The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226754574)

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.

Author: Paul Reitter
ISBN-10: 022675457X
ISBN-13: 9780226754574
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 11/09/2020
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.61d