The politics of translation in the press Siegfried Kracauer and cultural mediation in the periodicals of the Weimar Republic

Translations and translation reviews played a major part in furthering the political program of leftwing periodicals in Weimar Germany. However, this remains a relative blind spot in media studies of the period. By exploring the use of translations and their review for political ends in three major Weimar cultural periodicals and undertaking a specific examination of Siegfried Kracauer's translation reviews, this article illustrates the ways in which both translations and their reviews were employed, directly and indirectly, as instruments of political polemic and ideological mediation.