Anti-Journalist - Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-De-Siecle Europe

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's spectacularly hostile critiques often focused on his fellow Jewish journalists, which brought him a reputation as the quintessential self-hating Jew. The Anti-Journalist overturns this view with unprecedented force and sophistication, showing how Kraus's criticisms form the center of a radical model of German-Jewish self-fashioning, and how that model developed in concert with Kraus's modernist journalistic style.
Paul Reitter's study of Kraus's writings situates them in the context of fin-de-siècle German-Jewish intellectual society. He argues that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Kraus's 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-Reitter explains their admiration for Kraus's project and demonstrates his influence on their own notions of cultural authenticity. The Anti-Journalist is at once a new interpretation of a fascinating modernist oeuvre and a heady exploration of an important stage in the history of German-Jewish thinking about identity.

About the author

Paul Reitter is professor of Germanic languages and literatures at the Ohio State University. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe.

Product details

• Authors: Paul Reitter, Reitter Paul
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9780226754574
• ISBN: 978-0-226-75457-4
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Studies in German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature, Fr; Studies in German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature, Franz Rosenzweig; Studies in German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature, Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Judaism; NON-CLASSIFIABLE, Stationery and miscellaneous items, Miscellaneous items