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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

Siegfried Kracauer, or,

The Allegories
of Improvisation
Critical Studies

Miguel Vedda
 Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series Editors
Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique
of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for
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centuries, labour and social movements, Marxist analyses of contemporary
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More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14812
 Miguel Vedda

Siegfried Kracauer, or,

The Allegories
of Improvisation
Critical Studies
Miguel Vedda
University of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
ISBN 978-3-030-67964-4 ISBN 978-3-030-67965-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67965-1

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 Series Editor’s Preface

Titles Published
1. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, A Political History of the Editions
of Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts, 2014.
2. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s “German Ideol-
ogy” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach
chapter,” 2014.
3. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The History and Theory of Fetishism,
2015.
4. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: A
Critique of Marxism, 2016.
5. Domenico Losurdo, Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical
History, 2016.
6. Frederick Harry Pitts, Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to
Read Marx, 2017.
7. Ranabir Samaddar, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age, 2017.
8. George Comninel, Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of
Karl Marx, 2018.
9. Jean-Numa Ducange & Razmig Keucheyan (Eds.), The End of the
Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century,
2018.
10. Robert X. Ware, Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals:
Retrieving Marx for the Future, 2018.

v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins
of Capitalism, 2018.
12. John Gregson, Marxism, Ethics, and Politics: The Work of Alasdair
MacIntyre, 2018.
13. Vladimir Puzone & Luis Felipe Miguel (Eds.), The Brazilian
Left in the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral
Capitalism, 2019.
14. James Muldoon & Gaard Kets (Eds.), The German Revolution and
Political Theory, 2019.
15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and
Metaphysics of Domination, 2019.
16. August H. Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-
Time Political Analysis, 2019.
17. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello and Mauricio de Souza Saba-
dini (Eds.), Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits: A Marxist
Analysis, 2019.
18. Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto & Babak Amini (Eds.), Karl
Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the
Bicentenary, 2019.
19. Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism:
Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights, 2019.
20. Juan Pablo Rodríguez, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile:
The Possibility of Social Critique, 2019.
21. Kaan Kangal, Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature, 2020.
22. Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories, 2020.
23. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The Bourgeois and the Savage: A Marxian
Critique of the Image of the Isolated Individual in Defoe, Turgot and
Smith, 2020.
24. Terrell Carver, Engels Before Marx, 2020.
25. Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde: The Birth of Socialism and
Marxism in France, 2020.
26. Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara & Angel Oliva (Eds.), Marx and
Contemporary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction.
27. Francesco Biagi, Henri Lefebvre’s Critical Theory of Space.
28. Stefano Petrucciani, The Ideas of Karl Marx: A Critical Introduc-
tion.
29. Terrell Carver, The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th
Anniversary Edition.
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE vii

30. Giuseppe Vacca, Alternative Modernities: Antonio Gramsci’s Twen-

tieth Century.
31. Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin & Heather Brown (Eds.),
Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Gender, and the
Dialectics of Liberation.
32. Marco Di Maggio, The Rise and Fall of Communist Parties in
France and Italy.
33. Ryuji Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism,
Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism.
34. Kohei Saito (Ed.), Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century.
35. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism in Marx’s Capital: Towards a De-
alienated World.
36. Marcello Musto, Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation.

Titles Forthcoming
Michael Brie & Jörn Schütrumpf, Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary
Marxist at the Limits of Marxism
Miguel Vedda, Siegfried Kracauer, or, The Allegories of Improvisation
Gianfranco Ragona & Monica Quirico, Frontier Socialism: Self-
organisation and Anti-capitalism
Vesa Oittinen, Marx’s Russian Moment
Kolja Lindner, Marx, Marxism and the Question of Eurocentrism
Jean-Numa Ducange & Elisa Marcobelli (Eds.), Selected Writings of Jean
Jaures: On Socialism, Pacifism and Marxism
Adriana Petra, Intellectuals and Communist Culture: Itineraries, Problems
and Debates in Post-war Argentina
George C. Comninel, The Feudal Foundations of Modern Europe
James Steinhoff, Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: A
Marxist Study of Work in the Artificial Intelligence Industry
Spencer A. Leonard, Marx, the India Question, and the Crisis of
Cosmopolitanism
Joe Collins, Applying Marx’s Capital to the 21st century
Levy del Aguila Marchena, Communism, Political Power and Personal
Freedom in Marx
Jeong Seongjin, Korean Capitalism in the 21st Century: Marxist Analysis
and Alternatives
Marcello Musto, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective
from Labriola to Gramsci
viii SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

Satoshi Matsui, Normative Theories of Liberalism and Socialism: Marxist

Analysis of Values
Shannon Brincat, Dialectical Dialogues in Contemporary World Politics: A
Meeting of Traditions in Global Comparative Philosophy
Stefano Petrucciani, Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy, Society, and Aesthetics
Francesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship,
State, and Revolution
Thomas Kemple, Capital after Classical Sociology: The Faustian Lives of
Social Theory
Tsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory
of “Labour Note"
V Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in
India
Xavier Vigna, A Political History of Factories in France: The Workers’
Insubordination of 1968
Attila Melegh, Anti-Migrant Populism in Eastern Europe and Hungary:
A Marxist Analysis
Marie-Cecile Bouju, A Political History of the Publishing Houses of the
French Communist Party
Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello & Henrique Pereira Braga (Eds.),
Wealth and Poverty in Contemporary Brazilian Capitalism
Peter McMylor, Graeme Kirkpatrick & Simin Fadaee (Eds.), Marxism,
Religion, and Emancipatory Politics
Mauro Buccheri, Radical Humanism for the Left: The Quest for Meaning
in Late Capitalism
Rémy Herrera, Confronting Mainstream Economics to Overcome Capi-
talism
Tamás Krausz, Eszter Bartha (Eds.), Socialist Experiences in Eastern
Europe: A Hungarian Perspective
Martín Cortés, Marxism, Time and Politics: On the Autonomy of the
Political
João Antonio de Paula, Huga da Gama Cerqueira, Eduardo da Motta
e Albuquer & Leonardo de Deus, Marxian Economics for the 21st
Century: Revaluating Marx’s Critique of Political Economy
Zhi Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought of Karl Marx
Lelio Demichelis, Marx, Alienation and Techno-capitalism
Dong-Min Rieu, A Mathematical Approach to Marxian Value Theory:
Time, Money, and Labor Productivity
 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE ix

