the young Theodor W. Adorno, to whom he became an early philosophical mentor.
From 1922 to 1933 he worked as the leading film and literature editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung (a leading Frankfurt newspaper) as its correspondent in Berlin, where he worked alongside Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, among others. Between 1923 and 1925, he wrote an essay entitled Der Detektiv-Roman (The Detective Novel), in which he concerned himself with phenomena from everyday life in modern society.
Kracauer continued this trend over the next few years, building up theoretical methods of analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout, and dance, which he published in 1927 with the work Ornament der Masse (published in English as The Mass Ornament).
In 1930, Kracauer published Die Angestellten (The Salaried Masses), a critical look at the lifestyle and culture of the new class of white-collar employees. Spiritually homeless, and divorced from custom and tradition, these employees sought refuge in the new "distraction industries" of entertainment. Observers note that many of these lower-middle class employees were quick to adopt Nazism, three years later.
Kracauer became increasingly critical of capitalism (having read the works of Karl Marx) and eventually broke away from the Frankfurter Zeitung. About this same time (1930), he married Lili Ehrenreich. He was also very critical of Stalinism and the "terrorist totalitarianism" of the Soviet government.
With the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, Kracauer migrated to Paris, and then in 1941 emigrated to the United States.
From 1941 to 1943 he worked in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, supported by Guggenheim and Rockefeller scholarships for his work in German film. Eventually, he published From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), which traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the Weimar Republic as well as helping lay the foundation of modern film criticism.
In 1960, he released Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, which argued that realism is the most important function of cinema.
In the last years of his life Kracauer worked as a sociologist for different institutes, amongst them in New York as a director of research for applied social sciences at Columbia University. He died there, in 1966, from the consequences of pneumonia.
His last book is the posthumously published History, the Last Things Before the Last.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 1, 2018
It’s like David graebers bs jobs but written by a Frankfurt school writer in 1930
May 4, 2007
yeah, this guy's name is pronounced almost like 'crackwhore.' he wrote about the white collar masses. this is what they did and why they liked to do it, on the eve of national socialism. for a long time - some seventy years - you couldn't read this in english. then everyone demanded that this crackwhore be translated, and so he was. you should rejoice that this crackwhore is accessible to you, too, unless you already understood turgid german. what I mean to say is that it's quite good.
March 8, 2025
A 100-year-old study of today's salaried worker.
Particularly enjoyed the chapter on distraction.
Employees suffer a spiritual emptiness.
So they can think of nothing better to do than spend their free time distracting themselves from their soul-crushing jobs.
This is followed by a passage about people staying in themed hotels, which sent me down a rabbit hole, researching Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a now-closed immersive theme hotel.
"The geography of these shelters is born of the popular hit."
"...what is depicted ... is not so much real faraway places as imaginary fairy-tale scenes, in which illusions have become living figures."
"'Do not lean out!' is written upon the train window through which you gaze at nothing but sunny picture-postcard landscapes. In actual fact they are wall panels, and the realistically copied corridor of an international sleeper train is nothing more than a long, narrow passage connecting two Mohommedan halls with one another."
"But the real power of light is its presence. It alienates the masses from their habitual flesh, casts over them a costume that transforms them. Through its mysterious force glamour becomes substance, distraction stupor. If the waiter switches it off, though, the eight-hour day shines in again."
Particularly enjoyed the chapter on distraction.
Employees suffer a spiritual emptiness.
So they can think of nothing better to do than spend their free time distracting themselves from their soul-crushing jobs.
This is followed by a passage about people staying in themed hotels, which sent me down a rabbit hole, researching Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a now-closed immersive theme hotel.
"The geography of these shelters is born of the popular hit."
"...what is depicted ... is not so much real faraway places as imaginary fairy-tale scenes, in which illusions have become living figures."
"'Do not lean out!' is written upon the train window through which you gaze at nothing but sunny picture-postcard landscapes. In actual fact they are wall panels, and the realistically copied corridor of an international sleeper train is nothing more than a long, narrow passage connecting two Mohommedan halls with one another."
"But the real power of light is its presence. It alienates the masses from their habitual flesh, casts over them a costume that transforms them. Through its mysterious force glamour becomes substance, distraction stupor. If the waiter switches it off, though, the eight-hour day shines in again."
