Historical Turns reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema-The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis-Nicholas Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about the philosophy of history. Reconstructing the debates over historicism that unfolded during the initial decades of moving-image culture, Historical Turns proposes a more reflexive mode of historiography and expands the field of film and media philosophy. The book excavates a rich archive of ideas that illuminate our own moment of rapid media transformation and political, economic, and environmental crises around the globe.

Nicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in Film & Media, Critical Theory, and Jewish Studies. He is coeditor of The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907-1933; Unwatchable; and Technics: Media in the Digital Age.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Historical Turns
2. Things as they could have happened: Siegfried Kracauer and the historical film
3. Relativist perspectivism: the cabinet of Dr. Caligari
4. Metaphysics of death: destiny
5. The nonsimultaneity of the simultaneous: rhythm 21
6. Natural history: the holy mountain
Epilogue. The Weimar analogy: metropolis and the global present

Notes
Bibliography
Index