Salvatore Prinzi, Representation, Expression, and Institution: The Philos-

ophy of Merleau-Ponty and Castoriadis
Agon Hamza, Slavoj Žižek and the Reconstruction of Marxism
Kei Ehara (Ed.), Japanese Discourse on the Marxian Theory of Finance
Éric Aunoble, French Views on the Russian Revolution
Elisa Marcobelli, Internationalism Toward Diplomatic Crisis: The Second
International and French, German and Italian Socialists
Paolo Favilli, Historiography and Marxism: Innovations in Mid-Century
Italy
Terrell Carver, Smail Rapic (Eds.), Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century:
Perspectives and Problems
Juan Dal Maso, Hegemony and Class: Three Essays on Trotsky, Gramsci and
Marxism
Patrizia Dogliani, A Political History of the International Union of
Socialist Youth
Alexandros Chrysis, The Marx of Communism: Setting Limits in the Realm
of Communism
Stephen Maher, Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General
Electric and a Century of American Power
 Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint the following

articles:

“The Novel of a Melancholy Outcast. On Ginster”: published previously

as “La novela de un marginal melancólico. A propósito de Ginster,
de Siegfried Kracauer” in: Kracauer, Siegfried, Ginster. Escrita por él
mismo. Transl., with an Introd. by Miguel Vedda. Buenos Aires: Las
Cuarenta, 2018, pp. 9–38.
“A Philosophy of Rootlesness: The young Kracauer as a critic of Georg
Simmel”: published previously as “Sobre una filosofía del desar-
raigo: a propósito del estudio del joven Siegfried Kracauer sobre
Georg Simmel” in: Vernik, Esteban/Borisonik, Hernán (eds.), Georg
Simmel, un siglo después. Actualidad y perspectiva. Buenos Aires:
Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani – Facultad de Ciencias
Sociales, UBA / CLACSO, 2017, pp. 261–272.
“Allegories of improvisation: Streets in Berlin and Elsewhere”: published,
in a shorter and somewhat different version, as “Alegorías de la
improvisación. A propósito de los cuadros de ciudades en Calles en
Berlín y en otros lugares, de Siegfried Kracauer” in: Projeto História
65 (mayo-agosto de 2019), pp. 10–28.
“The Tradition of the Lost Causes: History. The Last Things before the
Last ”: published previously as “La tradición de las causas perdi-
das” in: Kracauer, Siegfried, Historia. Las últimas cosas antes de

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

las últimas. Introd. by Miguel Vedda. Transl. by María Guadalupe

Marando and Agustín D’ambrosio. Buenos Aires: Las cuarenta,
2010, pp. 9–36.
“The great Rift of the World”. Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin
and the Discussions about the Character and Function of critic-
Intellectuals”, published previously as “‘La gran grieta del mundo’.
Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin y los debates sobre la figura
del intelectual” in: Pandaemonium Germanicum. Revista de Estudos
Germaísticos (USP, São Paulo, Brasil) 17/23 (junio de 2014),
pp. 182–204.
“Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of the Fairy
Tale”, published previously as “Emancipación humana y ‘felicidad
no disciplinada’. Walter Benjamin y la poética del cuento de hadas”
in: Jozami, Eduardo/Kaufman, Alejandro/Vedda, Miguel (comps.),
Walter Benjamin en la ex ESMA. Justicia, Historia y Verdad. Escrit-
uras de la memoria. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2013, pp. 303–318.
“Anatomies of melancholy: Acedia and alienation in Walter Benjamin
and Siegfried Kracauer”: published previously as “Anatomien der
Melancholie: Acedia und Entfremdung bei Walter Benjamin und
Siegfried Kracauer” in: Ibero-amerikanisches Jahrbuch für German-
istik V (2012) 102–117.
“Decline and Fall of the short novel? Vicissitudes of a genre in the
modern German Narrative”: published previously as “Verfall und
Untergang der Novelle? Erscheinungsformen einer Gattung in der
modernen deutschen Erzählkunst“ in: Ibero-amerikanisches Jahrbuch
für Germanistik IX (2016).
“The Historian in the Anteroom. Configurations of the Intellectual in
the late Discussions between Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor W.
Adorno”: published previously as “La historia en la antecámara.
Figura y funciones del intelectual en las discusiones entre Siegfried
Kracauer y Theodor W. Adorno” in: Revista em Pauta. Teoria
social e realidade contemporânea (Universidade do Estado do Rio de
Janeiro) 38 (2016).

