In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader

by Karl Kraus, Harry Zohn (Editor), Joseph Fabry (Translation)

Rear cover "No hypocrisy or lunacy of early twentieth-century Europe was safe from the biting satire of Karl Kraus. A contemporary of Freud, Musil, and Wittgenstein, Kraus was one of the most influential figures of his day. From 1899 to 1936, his acerbic and fiercely independent journal, Die Fackel (The Torch), exposed the foolishness and sentimentality of the age."

Genres: Essays, Literature, Nonfiction, Modern Classics, German Literature, Poetry, Philosophy

286 pages, Paperback

First published November 19, 1914

About the author

Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is considered the first major European satirist since Jonathan Swift. He directed his satire to the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably a 3.5. Perhaps a different translation would appeal more to me.

The collection includes about a twenty newspaper pieces, two dozen poems, and selections from the play The Last Days of Mankind.

Kause is acid. Many of his pieces could be printed as current writing, especially those on the press creating news. There is a devastating piece on 'protective custody' written in 1933. The play follows WWI from the shooting of the archduke to the last gasp of starving armies and still-thriving profiteers. The scenes wander through every corner of Austrian society, from the common soldier to Franz-Joseph himself. Hypocrisy everywhere, unethical false reporters, wealthy draft dodgers, propaganda-wielding schoolmasters. Woven throughout is The Grumbler, a stand in for Krause.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of Protective Custody

"Sometimes one day is said to be enough. These people obviously cannot testify to this themselves - for one this because they are not allowed to, and for another because the spiritual transformation which often occurs at a stroke not infrequently results in unconsciousness or atleast an impaired memory, and because astonishment at unaccustomed things may result in speech disorders."

"Consequently, since Dachau, Durgoy and Sonneburg not only equal boarding schools but practically reach the level of sanatoriums (though what is striven for is more a mens sana) an order has been given to fix an appropriate charge for the benefits which the state confers upon its charges via such institutions, the costs of which would otherwise be a burden on the community.

Stuttgart, 23 June. Competent authorities have announced that hose in protective custody are jointly responsible for the cost of this custody. This means that every individual in protective custody is responsible for the total costs of protective custody. If this custody is utilized, the state has the right of recourse to the other inmates by way of an assessment. Hence a number of wealthy persons in protective custody have been billed the amount of approximately 100,000 marks to defray the costs of protective custody.

If a wealthy prisoner who is entitled to be in first class - refuses to sign a check he is threatened with third class; but usually one interrogation is enough to make him sign.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Zohn is an excellent translator who selects key essays of Kraus and captures their essence with a minimum of necessary footnotes to explain recondite references in the texts. He also provides the German original of Kraus's poetry that he translates. Kraus not enough known among the general English-language literate public, but he expresses the emergent contradictions of the age in which he lived, which have flowered fully and are now rotting in our own age. Perhaps his best-known aphorism, which is rarely if ever attributed to him, is that psychoanalysis is a symptom of that malady for which it believes itself to be the cure. The book includes selections from his unplayable play, "The Last Days of Mankind". His excoriation of journalists and editors in the title essay has lost none of its pertinence. This book is a treasure trove of exploding diamonds-in-the-rough, in a polished translation, that illuminate our present like the light of distant galaxies that astonish us by showing where we came from.

[Paulo Teixeira · Rating 4 out of 5]

(PT) Ao longo de vinte anos, Karl Kraus escreveu diversas sátiras onde demoliu praticamente toda a sociedade do seu tempo, revelando desde a hipócrita dos costumes até à denuncia da guerra como algo "patriótico", quer antes, durante, e mesmo depois da guerra, principalmente na rubrica "Viagens ao Inferno", onde um jornal suíço decide fazer um "tour" aos campos de batalha de Verdun... por 117 francos suíços!

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me the heart of this anthology is the abridged adaptation of his play The Last Days of Mankind—superb. The poems preserve the German originals rhyme and rhythm which means there is syntactic inversion, etc., but they’re still interesting. The essays for which he is mostly known are less interesting to me—though “Protective Custody” is first-rate and makes clear that within a few months of Hitler assuming power in 1933, it was completely clear how horrifying he was and any claims by other nations of “We didn’t know” are lies.