Kraus, Karl 1874-1936

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KRAUS, Karl 1874-1936

PERSONAL: Born April 28, 1874, in Jicin, Czechoslovakia; died June 12, 1936, in Vienna, Austria; son of Jakob and Ernestine (Kantor) Kraus. Education: Studied law at University of Vienna.

CAREER: Poet, playwright, and essayist.

WRITINGS:

Die demolirte Literatur, Bauer (Vienna, Austria), 1897.

Eine Krone für Zion, Frisch (Vienna, Austria), 1898.

Maximilian Harden: Eine Erledigung, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1907.

Maximilian Harden: Ein Nachruf, Rosner (Vienna, Austria), 1908.

Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität, Rosner (Vienna, Austria), 1908.

Sprüche und Widersprüche, Langen (Munich, Germany), 1910.

Heine und die Folgen, Langen (Munich, Germany), 1910.

Die chinesische Mauer, Langen (Munich, Germany), 1910, revised edition, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1930.

Nestroy und die Nachwelf: Zum fünfzigsten Todestage. Gesprochen im großen Musikvereinssaal in Wien, Jahoda & Siegel (Vienna, Austria), 1912.

Worte in Versen, Volumes 1-5, Schriften von Karl Kraus (Vienna, Austria), Volumes 6-9, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1916-1930.

Die letzte Nacht: Epilog zu der Tragödie die letzten Tage der Menschheit (play; first produced in Vienna, Austria, 1923), Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1918.

Nachts, Schriften von Karl Kraus (Leipzig, Germany), 1918.

Die letzten Tage der Menschheit: Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Vorspiel und Epilog (play), three volumes, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1918-1919, excerpts translated by Alexander Gode and Sue Ellen Wright as The Last Days of Mankind, edited by Frederick Ungar, Ungar (New York, NY), 1974.

Peter Altenberg, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1919.

Die Ballada vom Papagei: Couplet Macabre, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1919.

Weltgericht, two volumes, Schriften von Karl Kraus (Munich, Germany), 1919.

Ausgewählte Gedichte (selected poems), Schriften von Karl Kraus (Munich, Germany), 1920, Oprecht (New York, NY), 1939.

Literatur; oder, Man wird doch da sein Magische: Operette in zwei Teilen, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1921.

Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1922.

Traumstück (play; first produced in Berlin, Germany, 1924), Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1923.

Wolkenkuckucksheim, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1923.

Traumtheater (play), first produced in Berlin, Germany, 1924.

Epigramme, compiled by Viktor Stadler, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1927.

Offenbach-Renaissance, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1927.

Die Unüberwindlichen: Nachkriegsdrama in vier Akten (play; first produced in Dresden, Germany, 1929), Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1928.

Literature und Lüge, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1929.

Nächtliche Stunde, music by Eugen Auerbach, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1929.

Zeitstrophen, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1931.

Adolf Loos rede am Grab, 25 August, 1933, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1933.

Die Sprache, edited by Philipp Berger, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1937.

Die dritte Walpurgisnacht, Kösel (Munich, Germany), 1952.

Werke (collected works), edited by Heinrich Fischer, Volumes 1-10, Kösel (Munich, Germany), 1952-1962, Volumes 11-14, Langen Müller (Munich, Germany), 1963-1967.

Briefe an Sidonie Nadherny von Borutin, 1913-1936 (correspondence), two volumes, edited by Heinrich Fischer and Friedrich Pfäfflin, Kösel (Munich, Germany), 1974.

Frühe Schriften, 1892-1900, two volumes, edited by Johannes J. Braakenburg, Kösel (Munich, Germany), 1979.

Schriften, thirteen volumes, edited by Christian Wagenknecht, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1986.

EDITIONS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Poems, edited and translated by Albert Bloch, Four Seas (Boston, MA), 1930.

In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader, edited by Harry Zohn, Engendra Press (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1976, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1990.

Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths: Selected Aphorisms, edited and translated by Harry Zohn, Engendra Press (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1976, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1990.

No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus, edited by Frederick Ungar, Ungar (New York, NY), 1977.

OTHER

(Adapter) Johann Nestroy, Das Notwendige und das Überflüßige, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1920.

(Adapter) Johann Nestroy, Der konfuse Zauberer; oder, Treue un Flatterhaftigkeit, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1925.

(Adapter) Jacques Offenbach, Madam l'Archiduc, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1927.

(Adapter) William Shakespeare, Timon von Athen, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1930.

(Translator and adapter) Jacques Offenbach, Perichole, Universal-Edition (Vienna, Austria), 1931.

(Editor) Peter Altenberg: Auswahl aus seinen Büchern Schroll (Vienna, Austria), 1932.

(Translator and adapter) Jacques Offenbach, Vert-Vert, Die Fackel (Vienna, Austria), 1932.

(Adapter) Shakespeares Dramen für Hörer und Leser bearbeitet, teilweise sprachlich erneuert, Lányi (Vienna, Austria), 1934.

Also editor of Die Fackel, 1899-1936.