Fascism as a Farce of Farce: Totalitarian Propaganda appears for the

first time in this volume.
 Contents

Introduction: On Kracauer’s Essays and the Contemporary

Significance of Dialectics 1

Part I
A Philosophy of Rootlesness: The Young Kracauer
as a Critic of Georg Simmel 25
The Novel of a Melancholy Outcast. On Ginster 37
Allegories of Improvisation: Streets in Berlin and Elsewhere 65
Fascism as a Farce of Farce: Totalitarian Propaganda 83
The Tradition of the Lost Causes: History. The Last Things
Before the Last 101

Part II
“The Great Rift of the World”. Siegfried Kracauer,
Walter Benjamin and the Discussions About the Character
and Function of Critic-Intellectuals 127
Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics
of the Fairy Tale 147

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Anatomies of Melancholy: Acedia and Alienation in Walter

Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer 175
Decline and Fall of the Short Novel? Vicissitudes of a Genre
in the Modern German Narrative 195
The Historian in the Anteroom: Configurations
of the Intellectual in the Late Discussions Between
Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor W. Adorno 211

Bibliography 221
Index 231
 Introduction: On Kracauer’s Essays
and the Contemporary Significance
of Dialectics

To Carlos Eduardo Jordão Machado, in memoriam

1 Kracauer’s Writings and Heterodox

Marxism: A Study in Elective Affinity
In the course of the last decades, interest in the work and life of Siegfried
Kracauer has rekindled after the relative silence that prevailed in the years
immediately following the death of the German essayist. The appearance
of a series of clarifying and insightful studies, the translation of his writ-
ings into several languages and, above all, the long awaited publication
of Kracauer’s Werke in nine volumes by the German publishing house
Suhrkamp helped to increase the attention for the essay and narrative
production of this intellectual nomad. This reception began to extend
beyond the interest to the first two books published in the North Amer-
ican exile, From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Theory of Film (1960),
incorporating, not only the posthumous History. The Last Things before
the Last (first published in 1969), but also the essays and narrative works
composed in the 1920s and 1930s—those which, in our opinion, consti-
tute the greatest theoretical and aesthetic contributions of the German
author. To a lesser but appreciable extent, emerged a significant critical
reception of early writings—Uber das Wesen der Persönlichkeit (On the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
M. Vedda, Siegfried Kracauer, or, The Allegories of Improvisation,
Marx, Engels, and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67965-1_1
2 M. VEDDA

Essence of Personality, 1913–1914), Soziologie als Wissenschaft (Sociology

as Science, 1922), The Detective Novel (written in 1925), among others.
Whole dimensions of Kracauer’s work, however, remain unexplored. A
particular feature of this reception is that, with rare exceptions, it is char-
acterized by a political abstinence that speaks less about the peculiarities
of the author studied than about the convictions and expectations of the
critics themselves. In contrast to this trend, we have the conviction, on
the one hand, that the thought of Marx and a variety of heterodox Marx-
ists represent a substantial and persistent component of Kracauer’s work,
which is above all at the basis of his major writings. On the other, that
the theory and criticism of the German essayist could enrich (and, in
some cases, have effectively enriched) Marxism with aspects that it simply
neglected, or that it considered insufficiently or erroneously. It is telling
that this late work by Kracauer which has been the target of harsher crit-
icism due to its drifting towards a dogmatic and normative intolerance,
Theory of Film, is also a study that is distinguished by a singular political
abstentionism; and Miriam Hansen has aptly highlighted both the way
in which Kracauer “himself repressed much of the political and historical
dimension of his film theory in the process of revision”, and how “the
traces that remained were altogether erased in the book’s American recep-
tion”.1 On the other hand, there is a certain consensus, among critics,
that Kracauer’s most outstanding production is the one that emerged
between the mid-1920s and the emigration to the United States, that is,
the one that is most intensely marked by the exhaustive study of Marx
and by personal and intellectual contact with Walter Benjamin, Ernst
Bloch, Marx Horhkheimer, Theodor Adorno or Leo Löwenthal—as well
as with the early Marxist writings of György Lukács. The weakening of
interest in unmasking, from a materialistic perspective, false consciousness,
as well as the objective fetishisms and mystifications of capitalist Moder-
nity, the effort to provide a socio-historical and often expressly political
analysis of artistic and cultural phenomena, coincided with a relative paral-
ysis of Kracauer’s critical capacities, as we will have occasion to observe at
various points throughout this book. All this aims to suggest an affinity
and, even more, an elective affinity 2 between Kracauerian essayism and
Marx’s dialectical thought. In another place we try to demonstrate to
what extent both Marxian method and writing are deeply marked by an
essayistic bias,3 something we would like to show in this book is how
essayism and Marxism also appear productively combined in Kracauer’s
writings.
 INTRODUCTION: ON KRACAUER’S ESSAYS AND THE CONTEMPORARY … 3

It is possible to see in this oeuvre manifold suggestions to provocatively

expand the limits of Marxism. Urban ethnographies and explorations into
the unknown territory of labour and cultural spaces, as well as asylums
for the unemployed and the peripheral and marginal locations of big
cities have unquestionable historical significance and should be recovered
today, in the framework of the various attempts to found a historical and
geographical materialism. The contributions to a sociology of the middle
classes that can be drawn from The Sallaried Mases (1930) and from a
variety of short essays, in addition to being highly innovative in their time,
would provide extremely useful elements for analysing the behaviour of
contemporary middle sectors, particularly in the context of expansion of
the new radical Rights. Fertile indications for the analysis of the latter can
be found in the anatomy of fascist propaganda displayed in Totalitarian
Propaganda (written between 1936 and early 1938), a work explicitly and
intensely influenced by Marx’s essays on Second Empire France; and it is
characteristic that one of the most prominent contemporary scholars on
radical Rights of our time is precisely Enzo Traverso, author of a funda-
mental book on the Frankfurt essayist. Kracauer was also a pioneer in
developing an analysis of mass culture that constantly intertwines histor-
ical criteria with sociological and expressly political ones, highlighting the
reifying and utopian impulses of the analysed phenomena along a coin-
cident (but, at the same time, productively divergent) line with which
contemporary authors like Jameson and Žižek promote. And so far we
have only mentioned a few of the aspects that would justify a reivindica-
tion of Kracauer from a heterodox and emancipatory Marxist perspective.
We still have to consider some particularly relevant points.

