Karl Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind. The Ravens [extract], sound recording between 1930 and 1934

Medium

In his drama The last days of mankind (1918/19), Karl Kraus pilloried the madness of the war. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kraus regularly presented extracts in readings. The ravens, the traditional literary image of death, are the only winners from the world war.

Partner

Österreichische Mediathek

Verwendet bei

Chapter

I did not want it: Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind)

Karl Kraus’s anti-war drama is a satire in which reality parodies itself, with more than two hundred scenes, most of them short, but no continuous plot. The work was produced in the years 1915 to 1922 as a reaction to the First World War.
Chapter

The course of the war 1917–1918: Face-to-face with imminent downfall

It was now becoming ever more obvious that the Austro-Hungarian army could only function with massive German assistance. Politically this chained the Danube Monarchy even more firmly to Germany and left it even less freedom to make its own decisions.