Zusammenfassung
Anhand eines bisher unveröffentlichten Briefentwurfs wird erläutert, warum Karl Kraus schließlich nicht auf einen Vorschlag Upton Sinclairs einging, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit ins Englische übersetzen und in einer sozialistischen Sammlung von “Volksklassikern” erscheinen zu lassen. Der Aufsatz berücksichtigt sowohl die Bestände des Kraus-Archivs als auch den Upton-Sinclair-Nachlaß der Indiana University.
Abstract
Based on a previously unpublished draft of a letter, this article explains why Karl Kraus eventually rejected Upton Sinclair’s offer to have Die letzten Tage der Menschheit translated and included in a socialist collection entitled “The People’s Classics.” Sources are drawn from both the Kraus Archives and the Up ton-Sinclair-Archives at Indiana University.
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Literature
See Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind, trans. Alexander Gode and Sue Ellen Wright, ed. and abridged Frederick Ungar (1974); and the briefer abridgement trans.
Max Knight and Joseph Fabry in In These Great Times. A Karl Kraus Reader, ed. Harry Zohn (1976), pp. 157–258. Cf. the excerpts included in German Drama between the Wars, ed. George E. Wellwarth (1972), pp. 357–66; and in
Max Spalter, Brecht’s Tradition (1967), pp. 239–61.
James Fuchs (1873-?), an Austrian-born American journalist and translator, about whom only sketchy biographical and bibliographical information could be found. In the New Masses, June 1926, p. 3, he is called “a well-known writer for the radical press.”
Under the pseudonym Avicenna Witteis published a number of essays and stories in the Fackel in 1907 and 1908. See Sigurd Paul Scheichl, “Die literarischen Mitarbeiter der ‘Fackel,’” Kraus-Hefie, 10/11 (July 1979), p. 16.
Possibly a reference to Witteis’ paper “Die Fackel-Neurose,” presented at Freud’s Mittwochgeselhchafi in 1910. See the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 2 (1908-1910), ed. Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, trans. M. Nunberg (1967), pp. 382ff. The only other indication that Kraus knew of this “analysis” is in a letter (January 6, 1923) to Sidonie von Nâdherny, where Kraus rails against the psychoanalysts and refers to Wittels: “Das Gesindel hat jetzt auch ein Tagesblatt für seine Debatten zur Verfugung und ein Symptomjäger, dem ich den Laufpaß gegeben, fuhrt dort das große Wort, ein Kerl, der einmal meine Verabscheuung der Neuen Freien Presse auf meinen ‘Vaterkomplex’ zurückgeführt hat - öffentlich!” See Karl Kraus, Briefe an Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin, 1913–1936, ed. Heinrich Fischer and Michael Lazarus, rev. Walter Methagl and Friedrich Pfäfflin (1977), vol. 1, p. 569.
Witteis’ novel Ezechial der Zugereiste (1910), which contains the character of Benjamin Ekelhaft, who ist clearly a caricature of Kraus. See Martina Bilke, Zeitgenossen der “Fackel” (1981), pp. 180–82.
On the Utopian theorist Josef Popper (1838–1921), see William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind. An Intellectual and Social History 1848–1938 (1972), pp. 308–11. Cf. F 657–67, 1924, 135–37.
See the collection of these letters in Karl Kraus, Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung. Briefe des Verlages der Fackel, ed. Heinrich Fischer (1962).
See the discussion of Kraus’ ambivalent attitude towards the cinema in Leo A. Lensing, “‘Kinodramatisch’: Cinema in Karl Kraus’ Die Fackel and Die letzten Tage der Menschheit,” German Quarterly, 55 (November 1982), 480–98.
In Vienna, Kraus himself frequently read his works to workers’ assemblies. See Alfred Pfabigan, Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus. Eine politische Biographie (1976), p. 231; and the more comprehensive information in
Hans Eberhard Goldschmidt, “Die Vorlesungen für Arbeiter,” Kraus-Hefle 18 (April 1981), pp. 4–9.
New Yorker Volkszeitung, Sonntagsblatt, June 29, 1924, p. 6. Reprinted in F 679–85, 1925, 57–66. The Kraus Archives contain a copy of Fuchs’ article with some underlinings and marginal notes. On the New Yorker Volkszeitung, see Karl J. R. Arndt and May E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals 1732–1955. History and Bibliography (1961), p. 406.
See, e. g., Fuchs’ comment about the New Yorker Volkszeitung in a letter of July 27, 1925 (S/mss.). Fuchs and Sinclair’s correspondence numbers thirty letters between 1925 and 1932. Fuchs, who also wrote for the New Masses and other socialist publications, is mentioned briefly in Leon Harris, Upton Sinclair: American Rebel (1975), pp. 245, 391.
For bibliographical information on this book, the German translation and on Sinclair’s work in general, see Ronald Gottesman, Upton Sinclair: An Annotated Checklist (1973).
Letter of October 6, 1919, printed as a preface to the first edition of Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check. A Study of American Journalism (1920). For a balanced reassessment of this work and its influence on important figures such as I. F. Stone, see
Judson Grenier, “Upton Sinclair and the Press: The Brass Check reconsidered,” Journalism Quarterly, 49 (1972), 427–37.
Louis Untermeyer, “American Literature in Austria,” The Literary Review, December 22, 1923, p. 394.
See, e. g., the items mentioned in Anne M. Springer, The American Novel in Germany: A Study of the Critical Reception of Eight American Novelists between the Two World Wars (1960), pp. 39–45. See also “Sinclair in Germany” in
Lawrence M. Price, The Reception of United States Literature in Germany (1966), pp. 133–35. Neither of these studies, however, can claim either bibliographical or interpretative thoroughness.
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Lensing, L.A. Karl Kraus as “Volksklassiker”? Upton Sinclair and the Translation of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (Including an unpublished Kraus manuscript). Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 58, 156–168 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376023
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376023