2 The Modern Intellectual

and the Essay as Method
One of the complexes of problems that run through this book is that of
the physiognomy and functions of the modern intellectual, a subject that
occupied Kracauer during the Weimar Republic—to a great extent, from a
comparison between German circumstances and those that by then were
taking shape in the Soviet Union. For the German author, as for some
thinkers and writers close to him, this reflection went hand in hand with
a recovery of criticism, understood as a non-dogmatic, non-regimented
4 M. VEDDA

form of reflection, in keeping with the moving conditions of Moder-

nity, and which requires an exploratory, “essayistic” attitude—something
that partly explains why, in those years, essay came to be of such deci-
sive importance. To this genre, as well as to essayism as a method, could
be applied what Adorno wrote about Ernst Bloch’s early work, namely:
that “it indicates a change of attitude toward the object. The object can
no longer be contemplated peacefully and with composure. As in eman-
cipated film, thought uses a handheld camera”.4 By virtue of this style
of thought, “the bourgeois organization of experience with its seem-
ingly fixed distance between the viewer and the viewed is a thing of
the past” and this shakeup in the relationship of the subject to what he
wants to say, according to Adorno, “alters the idea of truth itself”.5 It
would be useful to recover this imperative of dynamism to define the
(mobile) perspective from which we approach, a century later, the discus-
sions that essayists like Kracauer, Benjamin or Bloch developed around
the significance of the modern intelligentsia. This leads us to introduce
a methodological specification: as is known, in the framework of the
book project on Parisian Arcades, Benjamin set out to take up the idea,
formulated by Lukács in History and Class Consciousness (1923), that a
“Copernican revolution in historical perception” would have to be carried
out, placing the present, and no longer the past, as a starting point.
According to Benjamin, “what has been is to become the dialectical
reversal – the flash of awakened consciousness. Politics attains primacy
over history”.6 With differences and nuances, this thought reappears in
other Marxist intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century; thus,
for example, in the writings of Lukács, even in works much posterior
to History and class consciousness. For the Hungarian philosopher—and
this contradicts the interpretations of him as only a nostalgic for a time
of fullness in the past—each present provides the parameter to relate to
the past. Lukács’s idea is that the past is no fixed and ready once and
for all, so that it can be described “the way it really was” (Ranke). We
should approach the past with the awareness that our relationship with it
is the result, not of a passive reception, but of a construction motivated
in part by the interests of our present. Lukács frequently insists that, in
any productive connection with the past (for example, the relation of a
writer with what has been bequeathed to him by tradition), the person
or the collective of the present must say, like Molière: je prends mon bien
où je le trouve.7 This can be seen, for example, in The Historical Novel
(1936–1937), where it appears explicit when he parallels the “method”
 INTRODUCTION: ON KRACAUER’S ESSAYS AND THE CONTEMPORARY … 5

of appropriation of the past employed by Walter Scott with that of Hegel:

Lukács comments that there is no evidence that Scott has read Hegel—
and, had he read it, it is unlikely that he would have understood him—but
his procedures are sometimes reminiscent of those of the German philoso-
pher.8 In Hegel’s Lessons on Aesthetics (1835–1838) it is stated that those
past customs and institutions that no longer bear any connection with
the present of humanity, lack genuine vitality and interest for this. In
this context appears the following comment, which is reproduced in The
Historical Novel : “History is only ours when […] we can look on the
present in general as a consequence of a chain of events in which the
characters or deeds represented form an essential link”.9 The past “even of
one’s own people must stand in closer connection with our present situa-
tion, life, and existence”.10 It would be reasonable to place this comment
in relation to the aforementioned “Copernican revolution” in historical
research to take a step further: in “The Storyteller” (1936), Benjamin
underlined the way in which become visible, from the perspective of each
present, certain dimensions of the past that remain hidden in other histor-
ical moments, as well as in a rock, for the observer who has taken the
correct distance and adopted the appropriate point of view, the head of
a human being or the body of an animal can appear.11 If, in accordance
with this method, we consider the work of the great Marxist essayists
of the early twentieth century, we perceive a constellation of elements
vanished in our time, just like Benjamin, in the mid-1930s, from a look
at the narrative art from the past, believed he could deduce the death of
the traditional storyteller. In relation to our theme: if, from the current
situation, we address the life and work of the aforementioned authors,
we are quickly struck by a model of intellectual that stands out especially
today due to its absence. We refer to the tradition of critic-intellectuals:
a tradition that was born at the time of the European Restoration and,
more precisely, in the generation of Marx—with him as one of its promi-
nent representatives—and which has been dying out, almost disappearing,
from the 1960s. It could be said that the failure of the insurrectionary
movements at the end of that decade helped to consummate the decline
of that figure; but the process is much broader. Without it the logic of
development having always been simple and univocal, the fading of critical
intellectuals has been a correlate of the unfolding of neoliberalism, as was
also, according to authors such as Jameson and Harvey, poststructuralist
thought, without the latter and the academicization process of intellec-
tuals integrates a single, closed and univocal process. Meanwhile, we have
6 M. VEDDA