September 26, 2024
“The right person in the right place!, are words drawn from the dictionary of a defunct idealist philosophy that give the impression that employers implement a genuine selection of persons. Yet the majority of employees carry out activities requiring no personality, let alone ‘the specific character of a personality’, and forget about the ‘right person for the job’! Jobs are precisely not vocations tailored to so-called personalities, but jobs in enterprise, are created according to the needs of the production and distribution process. Only in the upper layers of the social hierarchy does the true personality begin: and they exploit, exploit, exploit.”
“Many drift along unwittingly and join without ever suspecting that they really do not belong there.”
“Those without substance have an easier time. At least they can still just keep up, while others have to exorcise their nature merely in order to survive in one modest job.”
“The mass of salary employees differ from the worker proletariat in that they are spiritually homeless. Unable to attain real wealth, power, freedom or meaning, they are limited to creating a false sense of elitism for their own, and in their process of occupying the mediocre levels of society: they overestimate each other. As a result, they remain stagnant in the in-between, forever stuck to admire themselves.”
“The spread of sport does not resolve complexes, but is among other things a symptom of repression on a grand scale; it does not promote the reshaping of social relations, but all in all is a major means of depoliticization.”
“Sports associations are like outposts intended to conquer the still vacant territory of the employees’ soul, and represents a thorough process of colonization. And the primary intend of the corporate push for sports associations was the distraction of trade-union interests.
‘I am so happy to work here, they even have their own private gym, said little Timmy, to digest the fact that he has to now start working more for less.’
Young people are easy to fall for the magic of a short high, especially when a more significant change is hard to make.”
“Thirty-nine, married, three children. Future? Work, madhouse, or turn on the gas.”
“All arguments in favour of the prevailing economic system are based on belief in preordained harmony.”
“What matters is not that institutions are changed, what matters is that human individuals change institutions.”
Well, it is obvious that the survival of the present system, which is regarded as the best, is founded upon certain natural qualities of its ruling stratum; not however, upon the express will of this stratum to satisfy the demand of the masses. But hey, they are against fascism, they say!
Bombs away…
“Many drift along unwittingly and join without ever suspecting that they really do not belong there.”
“Those without substance have an easier time. At least they can still just keep up, while others have to exorcise their nature merely in order to survive in one modest job.”
“The mass of salary employees differ from the worker proletariat in that they are spiritually homeless. Unable to attain real wealth, power, freedom or meaning, they are limited to creating a false sense of elitism for their own, and in their process of occupying the mediocre levels of society: they overestimate each other. As a result, they remain stagnant in the in-between, forever stuck to admire themselves.”
“The spread of sport does not resolve complexes, but is among other things a symptom of repression on a grand scale; it does not promote the reshaping of social relations, but all in all is a major means of depoliticization.”
“Sports associations are like outposts intended to conquer the still vacant territory of the employees’ soul, and represents a thorough process of colonization. And the primary intend of the corporate push for sports associations was the distraction of trade-union interests.
‘I am so happy to work here, they even have their own private gym, said little Timmy, to digest the fact that he has to now start working more for less.’
Young people are easy to fall for the magic of a short high, especially when a more significant change is hard to make.”
“Thirty-nine, married, three children. Future? Work, madhouse, or turn on the gas.”
“All arguments in favour of the prevailing economic system are based on belief in preordained harmony.”
“What matters is not that institutions are changed, what matters is that human individuals change institutions.”
Well, it is obvious that the survival of the present system, which is regarded as the best, is founded upon certain natural qualities of its ruling stratum; not however, upon the express will of this stratum to satisfy the demand of the masses. But hey, they are against fascism, they say!
Bombs away…
November 23, 2022
A rich inquiry into the 'salariat' in early 20th century Germany, and particularly why they politically composed themselves in a certain way. The political conclusions of this study are certainly interesting and useful. However Kracauer's writing style (or at least the translation of) can be hard to get into, and the chapters do feel to jump around from topic to topic without any specific flow.
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December 2, 2024had to read this for urban culture and cultural theory but I found it fascinating
June 20, 2025
Wirklich interessant, ein Bericht der Welt der neuen Klasse der Angestellten Anfang des 20.Jhds. Trotzdem ist so vieles noch brandaktuell.
