The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 30 April 2026, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium

Till van Rahden (Université de Montréal)
»Rag-Picking: Siegfried Kracauer and the Redemption of Historical Reality«

Abstract
Siegfried Kracauer’s study »History: The Last Things Before the Last«, published posthumously in 1969, is his legacy to the humanities. This paper attempts to read Kracauer’s opus magnum against the background of a long tradition of controversies over the nature of reality, the meaning of history, and the concept of history since the Enlightenment. Especially scholars of modern history might benefit from Kracauer’s whimsical and unheroic theory of history. His reflections help us to rediscover an age that has been buried under a lexicon of abstract concepts and weighty works of masterly synthesis that intimidate rather than arouse curiosity. Skeptical of the ultimate truths of the philosophy of history and the scientific claims to objectivity of the social sciences, Kracauer’s theory of history encourages historians to gently prick their ears, to look ever so carefully and to discover the historical reality found, like God in the details. By avoiding definitive answers, and overconfident analytical precision, Kracauer urges us to explore contradictions and paradoxes, ambivalences and the interstices of history. This, as this paper argues, requires a disposition to go astray, a readiness to explore overgrown trails and back-alleys where historians can dirty their hands, where ideas become fuzzy and grand theories are rendered questionable.

The speaker
Till van Rahden teaches modern history at the Université de Montréal. From 2006 to 2016 he held the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies at the Université de Montréal. He specializes in European history since the Enlightenment and is interested in the tension between the elusive promise of democratic equality and the recurrent presence of differences and moral conflicts. Recent publications include Demokratie: Eine gefährdete Lebensform (Campus, 2019) and Vielheit: Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus (Hamburger Edition, 2022). This term, he is a Mercator Fellow of the Research Training Group »Aesthetics of Democracy«.

Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de