Karl Kraus und Peter Altenberg - A Typology

The monograph explores the modern attitudes that are articulated in the texts "Third Walpurgis Night" by Karl Kraus (1874-1936) and "Prodromos" by Peter Altenberg (1859-1919). Following Foucault`s discourse analytical approach and his concept of self practice, it asks with what types of subject and truth the two literary works break open the structures of enunciation in which they are historically embedded. The result is not a biographical or philological comparison, but a report on the experience of a performative reading that makes an archaeological section of the writings and reconstructs their genealogical line. Concerning "Third Walpurgis Night," of interest is a process of cognition in the Kantian sense: what was it possible to perceive about the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933 in Vienna by reading newspapers, listening to the radio, and going to the cinema? An analysis of the leitmotif discourses on protective custody, the Second Revolution, and the German-Austrian conflict illuminates K.K.`s criticism that mass media, as extensions of the sense organs, destroy the imagination. For "Prodromos," the archaeology draws on the knowledge of life reform, hygiene, advertising, and silent movies; the genealogy on Kierkegaard`s notion of truth, Nietzsche`s dramatization, and ancient dietetics. P.A. mirrors the market of modes of existence as it appeared in the year 1905 without settling on an identity: his essayism searches for the roles that strengthen life, and finds sources of pleasure everywhere. A closing dialogue condenses the attitudes of the two types and entrusts the ethical task of actualization to the reader.