October 9, 2021
A prescient examination of attitudes and social climate focusing on the German middle class in the period leading up to Hitler's rise to power. Weimar Germany in the 1920s was administered by governments lead by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which oversaw a system of union/corporate cooperation looking to guaranty labor peace while meeting the needs of the masses. Through extensive interviews with working people and their bosses he plots a scenario of bourgeois striving and disappointment, bureaucratic attempts at mitigating the tedious brutality of the capitalist workplace, and the social emptiness of entertainment designed to distract from the tedium. Such was the terrain of German middle class life that preceded their embrace of the National Socialist Party (Nazi) and Hitler. The book was published in 1930, before Hitler took power and doesn't actually deal with the Nazi rise per se. It is not a theoretical tract as it was taken from a series of articles that Kracauer published in the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper, where he was a culture editor, but there are references to Marx and mass psychology that were of particular interest to his friends at the Frankfurt School. There is an afterword by Walter Benjamin that ironically tries to situate the book in a theoretical framework of pre-revolution. It's a somewhat disturbing picture of a society much like the present day that lead to authoritarian disaster.
July 30, 2024
Interesante y actual; en la edición en castellano de Gedisa Editorial incluye una introducción muy completa de Ingrid Belke. Describe el modo de vida de los empleados (técnicos, comerciales, burocráticos) que aparecen con el desarrollo capitalista desde finales del siglo XIX. Los empleados son diferentes de los obreros porque no realizan trabajos manuales pesados y reciben un salario mensual, en lugar de cobrar por hora, por día o por semana. Parte de entrevistas a trabajadores y a empresarios y de publicaciones de la época para hacer un análisis de la precariedad laboral, la inseguridad de su modo de vida y la monotonía y pesadez del trabajo mecanizado. Al contrario que los obreros, los empleados carecen de conciencia de clase y se ven a sí mismos más cerca de los jefes que de los obreros; son una especie de burguesía venida a menos, inermes, 'espirituslmente desamparados', incapaces de reconciliar sus condiciones de vida reales con su ideología. Critica cómo se utiliza el deporte y el ocio para crear un falso sentimiento de comunidad en las empresas, pero también cómo las propias organizaciones sindicales fomentan la distribución de subproductos culturales para enriquecer supuestamente la vida de los trabajadores, dejando de lado el tipo de formación necesario para cambiar las cosas. Hace una crítica general del sistema de producción capitalista, defendiendo más o menos un modelo socialista.
April 19, 2010
really wise, thoughtful little book on white-collar worker mentality... still relevant today, though historically interesting, and applicable to a wide range of cultures - so much so that it makes one wonder how much industrialization has generalized cultural internationally.
stylistically a bit dry at times, but definitely worth the read and reread.
stylistically a bit dry at times, but definitely worth the read and reread.
July 12, 2017
A dialectical incursion into the false Consciousness of the precariously non-Marxist revanchist capitalistic fascist paternalist
This short blast of Feuilleton pieces from Siegfried Kracauer made for excruciating reading. Part of this is due to how palpable the author's resentments are (not a good mind-state to be in when doing this kind of social research). Confirmation bias is too kind a word for the set of assumptions, baggage and ideology Kracauer brings to the task. This was first noted by the scholar Eric D. Weitz, who seemed puzzled by how...for lack of a better word...mean Herr Kracauer appears when begrudging these salariat their meager pleasures, especially the female workers. I usually don't invoke the voguish bugbears of the left, but the tone is scornful especially when dealing with younger women, so much so that it noticeably mars those rare occasions when a genuine insight emerges from the nearly-impenetrable wall of obscurantist jargon in which Kracauer hides the few insights he actually provides.
About that jargon: Kracauer was not a full member of the Frankfurt School, though for obvious reasons he shares some traits with cohorts Benjamin, Adorno, et. al. that give me PTSD memories of my time in grad school. This intellectual ipsation is designed to give the work a density/seriousness that, once translated into plain English, is exposed as the fashionable nonsense Alan Sorkin used to parody so well. Sometimes concepts are so complex that they require dense language, and sometimes dense language is invoked in order to shield the wielder of words from being found out as a charlatan.
