characteristic for the locality is something else: namely, the aspect under which, viewed
from here, the production process appears. This production process weighs down like a
dark destiny upon the minds of men and women. Whereas in better off regions one
overlooks its natural course and strives to regulate it where not broken off, in these
storage spaces one speaks of it in a whispering tone and with a fatalism as if it is
misfortune. I was informed that, ‘For three or four weeks, although the level of
redundancies has reduced, new orders have not arrived.’ Or, ‘Young, strong people are
given greater attention than older ones.’ Or, ‘For workers on gold, who are not at all in
demand, unemployment often lasts for three years and longer, whereas for better placed
groups from six weeks to three months.’ Nothing but natural scientific statements,
without a word of criticism, which in this context would certainly not be appropriate.
This is how things are, and this is how they must be. The oppressive devotion to the
changing vicissitudes of market forces is plainly a typical characteristic of the
employment agencies. Here, behind the back of the all-powerful production process,
where one reprieves one’s life, the categories that have stamped this process as an
unchangeable natural state of affairs still shed a faint glimmer of their old bright glitter.
Here it is still an idol and there exists nothing superior to it.
In the employment agency, the concepts governing it ooze through all pores, and if
there is any place where they reign undisputed then it is in this space out of its narrow
sphere of power over the discharged workers. In the metal workers’ employment
exchange there is mounted a warning with the following content:
Unemployed! Protect and Preserve Common Property!
This warning is lacking for the textile workers who, on average, are of course less
powerfully built than, for instance, the locksmith. The furniture in the waiting room
consists of tables and benches, solid rectangular stuff that will bear some hard knocks.
Otherwise there falls under the rubric of common property only the wall plastering
which, by virtue of the permanent contact with the masses of unemployed, appears not to
be in good shape. It is to be assumed that, with the narrowly developed feeling for
language in Germany, the public warning is harmlessly intended and is in fact also
harmlessly paid attention to. But the words easily disengage themselves from the user
who does not understand how to use them and reveal: not what he thought of but rather
that which is so self-evident to him that he does not even have to consider it at all. And
indeed the placard preaches the sacredness of property with an unceremoniousness such
as only the sleepwalker possesses, he who does not concern himself with the provocative
effect which such a sermon at such a place achieves if all participants were awake. Of
course it states common property; yet for the unemployed, many of whom at present end
up as objects of public welfare, the common property too is not common enough in order
to forfeit its private character. To the point of superfluity they should still guard and
defend this property from whose regular enjoyment, and without being themselves to
blame, they are excluded. What is the whole expenditure of grandiose vocabulary for?
For a couple of miserable tables and benches that neither deserve the pretentious name of
common property, nor do they require preservation or even any special protection. Thus
society preserves and protects property; it fences it in, even there where its defence is not
at all necessary, with linguistic trenches and ramparts. It probably does it unintentionally,
and perhaps one of those affected hardly notices that it does it. But that is precisely the
Siegfried Kracauer 59