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The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe

Online ISBN:
9780226709727
Print ISBN:
9780226709703
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe

Published:
1 February 2008
Online ISBN:
9780226709727
Print ISBN:
9780226709703
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

In turn-of-the-century Vienna, Karl Kraus created a bold new style of media criticism, penning incisive satires that elicited both admiration and outrage. Kraus' spectacularly hostile critiques often focused on his fellow Jewish journalists, which brought him a reputation as the quintessential self-hating Jew. This book overturns this view with unprecedented force and sophistication, showing how Kraus' criticisms form the center of a radical model of German-Jewish self-fashioning, and how that model developed in concert with Kraus' modernist journalistic style. It situates Kraus' writings in the context of fin-de-siècle German-Jewish intellectual society. The author argues that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Kraus' attacks constituted an innovative critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation. Marshalling three of the most daring German-Jewish authors—Kafka, Scholem, and Benjamin—he explains their admiration for Kraus' project and demonstrates his influence on their own notions of cultural authenticity.

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