Kracauer was mostly a charlatan, but due to the political machinations of academia and the proliferation of "studies" degrees, especially the interdisciplinary racket, "The Salaried Masses" and several other Kracauer works are likely to remain in print for awhile longer. Unfortunately. If you would like to get a feel for the Weimar milieu as chronicled by a feuilletonist who doesn't treat people like Jane Goodall encountering apes, I recommend some Joseph Roth as a starting place, and (if you like slumming with a man who is brilliant but knows the gutter), you could do a lot worse than Alfred Doblin. You couldn't do much worse than Kracauer, unless you're grading grad students. Hans Fallada's "Little Man, What Now?" is fiction but can teach you more about the sufferings of the salaried class in Berlin better than a hundred courses on the same subject.
This short blast of Feuilleton pieces from Siegfried Kracauer made for excruciating reading. Part of this is due to how palpable the author's resentments are (not a good mind-state to be in when doing this kind of social research). Confirmation bias is too kind a word for the set of assumptions, baggage and ideology Kracauer brings to the task. This was first noted by the scholar Eric D. Weitz, who seemed puzzled by how...for lack of a better word...mean Herr Kracauer appears when begrudging these salariat their meager pleasures, especially the female workers. I usually don't invoke the voguish bugbears of the left, but the tone is scornful especially when dealing with younger women, so much so that it noticeably mars those rare occasions when a genuine insight emerges from the nearly-impenetrable wall of obscurantist jargon in which Kracauer hides the few insights he actually provides.
About that jargon: Kracauer was not a full member of the Frankfurt School, though for obvious reasons he shares some traits with cohorts Benjamin, Adorno, et. al. that give me PTSD memories of my time in grad school. This intellectual ipsation is designed to give the work a density/seriousness that, once translated into plain English, is exposed as the fashionable nonsense Alan Sorkin used to parody so well. Sometimes concepts are so complex that they require dense language, and sometimes dense language is invoked in order to shield the wielder of words from being found out as a charlatan.
Kracauer was mostly a charlatan, but due to the political machinations of academia and the proliferation of "studies" degrees, especially the interdisciplinary racket, "The Salaried Masses" and several other Kracauer works are likely to remain in print for awhile longer. Unfortunately. If you would like to get a feel for the Weimar milieu as chronicled by a feuilletonist who doesn't treat people like Jane Goodall encountering apes, I recommend some Joseph Roth as a starting place, and (if you like slumming with a man who is brilliant but knows the gutter), you could do a lot worse than Alfred Doblin. You couldn't do much worse than Kracauer, unless you're grading grad students. Hans Fallada's "Little Man, What Now?" is fiction but can teach you more about the sufferings of the salaried class in Berlin better than a hundred courses on the same subject.
January 25, 2019
An incredible collection of essays that offer a fascinating snapshot of interwar Germany. It's a bit of a slow read, but only because it takes some time to contextualize some of the things that were clearly dinner table topics at the time of writing. It's interesting to discover the transition from (or degradation of) a petit bourgeois defined as independent landowners or small business owners into the masses of salaried employees, and the emergence of new social traits in this new group. The discomfort of these people who think themselves dispossessed and disgraced, although they would never admit it, was viewed by Kracauer as the driving force to radical change which would likely come to ill, and writing in 1929, it seems more than a little prophetic. Things have changed, but elements remain relevant both to the social problems in the organization of the workforce and the endemic disenchantment of those therein that has led them to seek novel politics.
January 12, 2022
"O tipo de relações hierárquicas entre os empregados é inseparável da mentalidade dos empresários. Se a atitude destes for a do «aqui eu posso, quero e mando», a dos chefes de secção será a mesma do tiranete. Numa empresa toda ela organizada segundo o modelo militar, as eventuais queixas deverão seguir estritamente a via hierárquica. Tudo desliza sobre rodas, pensarão os chefes, desde que os empregados se rebaixem ou não pensem senão na sua carreira; era exactamente assim que os detentores do poder viam as coisas na Alemanha imperial. No entanto, há patrões mais sensatos, que em nome do próprio interesse aceitam compromissos e sabem como arranjar válvulas de escape que permitam atenuar o descontentamento."
September 12, 2023
i liked Kracauer's emphasis on the mundane, the so-called "imperceptible dreadfulness of normal existence". specifically, I enjoyed how he forced me to switch my perspective from the sensational to the everyday, and how we must question popular culture beyond "over-consumerism bad" and "capitalism bad" and instead focus on the very organization of our lives. our need for glamour, stemming from the monotony of work, leads us to believe that the things we do to distract ourselves are part of the "normal" human condition. obviously, this is false, yet easily overlooked.
