Germans and Jews beyond Journalism: Essayism and Jewish Identity in the Writings of Karl Kraus

Abstract

deste Beispiel von jtidischem Selbsthaf3 and as an Erzjude. For such prominent critics as Theodor Lessing, Anton Kuh, Wilma Abeles Iggers, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Walter Kaufmann, and, most recently, Sander Gilman, Kraus represents a spectacularly vociferous example of Jewish self-hatred.1 Kraus, the self-styled pillar of probity and language purist, attempts to distance himself from things Jewish by vilifying the unscrupulous capitalism and linguistic debauchery of assimilated Viennese Jews. This line of interpretation seems plausible enough, at least upon a first reading. For Kraus does in fact inveigh against Wienerjuden, Ringstrassejuden, and Schuhabsatzjuden, to use a few of his preferred formulations, with an incendiary violence and rhetorical excess that practically hector us into viewing him as driven by a deep-seated and irrational self-loathing. Kraus very often regards Viennese Jews as a major cultural liability. According to his first biographer, Leopold Liegler, Kraus sees in the Judenproblem the Kern und Herd des allgemeinen kulturellen Zerstirungsprozesses.'2 And, indeed, Kraus regards Jewish capitalists as the primary force behind German militarism. He has