The Anti-Journalist
, by Reitter, PaulNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780226709703 | 0226709701
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 2/1/2008
In turn-of-the-century Vienna, Karl Kraus created a bold new style of media criticism, penning incisive satires that elicited both admiration and outrage. Kraus's spectacularly hostile critiques often focused on his fellow Jewish journalists, which brought him a reputation as the quintessential self-hating Jew.The Anti-Journalistoverturns this view with unprecedented force and sophistication, showing how Kraus's criticisms form the center of a radical model of German-Jewish self-fashioning, and how that model developed in concert with Kraus's modernist journalistic style. Paul Reitter's study of Kraus's writings situates them in the context of fin-de-siecle German-Jewish intellectual society. He argues that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Kraus's attacks constituted an innovative critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation. Marshalling three of the most daring German-Jewish authorsKafka, Scholem, and BenjaminReitter explains their admiration for Kraus's project and demonstrates his influence on their own notions of cultural authenticity. The Anti-Journalistis at once a new interpretation of a fascinating modernist oeuvre and a heady exploration of an important stage in the history of German-Jewish thinking about identity.