mentioned the fundamental formula to express what we have been saying:

what decisively separates our time from the era in which intellectuals such
as Benjamin, Kracauer, Bloch or Sartre existed is the relative absorption
of the intelligentsia by academic spaces, a process that developed with
almost inexorable punctuality in the course of the last sixty years and that
marks a deep divergence from the aforementioned essayists. For Marx,
the decision to abandon the project of being a university professor in
Berlin and dedicate himself to journalism and independent investigation
was not hard, even though it meant a life of financial hardship. For the
aforementioned thinkers, the writing of ambitious books, or of essays
for widely circulated magazines, was an almost natural form of intel-
lectual production. In contrast to this essentially journalistic orientation,
the “influential” intellectuals in the last half century have been primarily
academics, who in many cases appealed largely to a university audience:
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-
Luc Nancy, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Giorgio Agamben… and the
list could be expanded considerably. The exceptions are not only rare, but
also doubtful. We can’t help but celebrate Chomsky’s forceful denuncia-
tions of US imperialism, but we know that those denunciations would not
be as effective if the author were not a world-acclaimed linguist, emeritus
professor at MIT.
The fact that, in the course of the last decades, critics abandoned their
traditional spheres of circulation to take refuge in universities has been
the subject of various reflections. From a radical position, Terry Eagleton
has pointed out that “criticism today lacks all substantive social function.
It is either part of the public relations branch of the literary industry, or
a matter wholly internal to the academies”.12 As we have already said,
the academization of criticism referred to here is correlative to the fading
of the critic-intellectual. It is impossible to discuss in depth the whole
complex of questions here; we aspire only to present here some brief
reflections on the problem. To speak of the modern critic-intellectual
implies invoking a figure that had its first prominent manifestation in
Europe during the time of the Restoration. Located on the threshold
of Modernity, faced with the disintegration of traditional cultures and the
advance of capitalism, but also located in a world in which history had
ceased to be a matter of scholarship to enter daily life, the intelligentsia of
the period felt the need to abandon the perspective of the world spectator
to take an explicit position towards contemporary reality, and this sudden
turn from contemplation to action can be seen in both progressives and
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The history of
Company B, 311th Infantry in the World War
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: The history of Company B, 311th Infantry in the World War

Editor: B. A. Colonna

Contributor: David Gardenier

Charles Peter
Bert W. Stiles
Tracy S. White

Release date: June 17, 2022 [eBook #68333]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Transcript Printing House,

1922

Credits: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

HISTORY OF COMPANY B, 311TH INFANTRY IN THE WORLD
WAR ***
Capt. Colonna and Lt. Foulkes at Camp Dix, 1918.
 THE HISTORY
OF
COMPANY B, 311th INFANTRY
IN THE
WORLD WAR.
Edited by
B. A. Colonna
with contributions by David Gardenier, Charles Peter,
and Tracy S. White.

Statistics compiled by Bert W. Stiles.

