Karl Kraus - The Last Days of Mankind

MESSAGERO, Der ( Il Messagero ), conservative Roman daily: 84.

MICHAELERPLATZ (Plan B3), square where patriotic music was played by military bands, adjacent to →Hofburg: 448.

MILLERAND, Alexandre (1869–1943), French minister of war (1914–15): 83.

MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, Baron Karl →Heinold von Udynski.

MINNA VON BARNHELM (1767), →Gotthold Lessing’s evergreen comedy, based on events at the end of the Seven Years War (1756–63). The good sense of the Saxon heiress Minna overcomes the stiff-necked pride of the impoverished Prussian officer Tellheim: 402.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Map F5), where Austrians annihilated a →Serb division (early September 1914): 539.

MITTAGSZEITUNG , midday issue of Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung (1905–21): 196.

“MITZI, MITZI, BE NICE TO YOUR FRITZI” (“Mizzerl, Mizzerl, sei doch netter”), waltz, music by Béla Laszky (1867–1935) and lyrics by Beda (Fritz Löhner, 1883–1942): 534.

MOB, military jargon for period of mobilisation: 226.

MOLENAAR, Heinrich (1870–1965), author of war poems and a pamphlet against smoking entitled Warum ist der Kampf gegen den Tabakgenuss eine nationale Pflicht? : 271.

MOLTKE, Count Helmuth von (1848–1916), nephew of his namesake, “the great Moltke”, resigned as chief of the German General Staff (14 September 1914), acting chief from January 1915: 284f.

MONTECUCCOLI, Count Rudolf (1843–1922), admiral, commander in chief of Austro-Hungarian navy (1904–13): 77f.

MONTE GABRIELE, mountain north of →Gorizia, scene of mass slaughter during sixth — ninth battles of →Isonzo: 549.

MONTENUOVO, Prince Alfred de (1854–1927), imperial chamberlain: 36ff, 121ff.

MONTE SAN MICHELE, south-west of →Gorizia, fiercely contested mountaintop during battles of →Isonzo: 335f.

MONTSCHI →Sternberg.

MORGEN, Der , liberal weekly, organ of “Reichsorganisation der Hausfrauen Österreichs” (Rorö): 211f.

MORSEY, Baron Franz von (1854–1926), chamberlain to →Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg Chotek: 38.

MOSER, Ferdinand (1867–1938), scene painter: 493.

“MOTHER-IN-LAW — MOTHER-IN-LAW — THAT WOULD BE THE FINAL STRAW” (“Wir brauchen — keine — Schwiegermamama”, 1888), march, music by Ernst Simon (1850–1916) and lyrics by Max Althans: 534.

MOULIN ROUGE, nightclub in Walfischgasse (Plan C4) behind →Opera: 173.

MÜLLER, Hans (1882–1950), author of patriotic plays ( Könige , Burgtheater, 1916) and articles, e.g., “Deutschland steht auf” (“Germany awakes”) in → Neue Freie Presse (25 August 1914); brought unsuccessful case for defamation against Kraus (1918): 93f, 135ff. 186, 254, 399, 507f, 592.

MÜLLER, Robert (1887–1924), journalist, →Serbian correspondent, and reporter for → Mittagszeitung in United States (1909–11). Articles on Roosevelt (1912–13) and Austrian Crown Prince (1914): 252.

MUNKACS, town and Habsburg fortress at south-west edge of →Carpathians: 389.

MUSKETE, Die , illustrated right-wing humorous weekly, popular with army officers: xii, xiv, 76, 109, 110, 197f, 483, 528.

“MY BROWN ISONZO LASSIE” (“Braunes Isonzomädel”), song, music by René Richard Schmal (b. 1897) and lyrics by Egon Schubert: 536.

“MY LITTLE POPPET, APPLE OF MY EYE” (“Puppchen, du mein Augenstern”), popular Viennese song (1912), music by Jean Gilbert (1879–1942) and lyrics by Alfred Schönfeld (1859–1916): 126, 372.

NAREW, lake, source of River Narew, tributary of the Vistula with line of Russian fortresses defending Congress Poland; →Rozan taken by German forces during summer offensive in 1915 (IV, 6): 327.

