Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist, Volume 2: The Postwar Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika - Hardcover

Timms, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 030010751X ISBN 13: 9780300107517

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this second volume of Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist, Edward Timms takes up Kraus’s story in November 1918, when the satirist responded to the creation of the new republics with a defiant hope, invoking international law against the dual threat of reactionary politics and irresponsible media. While contemporaries like Walter Benjamin regarded Kraus as heroically isolated, this book places him within a dynamic field of cultural production. Timms highlights the court cases Kraus pursued with his lawyer Oskar Samek and the theatrical projects that earned him Brecht’s friendship.

In the final section of the book, the author refutes the legend that Kraus responded with stunned silence to Hitler’s seizure of power. His career culminated in Third Walpurgis Night, an analysis of Nazi ideology that has proved enduringly influential. Timms concludes that Kraus’s lifelong critique of the media, combining Orwell’s political radicalism with Joyce’s linguistic playfulness, incisively anticipates the propaganda techniques of our own age.

About this title

About the Author:

Edward Timms is Research Professor in History at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex, and a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is the author of Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna, published by Yale University Press.

From Library Journal:

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), flamboyant satirist of turn-of-the-century Viennese society and culture, is but slowly gaining recognition in the English-speaking world. A contemporary of Freud, Schnitzler, Wittgenstein, Canetti, Schonberg, and Kokoschka, Kraus was most influential as an editor, publisher, and writer of the polemic journal Die Fackel (1899-1936). Drawing both on published texts and unpublished materials, Timms presents a fascinating portrait of Kraus as a complex and paradoxical figure within the broad cultural context of his times. Timms's book is a significant contribution to the study of early 20th-century European culture as well as to Kraus scholarship and thus should appeal to generalist and specialist alike. Recommended. Ulrike S. Rettig, German Dept., Wellesley Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 030010751X
• ISBN 13: 9780300107517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448