My biggest gripes (this may be a translation issue) is that he is at times difficult to follow & has an inconsistent flow from chapter to chapter.
My biggest gripes (this may be a translation issue) is that he is at times difficult to follow & has an inconsistent flow from chapter to chapter.
February 2, 2020
" Il n'est que juste que cet auteur en soit là, à la fin : tout seul. Un insatisfait, pas un meneur. Pas un fondateur, plutôt un trouble-fête. Et si nous voulons le voir tel qu'en lui-même, dans la solitude de son travail et de son oeuvre, le voici : un chiffonnier dans l'aube blafarde, ramassant avec son bâton des lambeaux de discours et des bribes de paroles, qu'il jette dans sa charrette, en grommelant, tenace, un peu ivre, non sans laisser, de temps à autre, flotter ironiquement au vent du matin quelques-uns de ces calicots défraîchis :"humanité", "intériorité", "profondeur". Un chiffonnier, à l'aube - dans l'aurore du jour de la révolution." Walter Benjamin
November 27, 2019
Kracauer's survey of Weimar Germany's petit bourgeois is part theory and part sociological study, but is quite enjoyable reading. The best bits deal with industries of distraction and consumption, which the "spiritually homeless" salaried classes flock to in this difficult period in Germany's history. The intersections between the ideas here and those of Walter Benjamin, John Berger, and Guy Debord make this essential reading for historical materialist and social theorist types.
May 25, 2024
absolutely fire line by Kracauer in regards to a union hosting an event that revolved around (and therefore elevated) a pop culture trend: “Everybody is talking about you, but you have lost your own power of speech.”
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November 7, 2022Life in white collared office jobs hasn't changed so much from the Weimar Republic era...
January 21, 2023
I read this book in front of the Times Square Madame Tussauds... a bit too apt.
(read for 20th century art course)
(read for 20th century art course)
March 7, 2025
Probablemente uno de los mejores escritos acerca del nacimiento y la psicología social de la llamada clase media en Alemania.
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June 3, 2025Pflichtlektüre für alle Sparkassen-Dudes
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December 3, 2025*Intro von "The Office", aber die Musik wird zunehmend düsterer*
January 7, 2026
das sich diese bücher aus den 1930ern alle so erschreckend aktuell lesen gibt mir wirklich zu denken.
November 7, 2020
Reads like a clunky synthesis of Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and David Graeber's (RIP) Bullshit Jobs.
Granted, written 30/90 years prior, respectively. Of course, lots of connections to the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi party. I think if you apply the synthesis of Debord and Graeber to the conditions of 1920s-30s Germany, you have a solid grasp of Kracauer's arguments.
Granted, written 30/90 years prior, respectively. Of course, lots of connections to the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi party. I think if you apply the synthesis of Debord and Graeber to the conditions of 1920s-30s Germany, you have a solid grasp of Kracauer's arguments.
October 3, 2017
Pubblicato nel 1930, non solo è testo estremamente attuale ancora oggi (un po' come dire che le problematiche dell'organizzazione aziendale non son cambiate poi molto...) ma rappresenta anche la prova della versatilità di Kracauer, ingegnere, architetto, sociologo, studioso di cinema. Un testo importante da parte di un pensatore europeo fondamentale.
April 15, 2013
Important subject matter, significant in economic and social thought, but that doesn't make it any more interesting to me.
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June 13, 2016Very actual despite the elapsed time (1930 versus 2016)
April 26, 2017
This is a short study of the budding German salatariat in the years before the Second World War — part new story, part ethnography and part treatise on the changing nature of work in a troubled era. Kracauer — who'd later go on to be known for his studies of film and fascist aesthetics — was clearly inspired by a journalistic sense of unease about this new strata of society, so unmoored by the past and struggling to carve out a place in a difficult modern terrain where they were too proud to be working class, but not quite accepted as bourgeois. The result is a fascinating look at the customs and attitudes of the younger generation struggling to keep their head above water, who would ultimately become the "good Germans" lending the Nazi regime legitimacy in the years ahead. A haunting read in 2017.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews