Karl Kraus

An Excerpt from Last Days of Mankind from Act V, Scene 54
Translated by Max Spalter

Introductory segment from George E. Wellwarth, German Drama Between the Wars (New York: Dutton & Co., 1972) Pp. xv-xvii

Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind: a Tragedy in Five Acts (1922)




This excerpt from the 1974 abridgement tr. Alexander Gode and Sue Allen Wright pp 697-724

Kraus was born in Bohemia in 1874. In Vienna studied law, but abandoned it for acting and then to philosophy and German literature. In 1896 he left university without a diploma to begin work as an actor, stage-director and performer, but in 1897 he broke with theatre culture summing up his revulsion in his essay "The Demolishing of Literature." Strongly opposed to Zionism wrote "A Crown for Zion" in which he answered all of the arguments then being presented by Herzl against Jewish assimilation in Austria. In 1899 he renounced Judaism and began his own newspaper which he used to lead the attack on Zionism, psychoanalysis, militarism, war profiteering, money power, pan-Germanism and laissez-faire. In return for his efforts he was the subject of endless lawsuits and attempts by others to gain control of the publication. In 1911 he was baptized as a Catholic, but in 1923, disillusioned over the Church's support for the war, he left the Catholic Church, claiming sarcastically that he was motivated "primarily by antisemitism." Kraus wrote against World War One, and editions of his paper were repeatedly confiscated or obstructed by censors.

Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind)

in 1934 he supported Engelbert Dollfuss' coup d'état that established Austrian fascist regime.

Kraus was the subject of two books written by noted libertarian author Dr. Thomas Szasz. Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors and Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry portrayed Kraus as a harsh critic of Sigmund Freud.

Kraus accused people — and most of all journalists and authors — of using language as a means that they believed to command rather than serving it as an end. To Kraus, language is not a means to distribute ready-made opinions, but rather the medium of thought itself. As such, it is in need of critical reflection. Therefore, dejournalising his readers was an important concern of Kraus in "a time that is thoroughly journalised, that is informed by the spirit but is deaf to the unity of form and contents". He wanted to educate his readers to an "understanding of the cause of the German language, to that height at which the written word is understood as a necessary incarnation of the thought, and not simply a shell demanded by society around an opinion."

Read by ol' Dick Eastman

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[finefilth]

great post Dick!