Kraus, Karl

Kraus, Karl (kärl krous), 1874–1936, Austrian essayist and poet, b. Bohemia. His satirical review the Fackel lashed out at hypocrisy, intellectual corruption, and the machine age. His voluminous works include Worte in Versen (9 vol., 1916–30, partial tr. Poems, 1930); Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (1919, tr. The Last Days of Mankind, 1974), a monumental drama of World War I; and volumes of essays, aphorisms, and epigrams.

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Kraus, Karl

(born April 28, 1874, Gitschin, Bohemia—died June 12, 1936, Vienna, Austria) Austrian journalist, critic, playwright, and poet. In 1899 he founded Die Fackel, a literary and political review, and by 1911 he had become its sole author; he continued to publish it until the year of his death. Believing that language was of great moral and aesthetic importance, he wrote with masterly precision, and his writings exercised wide influence. His works, which are almost untranslatably idiomatic, include Morality and Criminality (an essay collection, 1908), Proverbs and Contradictions (a collection of aphorisms, 1909), and The Last Days of Humanity (a lengthy satirical drama, 1922).