Karl Kraus Commemorative Plaque

Life and Work

Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936)

Kraus was the ninth child of a family of Jewish origin from Bohemia. Early on, he was part of the Viennese coffee house writers and quickly became famous, but also infamous because of his first satire, The Demolished Literature (Die demolierte Literatur, 1897). As editor of the culturally critical magazine The Torch (Die Fackel, founded in 1899), Kraus attacked the great and powerful of his time: stock market speculators, bankers, press czars and even the Police President Johann Schober, one of the main persons responsible for the massacre when the Palace of Justice was on fire in July 1927.

His public readings from his own works as well as from Shakespeare to Nestroy, were major literary and cultural events, with often more than 1,000 visitors.

Along with Schnitzler and Bertha von Suttner, Kraus was one of the few famous voices against the war, and wrote against it in his main work The Last Days of Mankind (Die letzten Tage der Menschheit). This drama became famous for another reason as well: Helmut Qualtinger's speech records, which were recently re-recorded  by Erwin Steinhauer.

Reference to Ischl

Karl Kraus's first known stay in Bad Ischl dates back to 1892, after he graduated from high school. The following year, the young poet dared to cause a sensation by reading Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers (Die Weber) at the Kurhaus in Ischl. Hauptmann’s drama was initially even banned because of its time-critical approaches.

Starting in 1894, Kraus worked as a correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse newspaper, and wrote several reports on Ischl's summer life from Ischl. Despite their biting sarcasm, his letters from Ischl are apt and humorous and testify to Kraus’s attachment to Ischl (see quote).

The commemorative plaque was unveiled on 1 July 2014.

+1