Edward Newman

“For Kracauer, the quintessential figure in this regard was undoubtedly Chaplin, and Roth’s comparison of Ginster to the figure of the Tramp bumbling his way through a department store finds ample confirmation in the praise Kracauer heaps on Chaplin in his reviews. His 1926 appraisal of Chaplin’s Gold Rush, for example, had been a hymn to the character’s profound humanity—albeit a humanity that asserts itself by retreating, by opposing the literally self-less figure of the Tramp to the “great ego-bundles” that constantly threaten to overwhelm him. Kracauer revels in the way Chaplin reduces the character to a lacuna, “a hole into which everything falls” and which has the power to shatter people’s self-perceptions. To Kracauer, the figure of the Tramp is touching, even transformative. “His powerlessness is dynamite,” Kracauer contends, describing Chaplin’s comedy as revelatory in its ability to show the world as it could be. Measured against the fact that the world persists as it is, Chaplin’s films provoke a form of laughter tinged with tears, for they bear witness to the disproportion “between the violence of the world and the meekness with which it is encountered.” As he notes these and other reactions to seeing Chaplin’s films during the mid- to late 1920s, Kracauer seems to be working out the poetic conception of the literary figure he would introduce to his readers soon after his encounters as a reviewer with The Gold Rush, or 1928’s The Circus (he also appears to have been a regular at a series of reruns of old Chaplin films that played at the Frankfurt Drexel Cinema just as he would have been writing his novel in late 1927 and early 1928). But there is another incarnation of Chaplin that resonates even more directly with Ginster. Though we have no record of when Kracauer first encountered Ballet mécanique from 1924, we can only guess at the impact this famous French avant-garde film would have had on the author of Ginster.”
― Siegfried Kracauer, Ginster

“I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell, and still the breeze shakes the yellow weeds, and the poppies glow under Crawley Ridge where some shells fell a few minutes ago.”
― Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

“Held together by nothing more than the animator’s imagination, this cubistic figure is perhaps Ginster’s closest relative in the culture of the 1920s: to paraphrase Roth, “Ginster in Kracauer’s novel, that’s Charlot in Ballet mécanique.” Not only does Léger’s Charlot fling his limbs in ways that recall the comedic scenes of Ginster learning to march or salute his superior officers. Both on screen and in Kracauer’s novel, body parts appear as exaggerated shapes or in close-ups and behave autonomously as if to question the unifying force of outdated notions such as consciousness, individuality, organic wholeness. In any event, this is how Ginster experiences his military training: “Continually up, then down, as if one were a toy a mother picks up so her infant can fling it out of the carriage again. Oftentimes regaining the upright state was immediately followed by marching. The legs were supposed to be hurled out from the body with such force that they flew across the entire barracks grounds—which would not have been so bad, quite the contrary, Ginster would have liked to liberate if not himself then at least a few body parts—but scarcely were the legs up in the air when they were forced back down to earth. He was still sensing how they detached themselves from him and already they were crashing down.”
― Siegfried Kracauer, Ginster

“Those early sessions were dominated by the problem of feeding Berlin’s inhabitants. All agreed that the neediest should get the most calories, but there was no consensus over who was most in need. The Soviets said it was the professional classes, including political leaders, while Howley insisted it was the elderly and infirm. Turning to his Soviet counterpart, he said, “You can’t kick a lady when she’s down.” The Russian flashed him an indulgent smile. “Why[,] my dear Colonel Howley,” he replied, “that is exactly the best time to kick them.”
― Giles Milton, Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World