The Anti-journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-fashioning in Fin-de-siecle Europe Book

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. Krausâ??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 Krausâ??s criticisms form the center of a radical model of German-Jewish self-fashioning, and how that model developed in concert with Krausâ??s modernist journalistic style.Paul Reitterâ??s study of Krausâ??s writings situates them in the context of fin-de-siècle German-Jewish intellectual society. He argues that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Krausâ??s attacks constituted an innovative critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation. Marshalling three of the most daring German-Jewish authorsâ??Kafka, Scholem, and Benjaminâ??Reitter explains their admiration for Krausâ??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. (20070905)Read More