The Silent Satirist — Karl Kraus and the Corporate State

The First Austrian Republic survived for just under twenty mostly miserable years. Beset by the financial, civic, and ethnic tensions ensuing from the collapse not just of the Habsburg Empire, but of the entire continental European polity in 1918, the republic inevitably presented some rich pickings for the greatest satirist of this era. Just as in imperial times, during the 1920s Kraus campaigned relentlessly and effectively against the frailties of literati and politicians, and the veniality of the press. Particularly memorable were the sustained onslaughts on the corrupt Hungarian newspaper magnate Imre Békessy and on the Vienna chief of police (and later Federal Chancellor) Johann Schober. After a campaign with the catchphrase “Hinaus aus Wien mit dem Schuft” (Get the crook out of Vienna!), Kraus succeeded in forcing Békessy to flee from Vienna in 1926. Kraus was so incensed by Schober's role in policing the violent aftermath to the burning of the Justizpalast on 15 July 1927 that, alongside articles in Die Fackel of a ferocity notable even by Kraus's standards, he also plastered Vienna with posters attacking the man he held personally responsible for the death of eighty-four protesters. In his last play Die Unüberwindlichen (The Unconquerable, 1928), Kraus memorialized his feud with both these foes.

Kraus's relish for a bare-knuckle fight with Viennese veniality could never be questioned. However, when faced with world events that transcended the environment he knew best, the immediate response of the normally voluble satirist was often to fall silent.