Paris, Café de Versailles. Bruno Schulz meets Siegfried Kracauer.
Schulz was encouraged by Maria Chasin*, who placed Kracauer* in the “my friends” category on the list of her Paris contacts. The two men were almost the same age. Kracauer, three years older than Schulz, had studied architecture, but eventually became involved in sociology and mass culture criticism (Theodor W. Adorno considered him his mentor). He worked as an editor of the film and literary section of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and had a close working relationship with Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch. He arrived in Paris in 1933 after Adolf Hitler had come to power. He was already the author of several books in German. As a political émigré, he started all over again, with very good results. Describing Kracauer, Chasin wrote: “He is a German writer who is known also in Paris (he wrote a great book on Offenbach, published in Grasset). I would be very happy if you could make contact with him; it will probably be the easiest way for you. You can be ‘yourself’ around him”.
They have never seen each other before. That is why Kracauer announces: “I will have a green briefcase with me”. For reasons that are difficult to establish, he also suggests: “It would be advisable not to sit outside, but meet inside the cafe”. Did they manage to meet? Everything seems to suggest that. They spoke German so Schulz could easily “be himself”. Chasin navigated their conversation from a distance. Regarding Schulz, she already asked Kracauer “for a recommendation to Mrs. Adrienne Monnier”, who was the founder of the legendary bookstore La Maison des Amis des Livres and promoter of new literature in France. Thanks to it, the first French translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses was published. In the bookstore at rue d’Odeon 7 – similar to the friendly Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company on the same street – European and American writers met in the 1920s and 1930s. It is therefore possible that Schulz raised the topic and asked Kracauer for advice on how to enter his work into the circulation of French literature. In this way he followed the advice of Rachela Auerbach* from several days before that he should try to belong to the world as a writer. Apart from the postcard, no trace of this meeting was left. (sr) (transl. mw)
