report no.: 203
informant: AA
source: Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses
date: 1929

The mystery of die neue Sachlichkeit could not be more conclusively exposed than here [at the Hotel Adlon]. From behind the pseudo-austerity of the lobby architecture, Grinzing [a Viennese suburb associated with schmaltzy music and romantic nights out] grins out. Just one step down and you are lapped in the most luxuriant sentimentality. But this is what characterises die neue Sachlichkeit in general, that it is a façade concealing nothing; that it does not derive from profundity but simulates it. Like denial of old age, it arises from dread of confronting death.