FREEHOLD, N. J.
TRANSCRIPT PRINTING HOUSE,
1922
 COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY B. A. COLONNA AND B. W. STILES.
 INDEX
Page
Introduction 5
Chapter I—Madison Barracks 6
Chapter II—Camp Dix 7
Chapter III—The Cruise of the “NESTOR” 11
Chapter IV—The English Sector 16
Chapter V—The American Sector 32
Chapter VI—St. Mihiel and Limey Sector 40
Chapter VII—Meuse-Argonne 67
Chapter VIII—Flavigny-sur-Ozerain 74
Chapter IX—Homeward Bound 76
Alphabetical Roster of Officers 81
Alphabetical Roster of Enlisted Men 83
Classified Rosters 108
Number of Officers and Men by States 111
Lists of Casualties 112
Decorations 114
Extracts from General Orders No. 6 115
 INTRODUCTION
You, my comrades of the past two years, for whom this history is
written, know that I have but small gift of expression at any time, and
least of all for the things closest to my heart. At your request,
however, made when we parted for the last time, I am writing the
story of our company. I shall do my best to put down everything as it
occurred, so far as my knowledge and memory will serve; and I trust
that if the matter is true, you will overlook crudeness in the form.
“Company B, 311th Infantry”—Only a letter and a number? Only one
company out of the hundreds in the National Army? Yes, to
outsiders; but to me, and I trust and believe to you, Company B was
a living and vital being, composed of part of what was best in each of
us. Its official life was twenty months; in that time it was born, grew to
full strength, was trained, travelled some 7500 miles, fulfilled its
destiny—fought, suffered, lost; and finally returned to its birthplace
and was mustered out. But the spirit of B Company is still with each
of us, and not a man but has carried away more than he gave.
Relatively, B Company was a very small part of the army. But to us, it
was the army; just as we shall always think of the war in terms of St.
Mihiel and the Argonne. We have heard of the Marne, Ypres,
Verdun, Chateau Thierry; but every man sees the war through his
own eyes.
For this reason, I am writing in the first person. The best I can do is
to relate things as I saw them so I shall not take refuge behind an
artificial impersonality. Probably a good many things were pulled off
that I did not know anything about. And then you may discover that I
knew more about some little matters than you thought I did.
 CHAPTER I
MADISON BARRACKS
On May 5, 1917, I reported for duty at the Officers’ Training Camp at
Madison Barracks, New York, with a commission as Second
Lieutenant of Infantry in the Reserve Corps. My call to active duty
had cut short my law course at Columbia University two months
before I was to take my degree.
Having graduated three years before from the Virginia Military
Institute, and served there a year as sub-professor of German and
tactics, I had some idea of the fundamental principles of military
training; but, like almost all the other reserve officers, army paper
work and administration was a closed book to me.
A few days later I was told off to report to Capt. Haynes Odom, U. S.
R., commanding Co. 5 of the 2d Provisional Training Regt. Capt.
Odom was already conspicuous among the batch of reserve officers
for his efficiency and tireless energy and industry. The tall,
upstanding figure, with the mark of the regular army man indelibly
stamped upon him; the head carried well back; the weather-worn,
sun-wrinkled face, the hooked nose, cool hazel eyes; the smile that
accompanied alike a friendly greeting or a merciless balling out; the
soft Southern accent indescribably harshened by thousands of
commands given—do you recognize the Major, boys?
The three long, hot, arduous months of training at Madison Barracks
can be passed over briefly. My cot in the long frame barrack was
next to that of a tall, lithe, black haired lad from Rochester, N. Y., with
the merriest, keenest, black eyes I ever saw. Before a week went by
he stood out above the average candidate. He was young, just
twenty-one—I was at the venerable age of twenty-two. But he had
the keenest, quickest, practical mind I have ever met, and the gift of
natural leadership, which is compounded of courage, intelligence,
unselfish sympathy, and a sense of humor. He had graduated from
Cornell in 1916. Later you knew him as 1st Lieut. Louis Sinclair
Foulkes, the best officer in “B” Company; the best officer it was my
fortune to come in contact with during the war.
One of the training companies was organized as a cavalry troop. We
saw them now and then being led in physical drill by a handsome,
muscular young chap, so alive and vibrant with nervous energy that
it was good to watch him work. He was Roy A. Schuyler, of
Schenectady, a graduate of Union College, and a descendant of that
General Schuyler whose record in the Revolutionary War makes so
bright a page in American history. Brilliant, impulsive, generous, full
of the joy of life, passionately eager to serve; he was a worthy
descendant of a long line of fighting patriots.
In Co. 9 was an earnest, dignified, hard working reserve first
lieutenant, one of the most capable of the reserve officers on the
post. He was a prominent lawyer of Utica, N. Y., and one of the
leaders in the Plattsburg movement. Though well over the draft age,
he had given up his large practice and had gone into the service at
the first call. This was Russell H. Brennan, the first commander of
“B” Company.
At last our course drew to a close; the commissions were announced
and we departed for ten days’ leave before reporting to Camp Dix for
duty. Will we ever forget those ten golden August days? The world
was ours, and life was sweet. No one knew what lay ahead, but we
all made the most of our last taste of the old life for some time.
 CHAPTER II
CAMP DIX
Most of you saw it for the first time when you rolled into the long train
shed, and hiked up to your barracks through a mile or more of
company streets, in a city of forty thousand men, the hundreds of
large barracks already weatherbeaten with the snows and rains of
winter.
We, however, after changing trains several times, finally rolled up to
what was apparently a piano box in a lumber yard, and were there
assured by the conductor that this was Camp Dix. We tumbled off,
and trudged away through six inches of New Jersey dust toward the
only building in sight with a roof on it—camp headquarters. Our bags
became heavier and heavier; our new uniforms were fearfully hot;
our new shoes and puttees, with which we had been dazzling
admiring womenfolks and causing menfolk to grunt with assumed
indifference, were abominably tight and pinchy.
Finally we straggled in to headquarters, to indulge for a couple of
hours in that amusement so familiar to every man in the army—
standing in line for an hour to do two minutes of red tape. When our
turn was over, we went over to a partially completed barracks, where
we were each allowed to appropriate 1 cot, iron. This was the limit of
our accommodation—those who couldn’t get away to some nearby
town slept on the soft side of a piece of bristol board. We walked to
the ether side of camp for all our meals—about two miles, if you
didn’t lose your way.
The next morning we attended a rollcall at 9 A. M. There we met Col.
