The focus of the first volume of Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist was on the cataclysmic final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This book takes up the 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 a heroically isolated figure, this book places him within a dynamic field of cultural production, highlighting the court cases he pursued with his lawyer Oskar Samek and the theatrical projects that earned him the friendship of Brecht. The legend that the satirist responded to Hitler's seizure of power with stunned silence is refuted in the final section of the book 'Into the Third Reich', highlighting his analysis of 'creeping fascism' and of the swastika as the 'twisted cross' of politicised religiosity. His career culminated in Third Walpurgis Night, an analysis of Nazi ideology that has proved enduringly influential.
Timms argues 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.
- ISBN10 030010751X
- ISBN13 9780300107517
- Publish Date 1 September 2005
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 27 June 2013
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 384
- Language English