Last Days of Mankind

The Austrian Jewish author Karl Kraus (1874–1936) was the foremost German-language satirist of the twentieth century. As editor of the journal Die Fackel (The Torch) he conducted a sustained critique of propaganda and the press, expressed through polemical essays, witty aphorisms, and resonant poems. Edward Timms, founding director of the University of Sussex Centre for German-Jewish Studies, is best known for his two-volume study Karl Kraus—Apocalyptic Satirist. The title of his memoirs, Taking Up the Torch, reflects his long-standing interest in Kraus’s journal. Fred Bridgham is the author of wide-ranging studies in German literature, history, and the history of ideas. His translations of lieder and opera include Hans Werner Henze’s The Prince of Homburg for performance by English National Opera.

Winner of the 2016 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work, sponsored by the Modern Language Association“The Last Days of Mankind is the strangest great play ever written.”—Jonathan Franzen, author of The Kraus Project“Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms’ translation of the complete The Last Days of Mankind, the apocalyptic drama by Karl Kraus, fills the major gap in the presentation of the Viennese literature on WWI in [English]. It is one of the greatest documents of the language of euphemism, misdirection, and deceit. Kraus simply repeats, in the mouths of his characters, the language heard and read on the streets and cafes in Vienna before and during the war. It heralds the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1919, turned by Kraus into a massive drama for the mind and the ear. What is most compelling is that it sounds like what all governments tell their population (and their population repeats) about the need, the glory, and the success of war but without any hint at its gore and horrors.”—Sander Gilman, Emory University“Among his audience he created at least one unified and unalterable attitude: an absolute hatred of war.”—Elias Canetti