Marcus B. Stokes, the commanding officer; and Lt. Col. Edgar Myer,
second in command. We found that the officers from Madison
Barracks, Cos. 5 and 6, with half of the Troop formed the nucleus of
the new regiment.
Capt. Odom was Regimental Adjutant and to my horror I was at once
made Regimental Supply Officer. The following officers were
assigned to “B” company:
Capt. Russell H. Brennan, commanding company,
2d Lt. Roy A. Schuyler,
2d Lt. Fred S. Fish,
2d Lt. Wm. D. Ashmore.
For a month the regiment went through the agonies of organization.
Supplies came in by driblets; transportation there was none, save for
two hopelessly over-worked motor truck companies, which put in half
their time trying to separate their trucks from the sacred soil of
Jersey. A great swarm of civilian workmen were toiling feverishly to
get up the barracks. The regiment was moved four times in as many
weeks. The roads were six inches deep in mud or dust.
The first enlisted men in the regiment were three former candidates
at Madison Barracks, who, through no fault of their own, had not
received commissions, but who wouldn’t leave the bunch, and
enlisted in the regiment,—Dave Gardenier, Art McCann, and Jimmie
Hooker. McCann and Gardenier were made regimental sergeants
major, and Hooker was my regimental supply sergeant.
In about a week a number of men came in from various Regular
Army regiments, to form a nucleus of N. C. O.’s. “B” company
received Ertwine, Robbins, and J. M. Newell. These men were
shortly afterward made corporals on recommendation of Capt.
Brennan.
From Sept. 19th to Sept. 22d, the men of the first draft came in. As
Supply Officer, my own troubles kept me pretty busy during those
strenuous days. I knew “B” company, however, as a good outfit.
Capt. Brennan’s steady, methodical, tireless work, and the energy
and devotion of his three lieutenants showed results from the first. Lt.
Fish, a former National Guard officer, was an old hand and steadied
the younger officers.
After two months of hard work, the companies began to round out
into some sort of shape. The non-commissioned officers were
selected, with as much care as was possible in the limited time
allowed for observation of the new men. The first top sergeant of “B”
Co. was Eilert, a sturdy and sterling product of the first draft, who
had been a foreman in a large factory. The “top” is, absolutely, the
most essential man in a company. His position is such that he has to
see to the carrying out of all the disagreeable orders, and making the
details for all the dirty jobs, while at the same time he is not
protected by any barrier of rank. He is usually cordially detested and
thoroughly respected by the men, and is about as useful to the
officers as a right hand. We never had a top in “B” Co. who was not
absolutely loyal to the service and to the company commander;
never one who shrank from the most disagreeable duty, nor who
gave a thought to his personal popularity. They were human, of
course, and made mistakes like the rest of us; and sometimes they
couldn’t help being placed in a bad light to the men. But you men—
some of you, even, who beefed most against the tops—if you only
knew how many times that same top came to the company
commander or other officers to help out this fellow or that, to suggest
some way of making things easier for the whole company; if you
knew how hard and thankless a job they held; possibly you would
have been a little more lenient in your judgments.
James McC. Newell was the first supply sergeant, and got away with
everything not nailed down. Samuel Tritapoe was Mess Sgt. until Lt.
Wagner recognized his ability and took him for a regimental supply
sergeant, and Warren Sculthorp succeeded to this thankless but
highly important job. The other sergeants, as well as I remember,
were Ertwine, Perry, Anness and Robbins. Joe Levy was soon
drafted by Newell to make the accounts balance; Harold Sculthorpe
started on his culinary career; Sweeney, Rogers, Tom Viracola,
Howard Lehy, Hayden and Long Bill Reid were corporals. Sutton and
Weber were detailed at the regimental exchange where they were a
great factor in making it the best in the division. And last, but not
least, deBruin was man of all work and plumber-in-chief. Red
Sheridan also started his lurid career with “B” Co., and helped
deBruin and “Bugs” Wardell to dispose of the vanilla extract rations.
Toward the middle of October, Lt. Foulkes arrived from Cambridge,
Mass., where he had been sent for a special course in trench
warfare. He was assigned to B Co., and remained as second in
command until he was made battalion adjutant in July 1918.
Now started in the era of transfers. New drafts were constantly
coming in; and as soon as we would get them uniformed and able to
negotiate a “Squads Right” without losing each other, they would be
drawn away to fill up some other division destined for overseas duty
before the 78th. Not once, but a dozen times between September
and May did this happen, leaving the company with its officers and a
skeleton of N. C. O.’s, cooks and orderlies.
On December 6th, Capt. Brennan and I were interchanged, he taking
over the Supply Company and I, “B” Co.
The winter wore on, and spring was upon us, and we seemed no
nearer France than before. Changes took place in officers as well as
enlisted men. Lt. Ashmore went to “A” Co.; Lt. Fish to the Supply
Co.; 2d Lts. Dunn and Merrill and 1st Lt. Vanderbilt took their places
with “B” Co. The time was filled with training and equipping the ever
changing quotas of recruits and drilling them in fundamentals; for the
training cadre of officers and N. C. O.’s there were special courses in
bayonet fighting, bombing, trench digging—how many cold and
weary hours were swallowed up in that trench system east of the
regimental area!—and ever and always wind, mud and snow, or
wind, sun and dust.
When the March drafts came in, rumors took a new lease on life.
The 77th division was being equipped to leave Camp Upton; our turn
would probably come next. The transfers went out now to fill up, not
other divisions, but our own artillery regiments across the parade
ground. Work on the target range was increased. Ah, the joys of
being routed out of the hay long before daybreak, snatching a hasty
breakfast, and hiking off through the cold dawn, five miles through
the barrens to that wind-swept waste with the long rows of targets.
1st Sgt. Eilert and Supply Sgt. Newell had been selected to attend
the officers’ training school. Sgt. Ertwine, who had shown
exceptional ability while in charge of the recruits’ barracks, was
made 1st Sgt., and Joe Levy, of course, became Supply Sgt.
It was not all work and no play, though. At night there were movies at
the “Y” huts; the Post Exchange for those who had something left
from insurance, allotments and other ornaments of the pay roll,—or
who were gifted enough to fill a full house or roll a “natural”
consistently. And on Saturday afternoon and Sunday the lucky 25%
would be off for a few precious hours at home or in the city, while the
camp would be filled with visitors to the less fortunate.
April passed, and May arrived with green trees and warm days. We
bought baseball equipment, and each company had a team (I
wonder who got hold of all that stuff finally?). The April drafts had
