With the generous support of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the
History and Theory of Biography, Vienna, the Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture
will be given this year by Dr Deborah Holmes of the University of Kent.
Dr Holmes’s subject is ‘War and Words. Krausian “Biographik” in The Last
Days of Mankind’: an abstract of her lecture is given below.
The lecture will be followed by a reception. All are welcome.
DATE: Friday 28 February
TIME: 5pm
VENUE: Main Lecture Theatre, Divinity School, St John’s College,
Cambridge
(The Divinity School is part of St John’s College, and the entrance is
off the lane immediately opposite the Main Gate of the College.)
Abstract:
In his monumental drama "Die letzten Tage der Menschheit", the Viennese
satirist Karl Kraus launched a savage attack on the causes and conduct
of the First World War as seen from the perspective of Austria-Hungary.
Over 800 pages long in its later versions (1922/28), it consists in
large part of quotations from newspaper articles, proclamations, legal
texts, war poems and songs, juxtaposed with snatches of conversation as
overheard in Vienna’s streets and coffeehouses. There is no plot as
such, rather a succession of dialogues created from this varied
intertext and sustained by an immense cast whose members are largely
based on historical figures.
The lecture will explore the relevance of Kraus’s mammoth project to the
biographies of the individuals he co-opted for his satire and vice
versa. In particular, the genesis of scenes from the first two acts
featuring Hofrat and Hofrätin Schwarz-Gelber will be examined. These
blackly comical characters – ruthless careerists intent on exploiting
the opportunities for social mobility created by the war – are claimed
to have been based on the real-life models of either Hermann and Eugenie
Schwarzwald or Rudolf and Erna Schwarz-Hiller, acculturated Jewish
couples who were respected representatives of liberal reform movements
in fin-de-siècle Vienna. In investigating their literary incarnation
here as paradigmatic types, I seek to shed light, not only on the nature
of Kraus’s satire but also on the modes of biographical writing to
emerge from German-language Modernism.
David Midgley
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David Midgley
Professor of German Literature and Intellectual History
St John's College
Cambridge CB2 1TP
Tel. 1223 338779
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