‘Karl Kraus reads Offenbach. He uses a piano reduction instead of the orchestra score, and there is Kraus himself in a lounge suit in place of a cast of actors. That which he shows on stage, so boundlessly denuded, is unforgettable.’ (Walter Benjamin). Krausʼ Offenbachiads were especially popular with audiences. The pianist Sir Henry and the actor and singer Boris Eder take on Bluebeard: a large parade of corrupt politicians, embarrassing machos and (ultimately cheerful) ‘murder victims’ ...

Kraus lectures – A tribute to the 150th birthday of Karl Kraus in five lectures

‘There is nothing more desolating than his acolytes, nothing more godforsaken than his adversaries’, wrote Walter Benjamin about Karl Kraus, the oft-cited and much too rarely read language and culture critic, satirist and talented performer born in 1874. In the Free Republic of Vienna, different artists and intellectuals will stage a series of ‘lectures’ like those held by Kraus himself between 1910 and 1936 to great acclaim in Vienna’s Konzerthaus, in workers’ homes, in theatres and other venues. On five weekends, Kraus will not be regurgitated, but his ‘Theatre of Poetry’ will be dusted off: Linguistic analysis and text demolition as demonstrated by him as the editor of the Fackel, in The Last Days of Mankind, the Third Walpurgis Night and hundreds of trials against corrupt politicians and media personas receive a new interpretation. Contemporary historian Katharina Prager, who manages Kraus’ estate in Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, will already give an insight into the life and work of Karl Kraus on 29 April 2024 in a Wiener Vorlesung at Gartenbaukino.