brought the companies above normal strength. Tents were put up in
the company streets to accommodate the overflow.
These were busy days for Supply Sgt. Levy and Cpl. Jimmie Jones,
Company Clerk. There was a continuous procession in and out the
door of the squad room where Levy had established his
headquarters; recruits going in with blissful visions of emerging in the
likeness of a magazine ad. soldier; departing with murder in their
hearts because their trousers bagged at the knees. And Joe, who
remembered last September when recruits would bum around for a
month before getting a sign of a uniform, had scant sympathy with
them.
This was also an era of reports. Reports on how many men we had;
how many shirts each man had; how many extra shoe-laces were in
our possession; how many men had W. R. insurance; how many
were yet to be inoculated and how many times. Twice a day did I
have to report for officers’ meeting; twice a day would the Colonel
hold forth on the reports the general wanted, which company
commanders would prepare at once, personally, in writing; then the
adjutant would begin on the reports the colonel wanted; then the
supply officer would chime in with a few more that he had to have by
six o’clock at the latest. Life was a veritable nightmare of typewritten
figures. The supply sergeant of “L” company actually lost his mind
under the strain. Drill was carried on in the intervals of lining up for
another check or inspection. And the men, quite naturally, looked
upon the officers as a set of lunatics who didn’t know their own
minds for ten minutes at a time.
About May 1st, an advance party of some 25 officers and men left
the regiment, so we knew we were soon to follow. Lts. Schuyler and
Merrill were in this party. They attended the A. E. F. Schools at
Chatillon-sur-Seine, and rejoined us about July 1st.
At last the company was filled up to war strength, and equipped
down to the last shoe lace. On Friday, May 17th, all visitors were
excluded from camp. That evening I assembled the company and
put the proposition up to every man in it whether he wanted to go to
France or not, offering to leave anyone behind who wished to
remain. I am proud to say that not a man applied to be left.
Saturday was a hectic day of last preparations. The barracks were
stripped down to their last mattress and swept out. The typewriters
clicked busily until the last minute. Tom Viracola, one of our best
sergeants, who had been tripped on a slight disability by the medicos
at the last minute and was nearly heartbroken, was to be left in
charge of barracks.
About nine o’clock the company was formed for the last time at its
old home. Packs were heavy with the regulation equipment, tobacco,
and gifts from home. As I was signing some last papers under the
arc light, “C” company moved out silently. I gave “Squads left,
march,” the company wheeled out and we were off for the station.
The road was lined with soldiers from the Depot Brigade as we
passed. Here and there we saw a familiar face, and though the
movement was to be kept as quiet as possible, there was many a
husky “so long, fellows” and “good-bye, 311, good luck,” to cheer us
on our way.
Packs were heavier every step, and what with the extra rations,
typewriter, etc., we were glad to have a half hour’s rest at the station.
Then the word came to fall in again—how many times were we to
hear those weary words, “Fall in”—and the company filed along to
the day coaches awaiting them. Equipment was removed, and all
made themselves as comfortable as they could for the night.
Early in the morning the train pulled out. As dawn broke, we made
out the names of some of the New Jersey towns we passed through.
Many a lad saw his home town for the last time as we rolled through
it in the chill of that May morning.
At Jersey City we detrained and passed through the station to the
ferry. Several civilians asked us where we were going; but the men
realized the importance of secrecy, and all the curious ones got was
a gruff invitation to “put on a uniform and find out.”
Then we were jammed on a ferry boat. It was some jam, too, leaving
those who hadn’t been trained on the subway gasping.
Down to the street, on between the great warehouses, and into a
spacious covered pier. Here was the point of embarkation, where we
had been told every service record was examined, every man
inspected; the focus of all the red tape that had been driving us
insane for the past two months. To our very agreeable surprise,
however, the loading was handled by two or three business-like men
in civvies, who merely checked each company on the boat by the
passenger lists as fast as the men could hike up the gangplank.
We were met by Lt. Gibbs, battalion adjutant, who led us below,
pointed out three decks each about the size of our Camp Dix orderly
room, and announced that these were B Co.’s palatial quarters. I
gasped, and remarked that we were much obliged, but suppose
someone should want to turn around, where would he be, and
howinell was Geoghegan going to get in one of those little canvas
napkins they called hammocks, anyhow? He replied that I ought to
see “C” company’s place, and melted away in a fashion peculiar to
Bn. Adjts. when leaving Co. Cmdrs. S. O. L. A few moments later we
heard him consoling Capt. O’Brien on the deck above by telling him
that he ought to see “B” Co.’s place.
 CHAPTER III
THE CRUISE OF THE “NESTOR”
By the time the space and hammocks were assigned to platoons and
squads, the ship was under way. Orders were to keep below decks
until out of the harbor; and for many, their last look at America was a
glimpse of the harbor front through a port hole.
At this point Lt. Gibbs reappeared, with the cheerful order that life
preservers would be donned at once, and kept on for the rest of the
voyage. For the next ten days all waddled about feeling like motherly
hens. The apparatus I drew seemed particularly dirty, and most
unbecoming to my figure, which is built close to the ground anyway.
Breakfast had been nothing more than a cracker and bully beef,
snatched at odd moments. The good ship hadn’t started to roll much
yet, so all looked forward to dinner with a robust interest. Then it
evolved that this was an Australian transport, the “Nestor;” and as
such, sailed under the British flag; and hence and therefore, the next
meal would be tea at 5 o’clock. Eternity passed, and about half an
hour thereafter the steward came around, and in queer, clipped
cockney English introduced us to “dixies” and “flats.” Another half
hour, and the first messes to be served saw their hash-grabbing
detail returning, bearing through aisles of famished Yanks—bread
and cheese and tea! A planked steak would have been more to the
point, we felt, and a towering, raw-boned countryman in a corner,—
Lory Price, I imagine—opined dismally that we were being mistaken
for an orphan asylum. However, what there was aroused the boys
sufficiently to take a less morbid view of life, and as the officers
departed to the cabin, cards and books appeared, and the mystic
words were softly chanted: “Natural, bones”—“Read ’em and weep.”
But there was not what you might call a festive air to that first
evening; nor to many thereafter. Of course, for some fellows who