The Shadow of Resistance. W.G. Sebald and the Frankfurt School

Sebald’s views on history and art were determined early on by his engagement with the leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School, namely Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. From his earliest postgraduate research in the 1960s to his latest prose fiction in 2001, Sebald’s work bears signs of their influence at every level. This article traces this influence in three main phases. Initially, it establishes the main tenets underpinning Sebald’s interest in their thought. This interest is then followed through his books on Sternheim and Döblin, in order to establish the extent of the impact of the Frankfurt School on his formative years. After this reconstruction of the methodology in his early critical work, the article then assesses the consequences of Sebald’s interest in the Frankfurt School for his later prose fiction, highlighting in particular his dialectical syntax, his critique of the Enlightenment idea of progress, and his taste for certain kinds of modernist artists.