The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe

271 Pages·2008·1.26 MB·English

by  Paul Reitter

The Anti-Journalist

The Anti-Journalist
karl kraus and jewish self-fashioning
in fin-de-siècle europe
Paul Reitter
The University of Chicago Press chicago & london
paul reitter is associate professor in the Department
of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Ohio State
University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70970-3 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-70970-1 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reitter, Paul.
The anti-journalist : Karl Kraus and Jewish self-fashioning in
fi n-de-siècle Europe / Paul Reitter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-70970-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-70970-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Kraus, Karl, 1874–1936—Political and social views. 2. Jews—
Identity—Europe—History—19th century. 3. Antisemitism in the
press— Europe—History—19th century. 4. German literature—
Jewish authors—History and criticism. 5. Jewish press— Europe—
History—19th century. 6. Jewish journalists— Europe—History—
19th century. I. Title.
pt2621 .r27z765 2008
838'.91209—dc22
2007020594
(cid:2)(cid:2) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
c o n t e n t s
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations xi
A Note on Editions xiii
A Note on Translations xv
Introduction • All That Is Solid Melts into Ink 1
1 • German Jews and the Writing of Modern Life 31
2 • Karl Kraus and the Jewish Self-Hatred Question 69
3 • Mirror-Man 107
4 • Messianic Journalism? Benjamin and Scholem Read Die Fackel 137
Conclusion • The Afterlife of Anti-Journalism 175
Notes 183
Bibliography 241
Index 249

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
At the risk of driving away readers with my fi rst sentence, let me be candid,
right up front, about the provenance of this book: The Anti-Journalist be-
gan as a dissertation. It had, as such, a committee. And I remain grateful
to the members of its committee—Robert Holub, Hinrich Seeba, and Ju-
dith Butler—for their generous encouragement and challenging feedback,
and for interweaving those two things so beautifully. I am also grateful to
them for continuing to play a role in shaping the project after signing off on
the Ph.D. thesis version of it. Bob Holub’s role was particularly important.
Throughout the years, he has been a wonderfully supportive mentor.
As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, my work profi ted from the input of
many excellent scholars. Some were in my home department, the German
department: Anton Kaes, Bluma Goldstein. Some were not: Martin Jay,
Hans Sluga. Still, the German department deserves special thanks. With
Bob Holub and then W. Dan Wilson as its chairperson, the department
provided me with a series of fellowships and more support for research trips
and conference travel than I requested. It was, after all, the late 1990s.
At the same time, the core research for my dissertation could not have
been done without a residential fellowship from the German National Lit-
erature Archive in Marbach am Neckar. There I had the good fortune to
have as my institutional “host” Friedrich Pf äffl in, a leading expert on my
subject, Karl Kraus; and in conversation with Dr. Pf äffl in I learned a great
deal about our mutual interests. Happily, this experience would become
part of a pattern. The community of established Kraus scholars proved to
viii Acknowledgments
be genuinely welcoming. And I am duly grateful to it for that. I especially
want to thank Gilbert Carr and Edward Timms for inviting me to their 1999
conference on the reception of Kraus’s work, and for their valuable com-
mentary on the talk I gave.
Ohio State University, where I have spent the past six years, magnani-
mously supported my research, both with sabbatical quarters for writing
and with funding for trips to archives in Vienna and Jerusalem. Further-
more, Ohio State colleagues in an array of disciplines read parts of the book
and gave me useful feedback. They are, in no particular order, Robin Judd,
Nina Berman, Brian Rotman, Jenny Siegal, and Steve Kern. Galey Modan,
Matt Goldish, and Gregor Hens off ered wise thoughts on the process of
book writing. Galey and Gregor also helped by being good friends, as did
Robin and Nina.
A number of colleagues and colleague-friends from around the fi elds of
German and Jewish studies commented on The Anti-Journalist in ways
that mattered: Willi Goetschel, Noah Isenberg, Michael Stanislawski, Amir
Eshel, Peter Gordon, David Brenner, Helmut Walser Smith, David Myers,
Scott Spector, Michael Rohrwasser, Liliane Weissberg, Richard Levy, An-
son Rabinbach, Michael Brenner, Ulrich Baer, Daniel Boyarin, Christoph
König, Steven Beller, Ritchie Robertson, Azade Seyhar, and Wilhelm Voss-
kamp. It is an honor to be able to say that Paul Mendes-Flohr, a shaping force
in German-Jewish studies, was steadfast in his support and encouragement.
Mark Anderson insightfully reviewed the manuscript for the press. He also
took the time to go over his criticisms with me. That my book challenges
parts of his work rather roughly makes his gesture all the more gracious.
The main point, however, is that in revising the manuscript I acted on all of
his suggestions and am thus indebted to him. I benefi ted, as well, from the
advice of a reviewer who chose to remain anonymous.
My editors at the University of Chicago Press, T. David Brent, Elizabeth
Branch Dyson, and Kate Frentzel, did an exemplary job of guiding this
project through the publication process. Richard Allen edited the manu-
script with a degree of rigor and intelligence that struck me as being extraor-
dinary. Indeed, his incisive, broad-ranging commentary helped make the
book better on every level, and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportu-
nity to work with him.
It is, of course, for readers to decide whether or not The Anti-Journalist
is a good book. But I will presume to say that without the help of two people
it would be a shadow, a hapless, anemic shadow, of the book it has become.
Acknowledgments ix
Practically speaking, Leo Lensing and Brett Wheeler were collaborators
on this project. Leo’s work on Kraus combines exegetical brilliance with
scholarly circumspection and enormous erudition. In helping me improve
my book he generously—and tirelessly—mobilized all those resources. An
admirably close reader and my closest friend, Brett identifi ed many prob-
lems in the manuscript and spent countless hours talking through possible
solutions to them.
My father, Robert Reitter, was born in prewar Budapest, into a family of
acculturated Germanophile Jews, and he was always willing to share with
me an experiential knowledge of issues that have a critical part in my project.
He was also an enthusiastic, discerning reader whose feedback helped make
The Anti-Journalist more engaging. I thank my wife, Maria, for providing
all those things that someone writing a book hopes for from a partner: pa-
tience, loving support, good editorial advice, etc. This book is dedicated to
her and to our daughter Cecelia.
A compressed version of chapter 2 appeared as “Karl Kraus and the Jewish
Self-Hatred Question” in Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 1 (Fall 2003): 78–111.