SIDELIGHTS: Austrian poet, playwright, and essayist Karl Kraus was a satirist who bemoaned what he perceived to be the disintegration of Western society. He was also known for skewering journalists for their careless use of language; as a result, critics often ignored his poetic and dramatic works during his lifetime. In more recent years, however, Kraus has been admired by scholars who have appreciated his emphasis on the importance of language. As Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Harry Zohn quoted Erich Heller as saying, "Karl Kraus did not write 'in a language,' but through him the beauty, profundity, and accumulated moral experience of the German language assumed personal shape and became the crucial witness in the case this inspired prosecutor brought against his time."

The 1890s, the decade when Kraus's work first saw print, were a time of social and political upheaval in Austria. It was also a time of artistic fervor, when the children of the nouveau riche sought the bohemian lifestyle afforded to artists (funded by their parents), rather than pursuing political office or business concerns. This generation became another object of Kraus's ridicule. His dramas, styled after German cabarets of the late nineteenth century, were designed to jostle audiences out of their self-involvement and urge them to political action.

Like the bohemians he mocked, Kraus was the son of a wealthy businessman who funded his literary pursuits. Three years after he was born in Czechoslovakia, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. Although he claimed later that the busy streets made him anxious and he found the city intolerable, he remained there for the rest of his life. At his father's bidding, he studied law for six years at the University of Vienna, but he left without a degree to join the throngs of other struggling artists, composers, and writers at the Café Griensteidle coffee house. The café was a refuge from society, a sanctuary for intellectuals, rebels, and dilettantes alike. When the café burned to the ground one year, its patrons simply relocated to Café Central. Kraus mocked this establishment and all it represented; he had a love-hate relationship with the world and thrived on mutual animosity.

Throughout his life, Kraus also struggled with his religious beliefs. The son of an assimilated Jew, Kraus attacked Zionism and its leader, Theodor Herzl, in his early pamphlet Eine Krone für Zion ("A Crown for Zion," 1898), and in 1911 he abandoned Judaism all together. He was baptized and joined the Catholic church, only to publicly break with the church in 1922.

Kraus found a way to vent his frustrations with society when he established the journal Die Fackel ("the Torch") in 1899 with the financial help of his father. He published and edited it for the rest of his life; he also wrote most of its content because he did not want to have to pay for other writers' contributions. Within two weeks of its debut on April 1, 1899, Die Fackel had an impressive circulation of thirty thousand. By the time of his death in 1936, Kraus had completed thirty-seven volumes consisting of a total of thirty thousand pages of writing. The periodical published articles about issues concerning Vienna, and it also devoted considerable space to attacks on politicians, authors, artists, and other publications. A thorough researcher, Kraus read every other periodical he had access to before painstakingly writing and editing each of his issues. The result was a publication that was both loved and hated by its readers. In 1902 he began writing about the hypocrisy inherent in the contradictions between private and public morality; he criticized the administration of justice in Austria in his essay "Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität" ("Morality and Criminal Justice"), which he later published in book form in 1908.

In response to World War I, Kraus produced one of his most acclaimed works, the drama Die letzten Tage der Menschheit ("The Last Days of Mankind"). A mammoth work consisting of five acts, two hundred and nine scenes, and five hundred characters from all walks of life, the play was too big to produce in its entirety. Only the epilogue ever saw the stage, being produced in Vienna in 1923 and 1924, and in Berlin in 1930. The play concerns the horrors of World War I and humanity's impending doom. With its pacifist message and mixture of farcical and grim scenes, the play was described this way by a New Republic reviewer: "At first the individual scenes seem … pungent cabaret sketches, dealing often with satirical points now fairly familiar. But the work pours on with such … mordant anguish that the deficiencies fade in the glare of a large Spenglerian fire." The critic added, "That is his last intrinsic gesture of disdain: civilization can't even perform this drama about its own incapacities."

After the war Kraus turned his wrath upon the expressionists. His Literatur; oder, Man wird doch da sein ("Literature; or, We'll See about That") satirizes the expressionist movement and Franz Werfel (a former disciple of Kraus's) in particular. Zohn said that "Kraus satirizes the effect that expressionist poets and playwrights, fashionable pseudophilosophical essayists, psychoanalysts, and other 'redeemers' have had on the impressionable masses." More criticism came with his last play, Die Unüberwindlichen ("The Unconquerables"), in which Kraus turns his sights on two of his favorite targets: the corrupt Hungarian press czar Imre Bekessy and Vienna's chief of police Johannes Schober. Although Kraus spared few people from his critical pen, there was one writer whom he admired greatly: William Shakespeare. He loved the bard's plays and poems and would recite them from memory at his Theater der Dichtung ("Theater of Poetry"), which he founded. His own lyrical poetry was published in the multi-volume collection Worte in Versen.

With the rise to power of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Kraus found something to become even more concerned about than the local corrupt politicians of Vienna. He was greatly alarmed by Germany's political pressures on Austria, and he decided to support the clerico-fascist regime of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the chancellor was assassinated in 1934, Kraus was devastated. He grew weary in body and spirit, and, four months after the last issue of Die Fackel was published, he died of heart failure on June 12, 1936. Fortunately for Kraus, he never lived to witness the German annexation of his country.