Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture

The 2nd Annual Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture will be taking place at St John's College on Friday 28 February 2014.

The lecture will be given by Dr Deborah Holmes, University of Kent, and is entitled 'War and Words. Krausian "Biographik" in The Last Days of Mankind'.

Summary

In his monumental drama "Die letzten Tage der Menschheit", the  Viennese satirist Karl Kraus launched a savage attack on the causes  and conduct of the First World War as seen from the perspective of  Austria-Hungary.

Over 800 pages long in its later versions (1922/28),  it consists in large part of quotations from newspaper articles,  proclamations, legal texts, war poems and songs, juxtaposed with  snatches of conversation as overheard in Vienna's streets and  coffeehouses. There is no plot as such, rather a succession of  dialogues created from this varied intertext and sustained by an  immense cast whose members are largely based on historical figures.

The lecture will explore the relevance of Kraus's mammoth project to the biographies of the individuals he co-opted for his satire and vice versa. In particular, the genesis of scenes from the first two acts featuring Hofrat and Hofrätin Schwarz-Gelber will be examined. These blackly comical characters - ruthless careerists intent on exploiting the opportunities for social mobility created by the war - are claimed to have been based on the real-life models of either Hermann and Eugenie Schwarzwald or Rudolf and Erna Schwarz-Hiller, acculturated Jewish couples who were respected representatives of liberal reform movements in fin-de-siècle Vienna. In investigating their literary incarnation here as paradigmatic types, I seek to shed light, not only on the nature of Kraus's satire but also on the modes of biographical writing to emerge from German-language Modernism.

The lecture will take place at 5pm on Friday 28 February at the Main Lecture Theatre, Divinity School, St John's College, and will be followed by a reception. All are welcome.