The Third Walpurgis Night: The Complete Text

by Karl Kraus, Fred Bridgham (Translator), Edward Timms (Translator), Marjorie Perloff (Foreword by)

Overview

The first complete English translation of a far-seeing polemic, written in 1933 by the preeminent German-language satirist, unmasking the Nazi seizure of power

"[A] drop-dead analysis of the rhetorical barbarities of the Hitler cult."—Bill Marx, Arts Fuse

Austrian satirist and polemicist Karl Kraus’s Third Walpurgis Night was written in immediate response to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 but was withheld from publication for fear of reprisals against Jews trapped in Germany. Acclaimed when finally published by Kösel Verlag in 1952, it is a devastatingly prescient exposure, giving special attention to the regime’s corruption of language as masterminded by Joseph Goebbels. Bertolt Brecht wrote to Kraus that, in his indictment of Nazism, “you have disclosed the atrocities of intonation and created an ethics of language.” This masterful translation, by the prizewinning translators of Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind, aims for clarity where Kraus had good reason to be cautious and obscure.
 
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 single-handedly after 1912 conducted a sustained critique of propaganda and the press, expressed through polemical essays, satirical plays, witty aphorisms, and resonant poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300236002
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/23/2020
Series:	Margellos World Republic of Letters Series
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	551,445
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) was the preeminent German-language satirist, who conducted a sustained critique, notably of propaganda and the press, in his Viennese journal Die Fackel. Translators Fred Bridgham and the late Edward Timms were awarded the MLA Scaglione Prize for their translation of Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind.

Table of Contents

Foreword Marjorie Perloff vii

Translators' Preface xvii

Introduction xix

1 Stunned by the Seizure of Power 1

2 The Satirist's Dilemma 10

3 And What about Culture? 17

4 Goebbels, Manipulative Modernism, and Bucolic Jew-Baiting 26

5 Political Leadership and Artistic Transfiguration 35

6 Heidegger and the Verbal Accomplices of Violence 39

7 Gottfried Benn and the Sacrifice of Intellect 48

8 Papen's Two-Faced Politics and the Military Tradition 58

9 National German Jews 64

10 Turning Headlines into Lies 68

11 Murder with Mendacity 72

12 Purveyors of Culture and the PEN Congress 76

13 Verbal Imperialism: "Germany, Awaken!… 85

14 Self-Refuting Rhetoric and the Price of Butter 89

15 Rubbing Salt in the Wound 94

16 Poets and Barbarians 97

17 Translations from the Hebrew? 107

18 Soundbite-Hooks and Foreign Policy 111

19 "When Jewish Blood …" 125

20 Austrian Independence and the Innocent Aggressor 132

21 Protective Custody 147

22 Sexual Hatred, "Unforced" Conversation, and an Act of Defiance 161

23 Dollfuss and the Social Democrats 170

24 Casting Out the Devil through Beelzebub 176

25 Between Two Fascisms: Language Brings Everything to Light 187

26 Headlong into Servitude: When Madmen Lead the Blind 198

27 Out of the Abyss: Prussian Eagles and Parched Tongues 207

28 Where Lawlessness Makes Law Its Instrument 213

29 Prophets of Doom and the Triumph of Aryan Teutonism 226

Notes 237

Glossary and Index 249

Editorial Reviews

[A] savage dissection of the Nazi media . . . Kraus’s drop-dead analysis of the rhetorical barbarities of the Hitler cult stands as an inspiring model for what’s needed (steely courage, a strong stomach, prophetic verve) to excoriate the language of autocracy, early and often.”—Bill Marx, Arts Fuse

“No one saw the rise of the demonic Adolf Hitler and Nazism with the clarity Austrian satirist Karl Kraus did . . . Now Bridgham and Timms provide a brilliant translation . . . Essential.”—S. Gittleman, Choice

“[A] critical bombshell. . . . In the Age of Trump, Kraus’s book could hardly be more timely. . . . In its brilliant and cruel dissection of the Nazi media of 1933, The Third Walpurgisnacht is . . . a truly prophetic work.”—Marjorie Perloff, from the foreword

"When I was a student of German Literature in Berlin in the 1960s, Karl Kraus was seen as a Viennese crank—a curmudgeon with a serious if all too local ax to grind. Too limited, too far away to be interesting. Suddenly, The Third Walpurgis Night reads as if ripped from the front pages of tomorrow’s newspapers. Too real, too frightening, too prescient. The brilliant translation by Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms brings the collapse of Weimar democracy into focus in a way that demands attention. 'Never again' really is the proper response to reading this work."—Sander L. Gilman, co-editor, The Third Reich Sourcebook

 

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