Karl

I was born into a wealthy Jewish family of Jacob Kraus, a papermaker, and his wife Ernestine, née Kantor, in Jicín, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). My family moved to Vienna in 1877. I enrolled as a law student at the University of Vienna. Beginning in April of the same year I began contributing to the paper Wiener Literaturzeitung. In 1894 I changed my field of studies to philosophy and German literature. In 1896 I left university without a diploma to begin work as an actor, stage-director and performer, joining the Jung Wien (Young Vienna) group, which included Peter Altenberg, Leopold Andrian, Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Felix Dörmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Felix Salten. In 1897, however, I broke from this group with a biting satire Die demolierte Literatur [Demolished Literature], and was named Vienna correspondent for the newspaper Breslauer Zeitung. One year later, as an uncompromising advocate of Jewish assimilation, I attacked the Zionist Theodor Herzl with my polemic Eine Krone für Zion [A Crown for Zion] (1898).On April 1, 1899, I renounced Judaism and in the same year founded his own newspaper, Die Fackel ("The Torch"), which I continued to direct, publish, and write until my death, and from which I launched my attacks on hypocrisy, psychoanalysis, corruption of the Habsburg empire, nationalism of the pan-German movement, laissez-faire economic policies, and numerous other bêtes noires.While at the beginning Die Fackel was similar to journals like the magazine Weltbühne, it became more and more a magazine that was privileged in its editorial independence, that I could provide by my funding. Die Fackel printed what I wanted to be printed. In its first decade, contributors included many well-known writers and artists such as Peter Altenberg, Richard Dehmel, Egon Friedell, Oskar Kokoschka, Else Lasker-Schüler, Adolf Loos, Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schönberg, August Strindberg, Georg Trakl, Frank Wedekind, Franz Werfel, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Oscar Wilde. After 1911, however, I was usually the sole author. My work was published nearly exclusively in Die Fackel, of which 922 irregularly-issued numbers appeared in total.Authors who were supported by me include Peter Altenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Georg Trakl.Die Fackel targeted corruption, journalists and brutish behaviour. Notable enemies were Maximilian Harden (in the mud of the Harden-Eulenburg affair), Moritz Benedikt (owner of the newspaper Neue Freie Presse), Alfred Kerr, Hermann Bahr, Imre Bekessy and Johannes Schober.My masterpiece is generally considered to be the massive satiric play about the First World War, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind), which combines dialogue from contemporary documents with apocalyptic fantasy and commentary from two characters called "the Grumbler" and "the Optimist". The play was begun in 1915 and published in its final form in 1922.My last work, unpublished at my death, was the verbally rich, densely allusive anti-Nazi polemic Die Dritte Walpurgisnacht (The Third Walpurgisnacht).I never married, but from 1913 until my death, I had a close relationship with the Baroness Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin (1885-1950). In 1911 I was baptized as a Catholic, but in 1923 I left the Catholic Church. I am buried in the Zentralfriedhof cemetary outside Vienna. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kraus)