Karl Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind

This analysis has a prophetic ring. On 30 July 2014, at the height of the Israeli-Gaza conflict, the Jabaliya School for Girls was hit by shells that killed refugees sheltering inside. The justification offered by the Israeli Defence Force was that militants had fired mortars earlier that day “from the vicinity of the school.” 6Clearly, the issues raised by The Last Days of Mankind are with us still. Since Kraus’s day there has been an exponential increase in the bombing of urban areas and the casuistry used to justify it. The truth identified by the phrase “murder from the air” is now shrouded in euphemisms like “collateral damage.” But even Kraus never imagined a global conflict in which democratically elected governments would intentionally bomb civilian targets like Dresden and Nagasaki, incinerating hundreds of thousands of defenceless people. British politicians of the Second World War spoke of “obliteration bombing” as they set about the task of destroying Germany “city by city”, a policy condemned by one of Winston Churchill’s most principled critics, Bishop George Bell. 7

In defending the cause of humanity, Kraus was repudiating nationalistic loyalties and aligning himself with the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment. The overwhelming majority of his countrymen, not least the German-speaking Jews, identified themselves with the Habsburg Monarchy and the German Reich. Leading authors like Richard Dehmel and Hugo von Hofmannsthal eloquently endorsed the German and Austrian cause, but Kraus took a very different line. If patriotism meant supporting the use of poison gas, and if it was treason to repudiate victories gained by this means, then he declared himself to be “one of the greatest traitors of all times” (F 474–83, 43). As his opposition to the war became increasingly vocal, Kraus was denounced as “the leader of defeatism in Austria” (F 501–7, 91).

During one of his wartime public readings in Berlin, Kraus contrasted the fanaticism of Kaiser Wilhelm II with the idealism of Immanuel Kant (F 474–83, 155–56). While German nationalists associated the Categorical Imperative with patriotic duty, the satirist endorsed the programme of international reconciliation set out in Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace.” Kant recognized the importance of creating new international institutions. In “Perpetual Peace” he associated war with the state of nature “where no court of justice is available to judge with legal authority.” After arguing for a republican constitution guaranteeing equality for all citizens, he suggested that peace could be secured by “a pacific federation.” 8Implicit in these arguments are the concepts of a League of Nations (with the power to regulate disputes) and an International Court of Justice (to punish breaches of the peace). For over a century after Kant’s death such ideas remained utopian, but in 1918, in the new climate created by President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, it was finally possible to put these proposals into practice. For Kraus, there was hope for humanity, after all. He greeted Wilson’s “immortal deed”, the liberation of Europe from military tyranny, as the fulfilment of Kant’s “immortal idea” (F 501–7, 113).

Journalistic Spin and Humanistic Education

Even after the trauma of defeat, the German nationalist press was unwilling to acknowledge that militarism was discredited. European politics of the interwar period were dominated by the ideological struggle between conflicting myths of the First World War, designed not simply to recall the past but to shape the future. The pacifist movement interpreted the conflict as “the war to end wars”, while reactionaries cultivated myths of military prowess as the inspiration for a conservative revolution. They remembered the war as they wished it to have been (and as they intended it to be next time round): as a triumph for German military power.

Kraus repeatedly denounced the chauvinistic postwar mentality that threatened to produce further wars. As early as January 1921 he prophetically identified Germany as the country “where the swastika rises above the ruins of the global conflagration” (F 557–60, 59). Against this, he defended the independence of the Austrian Republic. Responding in May 1926 to the agitation in favour of “Anschluss” (German annexation), Kraus argued that the hypnotic power of newsprint was creating a “counterfeit reality” in which “nothing is real except for lies.” Newspapers in Berlin and Vienna, by appealing to racist conceptions of “Volkstum”, were generating a circular discourse that had no basis in any actual political event. To fill the vacuum, the press was recycling slogans deriving from “the latest beer-hall conversations of the two realms.” By confusing political identity with biological homogeneity, the media created a frame of reference that was essentially fictitious. But this gigantic apparatus had the capacity to turn “non-events” into “action and death” (F 726–29, 59–61).

In his campaign against mystification Kraus found a kindred spirit in Bertrand Russell, an outspoken critic of British militarism. In July 1931 he quoted in Die Fackel a passage from Russell’s Sceptical Essays about the need for teachers to encourage critical thinking:

For example, the art of reading the newspapers should be taught. The schoolmaster should select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused political passions in its day. He should then read to the schoolchildren what was said by the newspapers on the one side, and what was said by those on the other, and some impartial account of what really happened. He should show how, from the biased account of either side, a practised reader could infer what really happened, and he should make them understand that everything in the newspapers is more or less untrue . (quoted F 857–63, 71–72)

To counteract these tendencies Kraus transformed political memory into performative art. He excelled at mocking the chauvinists from the public stage, especially by reading scenes from The Last Days of Mankind . Only the Epilogue was staged during his lifetime, but the message of the play was conveyed in condensed form through antiwar poems such as “The Ravens” (from Act V, scene 55) and “The Dying Soldier” (from the Epilogue), which Kraus recited in public on numerous occasions. Another excerpt repeatedly featured in his programmes showed how false memories are constructed. A staff officer on the telephone is dictating a press release about the Austrian fortress of Przemysl, which has been captured by the Russians. The loss of the fortress, the pride of the Austro-Hungarian army, is now to be played down as insignificant. When this is queried by the journalist at the other end of the line, the Staff Officer replies: “My dear fellow, you can make people forget anything!” The corresponding scene in the following Act takes place after the recapture of Przemysl. This time the press release reverses the argument, reaffirming the fortress’s strategic importance. When this blatant deception is queried, the Staff Officer’s rejoinder shows the same contempt for the public: “You can make people forget anything!” (Act II, scene 16, and Act III, scene 22). In these ludicrous scenes the Staff Officer may appear to be a character from an operetta, but his technique of rewriting history anticipates that of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four .

Kraus excelled in analyses of specific journalistic devices, some of which retain their exemplary character long after the occasion faded into history. In a further example dating from January 1921 he analysed the dangers of journalistic “spin.” In German this idea was commonly applied to devious arguments thought to be derived from Rabbinic Judaism—“der jüdische Dreh.” Kraus turned the tables by using the title “Ein christlicher Dreh” (“Christian Spin”) to introduce his analysis of the coverage of a debate at the League of Nations by the Catholic Reichspost . A report in this right-wing daily had attributed Austria’s enhanced international reputation to the electoral victory of the Christian Social Party. Citing the full text of the debate, Kraus exposed this tendentious report as a “disgraceful forgery” (F 557–60, 63–72).