Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist The Post-War Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika Edward Timms

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.

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 has a special interest in Austrian Jewish cultural history and is best known for volume one of Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist, Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (ISBN 030004483 6, paperback). In 2002 he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for History of the Social Sciences.

'Timms has completed his magnum opus... In delineating Kraus's world with such masterly care, he has illuminated a whole society - the lost culture of Central Europe in general, and its centre of excellence, Vienna.' - Nigel Jones, The Literary Review

'...a considerable achievement... His command of his subject's subtle and allusive prose is impressive.' - Joe Bord, The Jewish Chronicle

'For years, Kraus's work gathered dust, and he is all but unknown in America. Very little of his work has been translated into English because of the complexity of his rich German prose. But he is undergoing something of a renaissance, thanks in no small part to Timms...' - Jack Willoughby, Barron's