NÄSTELBERGER, Robert (1887–1942), operetta tenor and film actor: 490.

“NECHLEDIL MARCH”, from →Franz Lehár’s first operetta, Wiener Frauen (The Women of Vienna, 1902): 185.

NEGOTIATED PEACE, “All this talk of a negotiated peace was futile” (IV, 36). During 1917, after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, there were covert peace negotiations endorsed by the German Reichstag, international socialists, and Pope Benedict XV. On territorial issues such as control of Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and Poland the rival governments refused to compromise, and secret peace feelers put out by Austria to France after the accession of →Emperor Karl proved equally abortive (stimulating the febrile rumours dramatized in V, 17): 401f, 418, 458, 461f, 502, 511, 519.

NEITHER HIGH-HANDED NOR FAINTHEARTED, “Far removed from being either high-handed or fainthearted” (“Weit entfernt von Hochmut und von Schwäche”), leitmotif coined by → Neue Freie Presse at time of ultimatum to →Serbia: 52, 55, 165, 308, 367, 385.

NEPALLECK, Wilhelm Friedrich von (1862–1924), director of court protocol: 36ff, 121.

NEUE FREIE PRESSE , editorial office in Fichtegasse (Plan D4), liberal-leaning but pro-war daily, main target of Kraus’s satire: ix, xi, 29, 30, 31, 53, 57f, 59, 77ff, 86f, 91, 96ff, 125, 165, 168, 175ff, 210, 212, 220f, 222, 240f, 251, 256f, 288ff, 306, 343, 345, 350f, 355, 366, 368, 381, 399, 452, 468, 596.

NEVERMORE, in our translation of “The Ravens” (V, 55), may seem like an arbitrary echo of the celebrated poem by Edgar Allan Poe, but we know from comments in Die Fackel that Kraus admired Poe’s work and was familiar with the poem, whose refrain has a terrifying finality. When Kraus gave his last recital of “The Ravens”, recorded on film, the date was 1934 and a new black-shirted scourge of the battlefields had emerged in the shape of Himmler’s SS: 550.

NEW YORK WORLD , organ of the Democratic Party (from 1860): 285.

NIBELUNGS, mythical Germanic warriors whose exploits, supposedly linking the Rhine with the Danube in a →special relationship, are celebrated in the Nibelungenlied : 66, 107, 138, 174, 259, 591f.

NICHOLAS (Nicholas Nicholaïevitch Romanov, 1856–1929), Grand Duke, head of Russian army (August 1914), relieved of command (September 1915), appointed commander in chief, Army of the Caucasus: 58, 64, 362.

NICHOLAS II, →Tsar.

NIESE, Hansi (1875–1934), popular Viennese actress: 218f.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (1844–1900), German philosopher and “good European”, whose ideas were, on the one side, traduced ( The Will to Power [1906], selectively edited by his sister, seeming to advocate the value-free power politics he deplored), and on the other, demonized (decontextualized lurid metaphors such as the “blond beast” and the “superman” attributed to the arrogant Prussian soldier whom Nietzsche considered a contemptible automaton): 161, 292, 295, 400f.

NO ONE ESCAPES ME ( Mir kommt keiner aus —Wiener Kunst-Film, January 1917), comedy detective film, featuring →Hubert Marischka: 372.

NORDDEUTSCHE ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG , Berlin daily: 152.

NORTHCLIFFE, Viscount Alfred Charles William Harmsworth (1865–1922), founded Daily Mail (1896), acquired Times (1906), leading vehicles for anti-German agitation: 332, 596.

NOTHNAGEL, Hermann (1841–1905), professor of medicine, University of Vienna: 315.

NOYON, in northern France, occupied by Germans (September 1914–March 1917): 431.

NUREMBERG (Map D3), German city rumoured to have been targeted by French planes before declaration of war — a classic example of falsehood in wartime: 64, 345.

NYÁRI, Rudi (“the Gipsy count”), famous Roma musician (with brother violinist Joszi) and composer of Gipsy songs: 419.

OBERNDORFF, Count Alfred von (1870–1963), German ambassador to Bulgaria (1916–18): 343ff.

ODELGA, Anna (1863–1944), m. Baron Adolf Odelga (1851–1915), high official in Ministry of Defence (1884–1907): 235.